This study investigated the degree to which Japanese learners of English accurately perceive English fricatives over time and the extent to which fricatives were misidentified. To train and measure perception skills, an online high-variability phonetic training program was used in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class in Japan for eight…

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 study investigated the effects of using an online High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) program for university students whose first language is Japanese and who studied English as a foreign language. The target sounds were English fricatives, which many of the participants felt were challenging to distinguish and articulate. The training…

Drawing from a "constructivist" approach, this qualitative research presents results of teaching the Doctoral English Course (DEC) at the Center for Languages (CDL), University Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. The DEC aims to train doctoral candidates in the practice of scientific communication in English. By allowing students to (re)think…

Teaching culture out of context may not be the optimal approach, yet it could be achieved by immersive technologies. This study uses an immersive theme-based environment and focuses on cross-cultural interactions between learners of different cultures in goal-oriented scenarios. We collected interactions among learners with different cultural…

This study examined the acquisition of L2 English vocabulary with clickers, focusing on the role of individual differences. Following a pretest-posttest design, we measured perception and performance among 61 English learners who took part in a vocabulary acquisition treatment, in which they answered Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) via clickers…

This project aimed to explore how online open communities and resources could be used for language learning in a higher education context. Advanced language learners were introduced to translation and subtitling, and the use of open content to maintain their language skills post-graduation whilst engaging in a meaningful activity, namely sharing…

Wall Street English has built online activities that allow students to record phrases and receive word-level Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) driven pronunciation feedback. Students in language centres in China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and Italy (N=2,867) used ASR-Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) activities, and some (N=482) completed a…

This paper examines a peer virtual exchange project between students at the University of Cyprus and the University of Latvia. The main purpose of this project is to develop intercultural awareness. Through telecollaborative tasks, students are asked to interact in a common discussion space around elements related to their cultural values. The aim…

Writing is an essential literacy skill that is crucial to meeting various social demands. It is also extremely difficult to master, especially for learners of an additional language who face significant barriers to learning. Universal Design for Learning (UDL), is an instructional framework promoted as an effective means of removing such barriers.…

Monolingual and parallel concordancers have both been found to benefit second-language (L2) grammatical development. However, the relative benefits of these two concordancer types remains unclear. The present study compares learning outcomes and learners' perceptions of a monolingual English (Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA) and a…

This small-scale study draws on a higher education context where French-speaking students, "in situ" at Bordeaux University, participated in the Sharing Perspectives Foundation's flagship "Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange" (E+VE) program (2018-2019). French-speaking students interacted in English on the topic of "Newcomers and…

This paper implements and evaluates a curriculum-integrated information literacy programme in an Arabic primary school in the United Kingdom to empower learners and develop life-long learning skills. It reports on an action research project with a reflective practice approach used at the beginning of the semester to identify potential problems…

This study presents the way Parmaxi and Zaphiris's (2015) social constructionist framework was used in order to teach and learn vocabulary in an Italian for Specific Academic Purposes (ISAP) tertiary course. The participants (beginner students) were guided to build in groups an artifact, i.e a specific academic vocabulary collection. To do so,…

This paper looks at how corpus data was used to design an Italian as an L2 language learning programme and how it was evaluated by students. The study focuses on the acquisition of Italian verb-noun collocations by Chinese native students attending a ten month long Italian language course before enrolling at an Italian university. It describes how…