Catalonia is an interesting site for language ideology research for several reasons. It is a multilingual and multicultural territory, where both Catalan and Spanish enjoy the status of co-official language. Adding to this, over the course of the last two decades there has been a growing movement that has called for the independence of Catalonia…

No Spanish-language tool exists to assess physical activity in people with spinal cord injuries. This work aimed to provide a valid Spanish version of the Physical Activity Recall Assessment for People with Spinal Cord Injury (PARA-SCI). It was conducted in three phases. First, translation and cross-cultural adaptation. Second, a reliability…

High variability phonetic training using perceptual tasks such as identification and discrimination tasks has often been reported to improve L2 perception. However, studies comparing the efficacy of different tasks on different measures are rare. Forty-four Catalan/Spanish bilingual learners of English were trained with identification or…

Gamification is a methodological strategy that has been applied for several years in the field of modern language learning. It is employed primarily to increase students' motivation by incorporating game elements into an otherwise didactic context. Research into the use of gamification in language teaching has focused largely on characterizing the…

We presented 28 Spanish monolingual and 28 Catalan-Spanish close-language bilingual 5-year-old children with a video of a talker speaking in the children's native language and a nonnative language and examined the temporal dynamics of their selective attention to the talker's eyes and mouth. When the talker spoke in the children's native language,…

Research on the effects of bilingualism on third language (L3) development set in bilingual communities is scarce, outdated, and has provided mixed results. This study investigated the effects of exposure and age of onset of acquisition (AOA) of L3-English, as well as first and second language (L1/L2) skills and use, in the development of…

Purpose: Though the frequency of gesture use by infants has been related to the development of different language abilities in the initial stages of language acquisition, less is known about whether this frequency (or "gesture rate") continues to correlate with language measures in later stages of language acquisition, or whether the…

The present study seeks to offer insights into how former study abroad students, temporally beyond the period of initial re-entry into their home environments, perceive Spanish as a foreign language in their lives now. This post-sojourn period is explored within the framework of the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2009) and the expanded…

Second Language Pragmatics (L2 pragmatics) research focused on the study abroad (SA) context points out the benefits of this context for second language (L2) pragmatic development while also illustrating the non-linearity of this development, as it is shaped by different contextual factors and individual differences. Nevertheless, this research…

In recent years, a discourse of Spanish exceptionalism has arisen, whereby Spain has managed to integrate over five million immigrants in a very short period of time without the kind of social upheaval witnessed in other European countries over the past several decades. Overtly racist and xenophobic discourses have generally been, with notable…

After years of controversy and terminological debate, the plurilingual approach is now well accepted by language teaching communities. Still, doubts concerning how the plurilingual approach can shape the way we teach languages remain. The aim of this article is to describe a pedagogical and sequential approach that can be followed by teachers who…

Children and young people from migrated families often learn host languages faster than their parents might do, and from very young ages they help their parents, families or community members by translating or interpreting, known as child language brokering (CLB). Language brokers need to mediate with different languages in different contexts and…

This study examines the acquisition process of speech rhythm in Dutch learners of Spanish (DLS) and Spanish learners of Dutch (SLD) at different proficiency levels to determine whether learning direction affects the success of rhythm acquisition in a foreign language (L2). Analyses of lengthening effects showed that the two learner groups followed…

In the current neoliberal era, work is increasingly connected to transnational relations that involve people crossing linguistic and national borders. Based on a multi-sited ethnography, this article explores a transnational social movement called Emmaus where voluntary work, geographical mobility, and language learning intersect. I analyse the…

It is generally taken for granted that teaching the language of the region to newcomers will prevent social stratification and will enable them to participate in the society and economy. Nevertheless, there are significant drawbacks with regard to the coordination of these language classrooms. This article will problematise the fact that these…