evidence-based language education

evidence-based language education

A didactic unit based on the focus for tasks: reflections and examples

This article presents an experience of the implementation of a pedagogic unit based on the task-based approach. A brief theoretical review of the basis of task-based approach is made in order to contextualise the experience which is carried out with a group of adult learners in a...

Adapting the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) to Catalan

The adaptation of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (LITMUS- MAIN; Gagarina, et al., 2019) to Catalan contributes to advancing our knowledge of the development of children’s narrative skills in a diversity of languages using the same protocol, making it possib...

Advanced statistical modelling ideas, a challenge for research in culture and education

The availability of computerized statistical packages allows us to plug in our data and to expect a set of estimates, which we can communicate in our final research report. However, statistical software is not an end; it is only the means. Our responsibility as researchers is to ...

Being a plurilingual speaker versus becoming a linguistically sensitive teacher: contradictions in ITE discourses

The beliefs of pre-service teachers in initial teacher education (ITE) in Catalonia about plurilingualism and teaching in diverse classrooms are analysed and tensions in their discourse are observed. Following the analysis of discourse in interaction (e.g. Heller [2005]. Discour...

Causal connectivity in discourse: Towards a global characterisation of causal constructions in Spanish

In this paper, a classification proposal of causal constructions and causal connectivity between clauses and larger discursive segments is presented. Such classification is susceptible to be used in subsequent corpus-based studies. To do so, we unify two perspectives and classifi...

Concurrent predictors of spelling accuracy in secondary education in a semi-consistent orthography. The role of non-phonological spelling strategies

Spelling is a complex skill that requires mobilizing various levels of linguistic and orthographic representation. While there is substantial evidence of the impact of phonological skills in its development, less is known about the explanatory value of non-phonological (e.g., mor...

Digital user comments in online newspapers: analysis of consistency and interactivity

User digital comments in online newspapers are a fairly common discursive genre in computer-mediated communication. This paper analyzes the discursive practice in user comments in digital newspapers. Particularly, it starts from the analysis of the communicative context, based on...

Dimensionality of early writing in English and Spanish

Writing development is understood to be a multidimensional task, heavily constrained by spelling in its early stages. However, most available evidence comes from studies with learners of the inconsistent English orthography, so our understanding of the nature of early writing cou...

Editorial. L2 Acquisition of motion events: Crossing boundaries into unexplored territories

Editorial. Adquisició d'esdeveniments de moviment en L2: Travessant fronteres cap a territoris inexplorats.

Effectiveness of and SRSD writing intervention for low- and high-SES children

SRSD interventions on writing have shown to be effective across a myriad of contexts and populations. Less is known, however, about their effectiveness for improving the writing skills of disadvantaged children, relative to their efficacy with other types of students. This is imp...

The place of argumentation in didactic programmes

This article proposes a reflection on the role that argumentation should have in teaching programmes and suggests some proposals to favour argumentative learning and improve coordination between linguistic and non-linguistic areas.

“El nen s'ha menjat una aranya”: The development of narratives in Catalan speaking children

The production of a well-constructed narrative is the culmination of several years of language acquisition and is an important milestone in children's development. There is no current description of narrative development for Catalan speaking children. This study collected elicite...

Ethnic Prejudice, Resilience, and Perception of Inclusion of Immigrant Pupils among Italian and Catalan Teachers

In the current study we investigated the relationship between ethnic prejudice and resilience and the perception of inclusion of immigrant students among primary and middle school teachers in two different countries (Italy and Spain). Participants were 315 teachers: 75 Catalan wo...

Evaluation and description of narrative development in Spanish

Background and objectives. The skills involved in narrative production are a good indicator of children's current language competence and predict future linguistic performance. It is important in speech and language therapy and education research to have specific assessments of d...

Exploring Pragmatic Competence in Formal Communicative Contexts: The case of thanking by native and non-native speakers of Greek

The aim of the current study is to investigate the role of second language (L2) proficiency in the pragmatic competence of learners of L2 Greek. More specifically, it aims at exploring whether L2 proficiency can have an impact on the strategies that L2 learners use in order to ex...

Extending language learning beyond the EFL classroom through WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a powerful tool for L2 learning because of its capacity to promote interaction between teacher and student, as well as among students. Its use has also been shown to support ubiquitous learning. In an attempt to extend language learning beyond the classroom, this stud...

Gratitude for compliance: A developmental study on the speech act of thanking

This study investigates the production of the speech act of thanking by L2 learners of Greek from three different proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) and seeks to examine the effect of proficiency on the learners’ competence to express gratitude in symmetric...

