Syntactic complexity has long been used to gauge language learners' performance, proficiency, and development, offering language teachers valid recommendations for syllabus design and materials development. Progress in syntactic complexity research foreshadows the imperative of measuring syntactic features at a high level of granularity, which…

This article introduces the CELI corpus, a new learner corpus of written Italian consisting of ca. 600,000 tokens, evenly distributed among CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) proficiency levels B1, B2, C1 and C2. The collected texts derive from the language certification exams administered by the University for Foreigners…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has penetrated English language learning and teaching, and this penetration parallels a surge of research on its potential and challenges for learners and teachers altogether. This paper provides a glimpse of the status quo of generative (Gen) AI in contexts where English is not used natively. Adopting a holistic…

Multi-componential models of translation competence are widely used in translator training as a yardstick for curricular and syllabus design. These models must be adapted to reflect professional trends, such as the impact of artificial intelligence, and machine translation in particular, on working methods. This paper describes the process of…

Translation competence has been a heated topic in recent years. Yet, business English majors (BEMs), as non-translation bilingual majors, also need training in translation competence. The paper intends to construct translation competence for BEMs through four modules: schema based on business knowledge; information types; cognitive thinking and…

The Discontinuity Model (DM) described in this article proposes that adults can learn part of L2 morphosyntax twice, in two different ways. The same item can be learned as the product of generation by a rule or as a modification of a template already stored in memory. These learning modalities, which are often seen as opposed in language theory,…

This work is a contribution to the usefulness of climate-related authentic material for pedagogical purposes in Higher Education. The two case studies had the aim of raising environmental awareness of a sustainable future among university students, while encouraging them to explore language use and draw their own conclusions and considerations…

Word cloud generating applications were originally designed to add visual attractiveness to posters, websites, slide show presentations, and the like. They can also be an effective tool in reading and writing classes in English as a second language (ESL) for all levels of English proficiency. They can reduce reading time and help to improve…

The importance of plagiarism in an academic setting cannot be overlooked. Creating an awareness of plagiarism avoidance amongst students may be achievable and teaching students certain skills to avoid plagiarism, like paraphrasing, may also be possible. Although paraphrasing is one of the most important skills for avoiding plagiarism, it is a real…

Increasingly, professionally-oriented tertiary institutions are concerned with equipping their students with the English language skills needed in today's global professional world. The recently extended 2018 Common European Framework (CEFR) provides useful guidance to help institutions develop curricula to achieve this goal. This paper describes…

This lecture considers what reference and pedagogical grammars and grammar teaching materials for L2 learners should ideally include, based on corpus evidence from both native-speaker and learner corpora. I demonstrate how learner corpora can be used to track the emergence of grammatical features, from the elementary level to advanced, how…

There are many websites today that offer free machine translations and although beginning students of German are not always proficient enough to judge the quality of these translations or to fully understand certain translation results, they use these services nonetheless for their assignments. The problem for the educator is to distinguish…

In much of the literature on the exploitation of corpora for language learning, the learners are viewed as researchers, who formulate and test their own hypotheses about language use. Having identified difficulties encountered in corpus investigations by our intermediate-level students of Italian in a previous study, we have designed a…

Overviews ethical issues in applied linguistics presented in this special issue. The review discusses the articles' contributions within the broader contexts of the discipline and beyond the concerns of ethnocentric and Western contexts. The article argues that the issues raised are crucial to understanding functional approaches to linguistics and…

Terminology is a central theme of debate about language shift in Malaysia's judicial system--sometimes seen as the last bastion of the colonial language. Advocates of more Malay in courtroom argument and professional practice often point to the Institute of Language and Literature's creation of thousands of terms to equip the national language for…