This study investigates the efficacy of explicit rhythm instruction to improve engineering students' prosody in English. A pronunciation module of ten weekly sessions of 30 minutes held within the class schedule was designed for a technical English course at Rovira i Virgili University. Sessions were outlined using a communicative framework. Two…

Cook argued that the learning of a new language leads to a state of multi-competence, with the learner's mind changing in ways that go beyond the linguistic realm. The present study follows Dewaele's suggestion that multilingualism is linked to both cognitive and psychological changes. It explores one particular under-researched relationship,…

Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency and by using two…

To promote social consciousness and a sense of responsibility, educational proposals organised around the principles of technology-enhanced project-based language learning (Dooly & Sadler, 2016) should engage students in a process of reflecting upon and responding to crucial social issues. Thus, in this paper we will present a project carried…

Immigrant integration in nation states increasingly focuses on the importance of learning the national state language. This is evidenced by increased emphasis on rigorous language testing and tighter citizenship regulations. This paper analyses immigrant integration in two sub-state contexts, Galicia and Wales, where presence of a national…

This paper presents the first phase of a study conducted to analyze Knowledge Building forums for evidence of second language acquisition. This study is an analysis of the posts within an existing forum in search of evidence of foreign language learning. The analysis found that the collaborative writing project shows evidence that the students…

Background: Children with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) present impaired oral comprehension. According to the simple view of reading, general amodal linguistic capacity accounts for both oral and reading comprehension. Considering this, we should expect SLI children to display a reading comprehension deficit. However, previous…

In this paper, we analyse the relationship between use and perception of five Catalan variants of the variable "subject coreferential with an antecedent." This will be done by examining the results of a cloze test and three perception surveys answered in 1997 by 26 respondents. Two different correct constructions were then presented as…

In Spain, more than 40% of the population lives in officially bilingual regions in which the minority language is used as a means of instruction at school and university. In addition, the increasing importance attached to learning English has led to the proliferation of multilingual school programs in which different languages are used to teach…

In this article, we aim to explore the important role of future teachers in the revitalisation of minoritised languages. In the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia, language legislation stipulates that the minoritised language be supported in educational settings, yet this support has been weak at best, particularly for schools in urban areas.…

This paper explores language education in a Japanese school in Catalonia from the viewpoints of language policy with special attention to ideology. Our main goal is to identify the major factors which influence over the school's language education. As a national school abroad, this school should include national, local and global viewpoints in its…

Since the year 2000 and the massive arrival of immigrants to the Spanish region of Catalonia, the Catalan language has vastly augmented its number of students. In the meantime, the Catalan government continues to apply educational and language policies from the EU related to the new public management and knowledge economy. Neoliberal technologies…

This study investigates how epistemic stance is encoded and perceived in face-to-face communication when language is regarded as comprised by speech and gesture. Two studies were conducted with this goal in mind. The first study consisted of a production task in which participants performed opinion reports. Results showed that speakers communicate…

Bilingual children show a number of advantages in the domain of communication. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether differences in interactions are present before productive language skills emerge. For a duration of 5 minutes, 64 parents and their 14-month-old infants explored a decorated room together. The coordination of their…

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…