Imperfect Spanish Meanings Acquisition by Advanced Russian Learners. Evidence from Acceptability Judgments Data

This study explores the difficulties on grammatical representation descriptions of Spanish Imperfect meanings by 54 first language Russian learners of Spanish with advanced proficiency levels and a control group of 18 Spanish native speakers. The results from the on-line acceptab...

Intervening in oral and written language to improve the academic competences of secondary school students

Oral and written language are constantly interrelated in literate communities. In this paper, we examined the repercussions of teaching argumentative oral discourse on the development of argumentative writing and vice versa. The participants were seventh-grade students, who were ...

The perceptions of Japanese speakers about the alternation between tú/usted in Spanish L2/FL requests

The goal of this study is to assess the perceptions of Japanese speakers about the alternation tú/usted in Spanish L2/FL requests. In Spanish, this choice changes the formality, while in Japanese both lexical variations and verbal inflection regulate the degree of politeness. Als...

Linguistic indicators of text quality in analytical texts: developmental changes and sensitivity to pedagogical work

Mastering analytical writing involves the proficient use of varied later-acquired grammatical, lexical and discourse forms and functions. Developmental studies have identified specific linguistic features as diagnostic of increasing proficiency. This study examines how these feat...

Macro- and micro-developmental changes in analytical writing of bilinguals from elementary to higher education

Analytical writing serves to learn and communicate learning. Our goal was to determine the impact of students’ bilingual profile, defined by self-evaluated bilingual competence, use of language(s) for mental operations and language(s) use across different contexts, on their devel...

Migrant and non-migrant origin pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism and teaching in multilingual classrooms: convergences and divergences

This article reports findings from an investigation into migrant and non-migrant origin pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism and the relationship between their linguistic trajectories as students and how they perceive themselves as future teachers. We analize the b...

My future, my favourite passion or a path to ancient culture... The meaning of motivations in learners of Modern Greek as a second language

The study of motivation as an individual variable in language learning has produced an extensive body of contributions in the recent decades in relation to the success in language learners’ performance and to teaching and learning processes. However, the majority of studies have ...

Narrative discourse in children with Developmental Language Disorder: profile and stimulation

The development of narrative discourse is a good indicator of children’s linguistic competence and shows a strong correlation with linguistic and academic performance. Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) show multiple difficulties in various aspects of narrative p...

Narrative macrostructure and microstructure in bilingual children with DLD: A systematic review

The identification of bilingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is complex, and the assessment of narratives may be particularly valuable in this context. Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute to systematize and disseminate the growing body of lite...

Oral corrective feedback with underschool adult students

In recent years, corrective feedback has aroused much interest and a considerable number of studies have been carried out in this field, especially in English as a second or foreign language, but in Catalan as an additional language it is still in its early stages. This article f...

Our Moral Choices Are Foreign to Us

Though moral intuitions and choices seem fundamental to our core being, there is surprising new evidence that people resolve moral dilemmas differently when they consider them in a foreign language (Cipolletti et al., 2016; Costa et al., 2014a; Geipel et al., 2015): People are mo...

Pre-service language teachers’ perceptions of professional learning and development resulting from Greek as a Foreign Language teaching placements

Language teacher education research has convincingly shown that teaching placements can function as an opportunity for pre-service teachers to connect the theoretical knowl-edge acquired at university with actual classroom practices. Despite the extensive body of empirical resear...

Reading and Theory of Mind during the Primary-Secondary Educational Transition: A Multiple Case Study in Pupils with a Cochlear Implant

The transition to secondary education is a sensitive period for social and academic development and also for student identity. However, there is scarce evidence of the development of reading comprehension and theory of mind in pupils with cochlear implant (CI) during the educatio...

Reading and theory of mind in adolescents with cochlear implant

Previous research has shown a possible link between reading comprehension and theory of mind (ToM), but these findings are unclear in adolescents with cochlear implants (CI). In the present study, reading comprehension and ToM were assessed in adolescents with CI and the relation...

Repertoire and linguistic uses of an inmate student of Moroccan origin in a penitentiary centre in the metropolitan area of Barcelona

This paper presents a case study of an internal student of Moroccan origin at a prison located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona within the framework of the European project KA2 StrategicPartnershipRiUscire. The first results of the European project suggest the cultural diver...

Reported Evidence-Based Writing Practices and Teachers’ Beliefs in Catalonia, Spain: An Exploratory Study

This paper investigates the reported frequency of the use of evidence-based writing practices (EBWPs) by teachers (N = 51) in primary and secondary school classrooms in a sample of schools in the Barcelona metropolitan area (Spain), and how teacher beliefs contribute to the repor...

