In line with the increased interest in studying implicit language attitudes, this study aims to explore implicit attitudes towards Catalan and Spanish in the multicultural and multilingual context of Catalonia (Spain) using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). A sample of 113 adolescents completed the IAT and a set of explicit measures of…

Second Language Pragmatics (L2 pragmatics) research focused on the study abroad (SA) context points out the benefits of this context for second language (L2) pragmatic development while also illustrating the non-linearity of this development, as it is shaped by different contextual factors and individual differences. Nevertheless, this research…

Wisconsin Walloon is a heritage dialect of a threatened language in the langue d'oïl family that originated in southern Belgium and expanded to northeastern Wisconsin, USA in the mid-1850s. Walloon-speaking immigrants formed an isolated agricultural community, passing on and using the language for the next two generations until English became the…

This study set out to test the theoretical premise of the SSARC model of pedagogic task sequencing, which postulates that tasks should be sequenced for learners from cognitively simple to complex. This experiment compared the performance of three tasks differing in cognitive complexity in a simple-complex sequence versus in the absence of any…

This study aims to explore how the speech act of requesting is performed in Catalan (L1), English (L1) and EFL classrooms by pre-primary teachers. The study examines transcripts of 40-minute video-recorded lessons (six in Catalan/L1, six in English/FL, and three in English/L1) collected in several pre-primary schools in Catalonia, Spain. Recall…

This study explores the effects of extensive audio-visual input with three captioning modes -- unenhanced captions, textually enhanced captions, and no captions -- on learning a variety of L2 grammatical constructions and examines the effects of three learnability factors: construction type, frequency, and recency. A total of 112 participants…

Purpose: Research has shown that observing hand gestures mimicking pitch movements or rhythmic patterns can improve the learning of second language (L2) suprasegmental features. However, less is known about the effects of hand gestures on the learning of novel phonemic contrasts. This study examines (a) whether hand gestures mimicking phonetic…

While there is ample evidence that study abroad (SA) enhances oral fluency in a foreign language, the effects of different types of learning context on other aspects of oral skills, such as vocabulary use, have not received much attention in academic research and are less clear. The present study tries to fill this void by investigating lexical…

This study investigates the role of biological age and L2 exposure on the achievement of two groups of Catalan-Spanish intermediate learners of English in secondary school (Group A, Formal Instruction (FI), N = 50; Group B, FI + CLIL, N = 50) regarding receptive and productive L2 skills as well as grammatical knowledge. Learners were matched for…

This paper presents the results of a study based on the change in language attitudes experienced by some allochthonous individuals through contact with the sociolinguistic situation in Catalonia. Previous studies have suggested that in some cases, contact with Catalan--a minority language with a valued identity--acts as a stimulus for some…

In this article, we examine the experiences of 18 Galician language learners who participated in what Garland [(2008). "The minority language and the cosmopolitan speaker: Ideologies of Irish language learners" (Unpublished PhD thesis). University of California, Santa Barbara] refers to as a "language-learning holiday" in…

The present study examines the effects that a 3-week study-abroad (SA) experience and a set of individual differences have on the foreign language (FL) development of a group of 64 Catalan/Spanish speakers, learners of English as an FL. Moreover, the present study attempts to account for the outcome differences between successful and less…

This study explores the foreign language learning emotions of four EFL adolescent students in Romania and the ways in which their emotions emerge in their sociocultural context. Multiple qualitative methods were employed over a school semester, including a written task, semi-structured interviews with the learners and their teachers, lesson…

Catalonia is the Autonomous Community of Spain with the highest proportion of immigrant students. This study analyses the language attitudes of Catalan, as well as the possible explanatory variables for such attitudes, for a large sample with a high proportion of immigrant students and a great linguistic diversity. A questionnaire was given to…

A new approach for overcoming the language and culture barriers to participation in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is reported. It is hypothesised that the juxtaposition of English as the "language of instruction," used for interacting with course materials, and one's preferred language as the "language of participation,"…