French-as-a-second-language (FSL) teacher candidates' French proficiency and confidence are key indicators of recruitment and retention of FSL teachers. This paper outlines a pilot project, the Conversation Club, that was used to address linguistic insecurity and proficiency in FSL teacher candidates at one university. The Conversation Club was a…

Over the last 25 years, scholars have proposed several recommendations for including spoken grammar in second language classrooms. However, recent studies point to potential challenges in this endeavour: learners may feel inauthentic when using what they see as 'native-speaker' forms, and interlocutors may see these forms as less acceptable when…

This paper describes and analyses the role of peer mentoring in a pilot internship programme that took place in summer 2023. A team of five international MA student-interns participated in a summer pre-sessional programme, acting as communication partners and facilitators. The aim of the study was to investigate the benefits of being peer mentors…

This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of ELF communication strategy instruction for university students' communicative competence. Conceptual studies on ELF-informed pedagogy stress the importance of teaching strategies, which promote mutual understanding and positive relationships, but few empirical pedagogical studies exist.…

Being able to use a foreign language to communicate will increase an individual's opportunities of employment and personal growth, which implies the significance of adopting a lifelong learning approach to language learning. This study was conducted to explore language learners' lifelong learning tendency in general and the key factors affecting…

This study introduces the first Arabic Vocabulary Levels Test (Arabic-VLT), created for foreign learners of Arabic. We present compelling evidence to substantiate its validity and reliability. The Arabic-VLT was developed according to five levels, beginning with the most frequently used words (Level 1) to the least frequently used ones (Level 5),…

The effectiveness of providing Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms to enhance students' general writing skills has been well-established. With the advent of various feedback modes in modern classrooms, this pilot study aimed to explore EFL students' perceptions and preferences regarding the…

Existing research has established immense importance in contextual learning for second language development. However, to provide real-life context in the learning of a foreign language is challenging. To help create such a learning environment, our previous research developed an innovative system called the R&T System, utilizing robots (R) and…

Through the student-as-partners (SaP) framework, this paper explores how this can enhance undergraduate Spanish as a foreign language flipped classroom courses and promote student engagement and satisfaction. Traditionally, higher education courses are designed and developed by faculty members; however, our pilot project proposed collaboration…

Action research is characteristically used to provide research experience for late-stage, pre-service teachers as a means of breaching the perceived divide between theoretical knowledge and contexts of practice. However, aside from the considerable methodological challenges of enacting action research itself, pre-service teachers also enter…

This article discusses a pilot project aimed at giving tertiary students a wider repertoire of resources to use in language learning, with a particular focus on Italian. This project responds to the exponential increase in and access to online data and the potential value such data represent for students studying additional languages at tertiary…

Competence in the use of prepositions is versatile because they mark special relationships between persons, objects, and locations. However, using prepositions of time is challenging for many. The research investigated embodied pedagogical game approach in learning selected prepositions of time by Grade 7 English First Additional Language learners…

The current study analyzes three locative English prepositions, above, on, and over from a cognitive semantic point of view. Since English is a foreign language for Iraqi students, these prepositions pose a problem for Iraqi university students. The complexity of these three prepositions inspires the researcher to use the Cognitive Linguistic (CL)…

Given the novelty of human--machine communication (HMC) in task-based language learning (TBLL), we conducted a multimethodological pilot study to explore the use of Alexa in out-of-class task-based learning to mediate texts in English as a foreign language. Fourteen Polish intermediate learners participated in the quasi-experiment and programme…

Mass adoption of neural machine translation (NMT) tools in the translation workflow has exerted a significant impact on the language services industry over the last decade. There are claims that with the advent of NMT, automated translation has reached human parity for translating news (see, e.g. Popel et al. 2020). Moreover, some machine…