This paper will report on a pilot Virtual Reality (VR) project which repurposes an existing scenario-based VR asset for health sciences. The original scenario aims to prepare health care students for home visits by allowing them to experience a semi-linear conversation with a virtual Non-Player Character (NPC). This provides a safe,…

This study investigated the predictions of two approaches to second language acquisition. According to the usage-based approach, learner knowledge results from the strengths and weaknesses of input-driven statistical learning. According to the learner-varieties approach, pragmatic communication principles and language-internal constraints play…

The present paper reports on a study investigating whether the presence of a foreign accent negatively affects credibility judgments. Previous research suggests that trivia statements recorded by speakers with a foreign accent are judged as less credible than when recorded by native speakers due to increased cognitive demands (Lev-Ari and Keysar…

This paper aims to explore the reasons behind the limited dissemination of Adamczewski's Metaoperational approach to language beyond the French academic sphere. The theory, which developed in and by contrastivity between 1976 and 2005, is built on the basic assumption that utterances exhibit on their surface observable traces of the utterer's…

The present study aimed at investigating whether L2 learning affects phonological short-term and working memory and first language (L1) development. The performance of a group of 31 4- to-5-year-old sequential bilinguals attending an International School on tasks assessing phonological short-term and working memory and linguistic performance in L1…

This paper illustrates the use of two language-teaching and learning methods (process drama and theatre) in a class of Italian. Process drama is based on improvisation, over-identification, and dramatisation from a short set of coordinates that students can read just a few minutes before the activity that will be later performed in class (see…

The Cognitive Style Indicator (CoSI) includes 3 cognitive dimensions: creating (flexible, open-ended and inventive), knowing (emphasizing facts, details, objectivity, and rationality), and planning (guided by preferences for certainty and well-structured information). The first aim of this research was to validate the 3-factor structure of the…

Recent evidence demonstrates that pictures corresponding to iconic signs are named faster than pictures corresponding to non-iconic signs. The present study investigates the locus of the iconicity advantage in hearing bimodal bilinguals. A naming experiment with iconic and non-iconic pictures in Italian Sign Language (LIS) was conducted. Bimodal…

The current study investigated the capacity of a new test assessing phonological awareness to detect differences between Italian children with and without developmental dyslexia. Specifically, the task involves blending of a list of pseudo-words, and excludes lexical knowledge as a source of task performance. Fifty-four third to fifith Italian…

Recent developments in mobile technologies have increased the ways in which languages can be learnt, both within and beyond the classroom. Whereas the use of mobile technologies seems to challenge traditional knowledge and skills acquisition, research shows that foreign language study can be enriched through easy access to resources selected to…

The present article focusses on the use of the Electronic Language Log (ELL) as a tool to monitor independent learning practices by "ab initio" students of Italian in their first year of study at the University of Leeds. The ELL is first described in the pedagogic framework from which it derives, the language log; the primary aim of this…

Analyses of elicited pantomime, primarily of English-speaking children, show that preschool-aged children are more likely to symbolically represent an object with gestures depicting an object's form rather than its function. In contrast, anecdotal reports of spontaneous gesture production in younger children suggest that children use multiple…

Since 2012 an interdisciplinary and culturally heterogeneous team composed of more than 30 people has been engaged in the complex process of conceiving, designing and validating an online placement test with formative orientation called SELF (Système d'Evaluation en Langues à visée Formative), developed and already deployed in six different…

Academic globalisation and the internationalisation of scientific knowledge currently place higher education between two forces: global competitiveness and innovation on the one hand, local attractiveness and diversity on the other. In view of this double requirement, this paper aims to examine language policy and analyse its impact on language…

Narratives have been extensively studied in recent decades, but studies investigating differences and similarities in the narrative features from a cross-cultural or cross-linguistic point of view are limited. This study investigated the narrative language of typically developing monolingual four- and eight-year-old Finnish, Italian and Canadian…