Task repetition (TR) is a valuable tool to direct learners' attention from meaning to language form. The first time learners perform a task their focus is on conveying meaning, whereas during the second enactment they tend to focus on the form of their message. Collaborative writing also promotes learners' focus on form, allowing extra time to pay…

Within higher education, it is often believed that the adoption of English-medium instruction (EMI) will provide domestic students with the language skills that will enable them to be more competitive in their future professional pursuits. However, research into language learning and EMI at the university level is very scarce. This study examined…

This study compares the language proficiency gains of two groups of students taking a business English course module in a bilingual university in Catalonia (Spain). Whereas one of these groups followed a 'translanguaging' or 'plurilingual' pedagogy, the other followed a strictly monolingual approach. Participants were 54 mostly Catalan/Spanish…

Acquisitionists generally assume a relation between code-mixing in young bilingual and trilingual children and language dominance. In our cross-sectional study we investigated the possible relation between code-mixing and language dominance in 122 children raised in Spain or Germany. They were bilingual, trilingual or multilingual, the latter…

In this paper, we explore the extent to which a stay abroad in a Danish university in which English is a frequent medium of instruction can be a very suitable context for students to increase their language proficiency and to develop both awareness of their communicative skills and their confidence in them. The data analysed come from (i) a pre-…

Language attitudes have become more relevant than ever as a result of the considerable number of immigrant students enrolled in the Catalan educational system and the challenges this entails in terms of promoting social integration and language learning. Therefore, the objective of the study is to increase our understanding of language attitudes…

Second language (L2) gains during study abroad have been related to several variables including length of stay (Llanes, 2011), language use (Martinsen, Baker, Dewey, Bown, & Johnson, 2010), and social network development (Isabelli-García, 2006), among others. However, most studies have investigated only a few predictors in single study abroad…

In this paper an updated overview of the main errors that Spanish students make when writing the English exam in the University Entrance Examination is provided. To do so, a Computer-aided Error Analysis (CEA) (Dagneaux, Denness & Granger, 1998) was conducted on a representative sample of the students who took the exam in June 2008 in Jaen,…

This study compared the amount of the second language (L2) use and linguistic gains made by students in three short-term language immersion programs: (1) traditional study abroad, (2) service-oriented study abroad, and (3) foreign language (FL) housing. These were chosen because they represent three distinct program types, providing students with…

The programs WordSmith and VocabProfile were used to research lexical differences between essays written in English by Spanish undergraduates and a set of essays independently judged as being of TWE grade 6 standard. The results indicated that writing by this group of students was generally characterised by low lexical variation, a preponderance…

English translations of articles in French in this issue include these: "Discourse Reported in the Print Media"; "Comparison of Register in Quebec and French Speakers"; "Method of Description of Specialized Verbs in View of Machine Translation Applications"; "Dialectal Areas in the Brazilian State of Rio Grande…