Due to globalisation and migration, multilingualism has become both a reality and an aim of education systems across Europe, affecting how language education is shaped. To improve the ways in which schools cater for language education in diverse settings, research is required on the potentials of multilingualism in order to design curricula that…

This study follows a group of modern foreign languages (MFL) teachers in the Netherlands during a nine-month professional development project around the theme of 'Content in MFL'. The project was initiated following proposals to refocus the MFL curriculum on the basis of integrated learning outcomes for both language proficiency and areas of…

Morphological complexity (MC) is a relatively new construct in second language acquisition (SLA). After critically discussing existing approaches to calculating MC in first- and second-language acquisition research, this article presents a new operationalization of the construct, the Morphological Complexity Index (MCI). The MCI is applied in two…

Web-based video is one of the technologies which can support meaningful learning from practice--in addition to practical benefits such as accessibility of practices, flexibility in updating information, and incorporating video into multimedia resources. A multiple case study was set up on the use of a web-based video learning environment in two…

This paper reports on a study on the relationship between cognitive task complexity and linguistic performance in L2 writing. In the study, two models proposed to explain the influence of cognitive task complexity on linguistic performance in L2 are tested and compared: Skehan and Foster's Limited Attentional Capacity Model (Skehan, 1998; Skehan…

In a study on L2 proficiency in writing, conducted among 84 Dutch university students of Italian and 75 students of French, manipulation of task complexity led in the complex task to a significant decrease of errors, while at the same time a trend for a lexically more varied text was observed (Kuiken and Vedder 2005, 2007, in press). Based on this…

This article discusses the linguistic background of two Italian children who lived with their parents for an extended period of time in Holland and for a brief time in Puerto Rico and spent vacations in Italy where their relatives spoke the dialects of Veneto and Friuli. (CFM)

Focuses on personal pronouns in business discourse, using data from four business meetings: formal and informal, in Dutch and in Italian. The article focuses on the pronouns "I" and "we," commenting on the frequency of Dutch inclusive "we," absent from the Italian data. The article also discusses indexical and…

Foreign language (FL) teachers have long been leaders in the use of technology in the classroom, from short wave radio and newspapers, to film strips, to tape recorders, to records, 16 mm films, video, and now computers, as a means of bringing authentic language and culture to their students. Computer and Internet technologies require…