Among the existing sign language assessment tools, only a small number can be used in clinical settings. This contribution aims at presenting three comprehension assessment tests (two lexical and one syntactic) that offer a solid basis to build tools to assess language impairments in deaf signing adults. We provide the material and guidelines,…

Verbal interaction has been the subject of a growing interest among language professionals in Europe since the CEFR was published in 2001; in linguistics, verbal interaction has long been studied. In the Bakhtinian approach, it is even considered "the fundamental reality of language". All types of interaction share the fact that they are…

According to the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), since 2016 many French universities have set up French language teaching programmes for refugees and people with subsidiary protection to respond to their need of linguistic support in French before starting or resuming their higher education studies. Welcoming such students however…

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 progress of technology and the complete integration of its products in our daily lives is now a reality. In addition to this, more and more young children now own their personal mobile devices, most of which have a connection to the internet. These new portable devices offer unlimited possibilities to their users, yet they also create more and…

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…

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…

In teacher training curricula, books are presented as an ideal material for building and enriching young children's language. Yet, the routine of reading at home with children is hardly ever mentioned. In this chapter, the author proposes analyses of story-reading activities from a usage-based and first language acquisition perspective. The goal…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) are particularly sensitive to phonological complexity in their language. Their performance drops when there are specific phonological structures or when complexity increases. A nonword repetition (NWR) test, which aims to assess the phonology of bilingual speakers with and without SLI, should…

This chapter presents and discusses the results of a large-scale pilot study carried out in the context of a task-based, blended-learning Business English programme in the Foreign Languages and International Trade department of a French University . It seeks to explore the effects of pre-task planned Focus on Form (FonF) on accuracy in students'…

This paper reports on the early stages of a locally funded research and development project taking place at Rennes 2 university. It aims at developing a comprehensive pedagogical framework for pronunciation training for adult learners of English. This framework will combine a direct approach to pronunciation training (face-to-face teaching) with…

This paper presents the findings of an experiment in which a group of 17 French post-secondary EFL learners used Google to self-correct several "untreatable" written errors. Whether or not error correction leads to improved writing has been much debated, some researchers dismissing it is as useless and others arguing that error feedback…

The introduction of foreign languages into the first three-year cycle of primary school has spurred the need for qualified teachers, and is one of the main discussion points among experts in foreign language teaching. Most of the contemporary studies report that there is a global gap between the supply of qualified teachers of foreign languages to…

The use of a blog as a pedagogical aid for the learning of foreign languages is gaining support among teachers' communities (Soubrie, 2006; Tome, 2007) as it can help students develop online interactions and authentic productions. The current study is analysing the use of such a multimedia setting in a group of Master's students in France,…

This volume contains papers submitted to the 10th Annual Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society, held in Kyustendil, Bulgaria, 12-15 June 2012. The overall goal of the 10th BCES conference is to facilitate discussion of different perspectives on international education providing a forum for scientific debate and constructive…