While translation was once a key component of language teaching, throughout the twentieth century, it largely gave way to methods and approaches with a greater focus on communicative competence. However, efforts have been made in the past few decades to return translation and more generally multilingual language learning to classrooms. In the…

The acquisition of voice in Greek remains understudied, especially in heritage populations. Voice in Greek poses a challenging acquisition task for children due to its syncretism, marking various verb classes as well as passives. The present study explores the acquisition of anticausatives, reflexives, and passives in 6-to-8-year-old monolingual…

Social Virtual Reality (VR) applications enable real-time interpersonal conversation and allow users to perform activities together. They have the potential of changing the ways learners practise speaking a foreign language. Following a previous study (Jauregi Ondarra, Gruber, & Canto, 2020), we designed the present study to explore how…

This article explores how multiple linguistic cues interact in predictive processing among second language (L2) learners. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, we investigated whether learners of German use case and prosody cues together to assign thematic roles and predict post-verbal arguments. During the experiment, participants listened…

We suggest that complex tasks can be introduced to learners as early as primary school level with the help of digital media in the form of different apps. As a theoretical basis, we will first outline the principles of teaching English in (German) primary schools. Secondly, we will look at the framework of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)…

Being able to coordinate the perspectives of oneself and others is likely to be helpful in educational contexts. For example, teachers need flexible social perspective taking to understand their own perspectives and those of their students. Evidence suggests that reading facilitates social perspective taking because it involves readers…

The present exploratory study investigated the efficacy of secondary face-to-face classroom-based English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction digitally supported by the FeedBook, an interactive computer assisted language learning web-based suite of exercises providing item-level scaffolded feedback. Seventy-seven native (L1) German…

This experiment investigated interactions between lower- and higher-level processing when reading in a second language (L2). We conducted an eye-tracking experiment with the within-subject manipulation inconsistency (to tap higher-level coherence-building) crossed with a within-subject manipulation of word-processing difficulty (to alter the ease…

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 whether the ability to encode the sounds of difficult second-language (L2) contrasts into novel nonnative lexical representations is modulated by the phonological form of the words to be learned. In 3 experiments, German learners of English were trained on word-picture associations with either novel minimal pairs…

Metalinguistic awareness (MLA) is a predictor of adult foreign language (FL) learning in instructed settings. Following Bialystok and Ryan (1985) two-component model of MLA, we distinguish ML analysis as the ability to compare and select language items from ML control as the ability to detect and manipulate rule-based linguistic patterns. So far,…

This paper describes an experiential education course designed to enhance student learning while abroad. Studies have shown that students studying abroad need specific interventions in order to profit fully from the immersive experience. The article describes a sequence of task-based interventions designed to prompt students to engage with the…

In this article we explore how primary school learners of English in Germany engage with examples of English that they were asked to locate in their local environments (their linguistic landscapes, LLs). In association with each located image, the learners completed a standardised worksheet in German that asked for brief written comments about its…

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…