During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online,…

Many educators in immersion contexts support a policy of strict separation of languages in the classroom as the ideal model for second language acquisition and are reluctant to make connections between the dominant language, the target language and pupils' home languages. This can result in missed opportunities for drawing on pupils' entire…

Largely banished from language instruction following the adoption of communicative approaches, some researchers now encourage the use of translation as a valuable resource for the language classroom. While increasingly embraced in theory, there remains a need to better understand, through empirical research, the implementation of translation-based…

This paper presents the results of a brief mixed-methods intervention which sought to modify the production of prominence-related features in L2 English by four native French-speaking university lecturers, in read-aloud speech. Selected parts of participants' productions were acoustically modified and then used as the model in a Listen-and-Repeat…

A large amount of literature exists on how native speakers derive and process pragmatic inferences, yet few studies have examined the issue in second language learners, despite a controversial debate of second language (L2) ultimate attainment of phenomena situated at external interfaces. This study contributes to the debate on the integration of…

This study investigates whether re-thinking the separation of lexis and grammar in language testing could lead to more valid inferences about proficiency across modes. As argued by Römer, typical scoring rubrics ignore important information about proficiency encoded at the lexis-grammar interface, in particular how the co-selection of lexical and…

Language classroom interactions can be characterized as multimodal, since teachers may resort to a variety of resources provided by their body or by their immediate space in order to convey meaning, manage activities and assess pupils' performances. Furthermore, teachers' multimodal practices constitute an essential component for the…

In this chapter, I present an interactional and multimodal analysis of video-recorded mental health consultations with asylum seekers in France. My main focus is on sequences in which the patients talk with the therapist about their learning of French, in some cases through the mediation of a professional interpreter. The particular context of…

This article compares the immersion-education systems in Brittany and Wales. The number of Welsh speakers is growing thanks to its well-developed immersion-education system. Brittany has a much less well-developed system and the number of Breton speakers is falling dramatically. Urgent action is needed if Breton is to survive. Using an approach…

For many years, French and Canadian schools have welcomed students from around the world. This article presents the Binogi/ESCAPE project, which supports the integration of a multilingual digital resource in the classroom that presents STEM content through a multilingual lens with associated animated videos and quizzes. The study aims to encourage…

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 case study investigated the practiced language policies of a French elementary school educator, Catherine, as she implemented the French National Cycle of instruction for the early elementary grades with a culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) class of students. The findings revealed that macro-level policies--such as curriculum and…

This article explores the role of transfer and Universal Grammar (UG) in second language (L2) phonology by investigating the L2 acquisition of stress/prominence in footless languages, such as Turkish and French, which have fixed word- and phrase-final prominence respectively. It is proposed that once the prosodic constituent Foot is projected in a…

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…