Many scholars have highlighted the great variability of second language acquisition outcomes and, thus, the inconsistencies and inconclusiveness in the study abroad literature. These have called for longitudinal, case-based research that focuses on the students' processes (rather than outcomes) and that showcases the heterogeneity of…

Employability is increasingly becoming a central aspect of higher education in the United Kingdom and it is becoming imperative that modern foreign languages teachers engage directly and sincerely with the employability agenda. This article proposes the use of feature films as a successful method for developing and promoting employability skills…

Like other anglophone countries, the UK is experiencing a language 'crisis', in that fewer and fewer students opt to study a foreign language (FL) beyond the compulsory phase, and that the UK's language skills do not match its economic needs. Despite strong statements of commitments to increase FL uptake, decline in FL uptake in the UK's four…

The majority of multilinguals immersed in different cultures report feeling different when switching languages. Although the influence of personality on self-perceptions has been investigated, little attention has been paid to acculturation aspects. The present study is based on a mixed-method approach combining questionnaire and interview data.…

We describe an exploratory study carried out within the University of Milan, Department of English the aim of which was to analyse features of the spoken English of first-year Modern Languages undergraduates. We compiled a learner corpus, the "Role Play" corpus, which consisted of 69 role-play interactions in English carried out by…