In France, including the region of Alsace, German is taught as a foreign language. German is also taught as the regional language in Alsace and is presented in the following two forms in the national education legislation: the Alemannic and Franconian dialects (known as Alsatian), and Standard German. The latter is considered the written form of…

Since 2018, a language-learning scheme has been specifically designed for first-year students at the University of Lorraine. Its intended objective is to make them aware of the many possibilities, strategies and methodologies to learn languages, other than simply attending classes. Developing learner autonomy and inciting the students to use all…

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…

The present volume constitutes a singular contribution to its field on several counts. First and foremost, it is an outcome of a joint research effort by members of various European higher education institutions who have cooperated within the framework of the European Campus of City Universities Project (EC2U). It is an initiative that brings…

The many permutations of spoken English have called for an interrogation into the notions of 'standard English' and 'native accents'. Despite their problematic nature, these terms remain commonly used, and familiarity with 'standard', inner-circle varieties of English is typical among L2 English speakers, differences in education and language…

While intercultural learning is a key goal of study abroad, it is often difficult to assess or even achieve. Recent models, such as linguistic landscapes (which looks at the language of public signs, including road signs, advertising billboards, street, and place names), can help students reflect on and make sense of their intercultural…

When organising TeleCollaboration (TC) encounters at primary or secondary schools, especially technological and organisational complexity, alongside pedagogical issues, plays an essential role in the degree of success of the exchanges. Within the European TeCoLa project, pilot experiences have been organised using innovative but 'simple'…

The Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that properties of inflectional morphology explain why second-language learners may face persistent difficulties in articulating meaning in target-language forms. In particular, the acquisition task proves even harder when first and second languages differ in the way they organize the mapping of functional features…

This study investigates the impact of a high-level and a low-level process-based L2 comprehension training on L1 French students' listening performances. These students (N = 108) of English, Spanish, and German came from five different classes. After a L2 comprehension pretest, the participants were divided into two experimental groups. During the…

The results of a self-paced reading study with advanced German, Dutch and French second language (L2) learners of English showed that their online comprehension of early closure (EC) sentences which are initially misanalysed by native English speakers (e.g. "While John hunted the frightened rabbit escaped") was affected by whether or…

The present study investigated the effects of group set-up in a semester-long telecollaborative discussion forum project in second-semester German. In order to explore whether group set-up affects learning in discussion forums, small groups of non-native speakers (NNS) of German were partnered either with native speakers (NS), other NNS with the…

The technical institutions Institut Mines Télécom in Albi, France (IMT) and Trier University for Applied Sciences at the Environmental Campus of Birkenfeld, Germany (UCB) have been running Virtual Exchange (VE) projects since 2013. These projects allow the French and German students to use the vocabulary learned in class in a real context and to…

This study investigated clicker-use impact in a legal German lecture, given to 65 French students of Law in which the learning focus was both language and content. 36 participants who attended the entire course were tested. Upon their introductory session, students took a preliminary two-fold multiple-choice questionnaire involving 16 questions on…

This aim of this article is to contribute to the development of a socio-cultural model of emergent biliteracy that recognizes the dynamic interactions amongst two languages. The present field study took place in a French-German public Kindergarten class in Alsace, France, where students are in the initial process of learning to read in both…

Designing and sharing Open Educational Resources (OERs) requires teachers to develop new competences, in particular with digital resources. In this paper, the case of a language resource production group is introduced. Due to the centrality of the OERs in their collective activity, I show that the documents they produce are essential to the…