Review of Arroyo, Ignacio. 2017. The expression of cause in Spanish

Review of Arroyo, Ignacio. 2017. The expression of cause in Spanish.

Review. Teaching and learning languages in a multilingual educational model

Review. Teaching and learning languages in a multilingual educational model: Methodologies and strategies for the development of educational projects and for teaching practice, coordinated by Mònica Pereña, 2018.

Specific EF tasks and reading in adolescents with typical hearing or a cochlear implant

The acquisition of effective reading comprehension for adolescents with a cochlear implant (CI) in inclusive settings is crucial for ensuring the benefit of current traditional reading curricula and instructional practices. Executive functions (EF) are recognized as important cog...

Spelling Across Orthographies

The ability to spell words correctly is a cornerstone of literacy. Despite the substantial amount of research into this process, a large part of the empirical findings come from English-speaking populations. Given the distinctive features of the varying orthographic systems world...

Teaching Catalan as an additional language to adults

This monographic volume of the CLIL Journal of Innovation and Research in Plurilingual and Pluricultural Education focuses on Teaching Catalan as an Additional Language to Adults and all the articles have a double objective: to create points of connection between teachers, traine...

Teaching competencies of ELE teachers at Instituto Cervantes: competency profile and type of contract

Teaching competencies, professional development, and reflective practice are basic issues faced by teachers of foreign languages. To work on these aspects, reference documents have been prepared that propose a way of categorising teacher competencies, and that offer evaluation fr...

Telelogopedia in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis of the adaptations and perceptions of speech therapists

Telepractice in Speech-Language therapy facilitates services in exceptional situations such as COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the restrictions imposed, speech-language pathologists (SPL) have had to adopt new approaches in their professional practice. The aim of this study is, through...

The affordances of images in digital reflective writing: an analysis of preservice teachers’ blog posts

The aim of this study is to examine the affordances of images to prompt reflective processes of preservice teachers writing in a digital environment. The study was conducted over three academic years and a total of 180 preservice teachers were asked to write a blog post to reflec...

The cognitive profile and text-based traits of struggling writers

Writing difficulties have typically been investigated as the consequence of learning disabilities. However, several characteristics of texts and the underlying cognitive skills are often shared across these populations. Our aim was to investigate the writing and cognitive profile...

Developing Analytical Writing: Learning to Connect Information, Learning to Take a Stance

The development of analytical writing requires mastery of specialized linguistic forms and functions. Students of all educational levels have problems with the organization of information and the use of specific formal resources. We focus on intra-sentential connectives and disco...

The limits of the foreign language effect on decision-making: The case of the outcome bias and the representativeness heuristic

Language context (native vs. foreign) affects people’s choices and preferences in a wide variety of situations. However, emotional reactions are a key component driving people’s choices in those situations. In six studies, we test whether foreign language context modifies biases ...

The role of executive functions and transcription skills in writing: a cross-sectional study across 7 years of schooling

Findings around the cognitive resources needed to compose text have helped shape current models of writing. Some of these models predict that text generation is constrained by two groups of skills: transcription (i.e., spelling and handwriting) and executive functions (EFs). Whil...

The role of intentions and outcomes in the foreign language effect on moral judgements

We explore the origin of the foreign language effect on moral judgements by assessing whether language context alters the weight given to intentions and outcomes during moral judgement. Specifically, we investigated whether foreign language contexts, compared with native ones, ma...

The role/place of argumentation in didactic programmes

This article proposes a reflection on the role that argumentation should have in teaching programmes and suggests some proposals to favour argumentative learning and improve coordination between linguistic and non-linguistic areas.

The use of past tenses in the construction of temporality in Spanish L2 at advanced levels of proficiency

The aim of the current research is to describe and analyze the specific characteristics of the use of the Spanish verbal past tenses, specifically the imperfecto and indefinido, by Russian advanced learners of Spanish L2 with high proficiency level in a formal learning environmen...

Non-phonological spelling strategies

This paper investigated the role that types of knowledge beyond phonology have on spelling development, such as knowledge of morpheme-to-grapheme mappings, of orthographic patterns, and of word-specific orthographic patterns. It is based on the modern view that children do not le...

Visual metaphors and metonymies in pre-service teachers’ reflections: Beliefs and experiences in the learning and teaching of writing

This study focuses on visual metaphors and metonymies in a Catalan teacher education context and analyses how 143 pre-service teachers use them...

WhatsApp as part of an EFL programme: Participation and interaction

This study examines the results of an intervention conducted with adult EFL learners in Barcelona, Spain, to foster engagement with the target language outside class time. As part of the programme, the messaging service WhatsApp was used to carry out a range of voluntary communic...