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 paper investigates the attitudes towards English of autochthonous and immigrant students in Catalonia (Spain) by focusing on their region of origin and their language competence. The research examines the individual and the joint effect of both variables in the development of language attitudes. A questionnaire was administered to 954…

One of the most intriguing questions in the investigation of second-language acquisition concerns the role of learners' first language (L1). Comparing learners of different backgrounds (L1 German vs. L1 Romance languages), we aim to explore the acquisition of tense and aspect features in Spanish as a second language (L2). Findings show that the L1…

There is strong controversy over the application and effects of the Linguistic Immersion Policy in Catalonia, a policy that established that the Catalan language should constitute the only vehicular language during the different levels of compulsory schooling. While some of the effects of this policy have been determined, the evidence on other…

In many immigrant families, children often learn the language and culture of the host society quicker than adult immigrants. Consequently, children serve as language brokers, translating and interpreting face-to-face communication. The aim of this paper is to present a study based on 19 qualitative in depth interviews with young adults reporting…

There is a theoretical and empirical tradition demonstrating the influence of the place of birth and self-identification in the shaping of language attitudes. But very few works analyse their joint effects. The main aim of this study is to analyse both the disaggregated and joint impact of these variables on the shaping of attitudes towards…

The increasing popularity of radical right, anti-immigrant, neo-nationalist movements can be seen as a response to super-diverse and complex migration and globalization processes challenging the ideology of the 'nation-state' and the traditional education system. Based on the question of how English is increasingly viewed as a threat to Swiss…

This article concerns Northern Catalonia, the part of the Catalan-speaking area that today is in France. A Catalan-speaking region until the first half of the twentieth century, the effects of Frenchification -- the acceptance of the French political and economic project in the contemporary era -- and the multiple demographic changes of the…

Learner corpora of written texts from academic writing assignments provide a practical resource for students, particularly in fostering academic writing skills. One such corpus is the newly available ROGER (Corpus of Romanian Academic Genres), a bilingual comparable corpus containing learner discipline-specific academic writing data in Romanian…

This paper explores the translation of non-canonised literature from a minority culture (Catalan) into a hegemonic culture (Spanish). In particular, it focuses on the ideological and sociocultural factors which lead the translator to purge the translation of idiosyncratic elements pertaining to the source culture. The aim is to show that the…

The goal of this brief article is to highlight a specific methodological consideration pertaining to the examination of linguistic transfer in sequential language acquisition: When and how can transfer be meaningfully disentangled from issues pertaining to developmental trajectories of the target language? While this methodological issue is…

Research on pragmatic awareness of language learners has mainly focused on the target language. As argued by some scholars, a multilingual perspective should also be adopted in the analysis of pragmatic awareness. In fact, existing findings point to the peculiar characteristics of multilingual pragmatic comprehension and awareness. Bearing these…

The premise of the present paper is that an intercultural approach to multilingualism in schools generates inclusion and a construction of cultural and linguistic identity that respects the diversity of society and classrooms. Students, teachers, and families participated in an action research project conducted in four schools with the presence of…

This study explores integration and linguistic acculturation in Catalonia (Spain), a multilingual setting where a state and a regional language coexist with those of immigration. Using qualitative content analysis, we examined the linguistic acculturation profiles of 13 high-school students of immigrant background and the linguistic acculturation…

In 2013, the so-called Viducation project was launched at the Institute of Romance Studies at the University of Kiel4 (CAU) as a reaction to the new Bachelor of Arts and Masters of Arts degree programmes in order to improve students' learning skills and core competences by creating subject-related videos. Filmmaking by students is already widely…