Research in metadiscourse has foregrounded the multiple ways in which writers build a relationship with readers through internal discourse. Yet, few studies consider the relationship between the texts writers create and the metalinguistic thinking which informs their decision-making as writers. This paper draws on data from a larger study which…

We investigated how native and fluent users of English segment continuous speech and to what extent they use sound-related and structure-related cues. As suggested by the notion of multi-competence, L1 users are not seen as ideal models with perfect command of English, and L2 users not as lacking in competence. We wanted to see how language…

Research on pragmatic awareness of language learners has mainly focused on the target language. As argued by some scholars, a multilingual perspective should also be adopted in the analysis of pragmatic awareness. In fact, existing findings point to the peculiar characteristics of multilingual pragmatic comprehension and awareness. Bearing these…

Analysis of conversations between international university students in the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca Interaction (CELFI, McDonough & Trofimovich, 2019) has demonstrated that holds, which are temporary cessations of dynamic movement, are a robust visual cue of nonunderstanding that can be reliably interpreted by external observers as…

This article reports a project that I carried out with prospective Maltese language teachers in order to give them the opportunity to examine their linguistic landscape (LL), to develop an awareness and a curiosity about how languages are used in house names, and to reflect on their own learning. The student-teachers adopted visual ethnography to…

The present study evaluated the effects of explicit instruction on advanced French second language (L2) learners' (n = 18) contextually appropriate use of two stylistic variables (/l/ deletion vs. retention and "ne" deletion vs. retention) using two different task types. A planned and unplanned oral task was used to assess students'…

In this article, we analyse visual narratives of multilingual children, in order to acknowledge their self-perception as multilingual selves. Through the analysis of drawings produced by children enrolled in Portuguese as heritage language (PHL) classes in Germany, we analyse how bi-/multilingual children perceive their multilingual repertoires…

English phraseology abounds with alliterative multiword units (e.g., slippery slope), which suggests that alliterative word strings have a comparative advantage to become stock phrases. One plausible explanation for this advantage is that alliterative word strings are relatively memorable, all else being equal, although there is little directly…

Johns reports in his text "Kibbitzing one-to-ones" (1997) that corpus-informed metatalk with a foreign language expert helps apprentice writers to make progress in independent text revision. Expecting this progress to be based on the development of expert-like ways to observe language features, I integrated Johns' so-called kibbitzing…

A recent practice in the study of language on teacher education programmes has been the use of electronic corpora, and we are therefore still at the initial stages of exploring key issues relating to their integration. Despite arguments for and against their adaptation, there is a dearth of evaluative research examining student teachers'…

Self-repetition is commonly found in spoken discourse, and it could be argued that it is an interactional necessity. Self-repetition in spontaneous talk is pervasive and performs a variety of functions. Some regard it as signalling redundancy, disfluency, or both, in spoken language, whereas others consider it to be facilitating the production of…

Explores the potential of a corpus-based approach for promoting language awareness in student translators. Examines principal criteria required to produce a good translation and discusses obstacles to language awareness that can be found in the classroom: resistance to correction, lack of motivation, and lack of awareness of the distinction…

Considers issues in customizing descriptions of English grammar in the context of creating an electronic database for secondary school teachers in Hong Kong. In developing the database, the aim was to incorporate insights from functional grammar and corpus linguistics while keeping information accessible and relevant to teachers only familiar with…