This article presents the outcomes of a 2-year pilot study of a teaching innovation project in an English-medium instruction course on sociolinguistics, in a languages degree at a Catalan university. Following the tenets of Critical Linguistics Education, our proposal aimed at promoting the students' development of metalinguistic awareness of…

Under the conditions of the globalized new economy, European universities have become profit-making institutions. They envision students as mobile workers-to-be whose employability chances depend on self-enterprising and on self-responsibilization for foreign-language command, and they now compete in the educational marketplace by targeting them…

In the shift to English-medium instruction (EMI) in European higher education, policy often runs ahead of research and curricular decisions are taken independent of evidence regarding their suitability for achieving broader educational goals, which may range from internationalisation as a general strategy to English language learning as a more…

Spain has followed the lead of other Western countries by establishing new citizenship requirements for immigrants. In 2015, the "Real Decreto" 1004/2015 was passed, making both knowledge of culture and history of Spain and knowledge of Spanish language a requisite for immigrants wishing to become citizens. In order to fulfill this legal…

This study explores the source of transfer in third language (L3) English by two distinct groups of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals, simultaneous bilinguals and late bilinguals. Our study addresses two research questions: (1) Does transfer come from the first language (L1), the second language (L2), or both? and (2) Does age of acquisition of the L2…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise description of the European minority language, Hungarian in Romania, in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools,…

Occitan, or the Oc language, is a Romance language. The focus in this dossier is on the four regions in France where Occitan is spoken: Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Occitanie, and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal…

Since 2002, which marks the end of the Civil War in Angola, a large multilingual and multicultural workforce from various corners of the world has entered the Angolan education system. This paper investigates language barriers experienced in the classroom of Spanish speaking lecturers by Portuguese speaking students. The study focuses on a group…

Predicting the outcome of language contact situations is complicated by the fact that the primary agents of linguistic change--individual speakers--are unpredictable (van Coetsem, 2000; Thomason, 2001). My dissertation examines the variety of Spanish spoken in Galicia, Spain, where individual language choices are often motivated not by utility but…

Although CLIL (content and language integrated learning) programmes are now globally expanding, the number of studies that have examined their impact on both multiple language learning (students' L1, L2 and English as a foreign language) and content learning are scarce. This study investigates the effects of a CLIL programme implemented in a rural…

The aim of the dossier is to provide a concise description of European minority languages in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools, teachers, pupils, and…

Due to the great number of Romanian pupils in Spanish public school, the local administration organises extra-curricular Romanian courses in order to preserve the Romanian language and culture. This is a way to contribute to build and consolidate a bicultural and bilingual profile of the young people. Besides, it is also an opportunity to align…

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…

Building a text is a multidimensional endeavor. Writers must work simultaneously on the content of the text, its discursive organization, the structure of the sentences, and the individual words themselves. Knowledge of vocabulary is central to this endeavor. This study intends (1) to trace the development of writer's vocabulary depth, their…

This study compared receptive English grammar skills of two groups of 7- and 9-year-old Danish children at the beginning of second language (L2) instruction in English, and two groups of Spanish/Catalan children of the same age after several years of instruction. The study examined the influence of two language-related factors (receptive…