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The paper discusses the results of a corpus-based study on the metaphors and metonymies used in Italian academic and popular-scientific discourse to refer to students with specific learning differences (SpLDs). Taking a cognitive linguistic perspective, the study revealed that SpLDs tend to be conceptualized through negative metaphors, and there is a growing tendency to use the term SpLDs to refer to people with SpLDs - which is indeed an instance of metonymy. In the light of these results, the paper discusses some implications for Educational Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at highlighting one possible way to create an online community for language learning building on plural approaches. To do so, it analyzes today's most popular community, Duolingo, and breaks down the reasons for its success - among which plurilingualism is a major component. The paper then compares Duolingo in its current form to the descriptors summed up in the FREPA, to find which of the resources contained it capitalizes upon. In the end, the paper describes a way to implement all of the FREPA resources into an ideal "plural" online language learning community whose main goal is to provide its users with a global and democratic take on language education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, after a preliminary analysis of the main characteristics of plurilingual and intercultural education and of the different ways of implementing it within the curriculum, according to Italian educational guidelines, focuses on the potentialities of Cooperative Learning in providing inclusive and multipurpose language learning spaces open to diversity and pluralism, especially when enhanced by technology. The paper then proposes an approach, 'Cooperative BYOD', which combines Cooperative Learning and Mobile Technology. Experience of four years of teaching university' students confirms the strengths of this approach, namely an improvement in the quality of study, more inter-linguistic and inter-cultural exchanges, opportunities for critical reflection by students from different backgrounds, an improved cooperation among the students benefiting foreign students and students with difficulties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the linguistic behaviour of the 1st generation immigrants living in Pisticci and in its hamlet, Marconia. The main aim of this survey is to research the linguistic variation between the two communities: Pisticci, in fact, in mainly populated by women migrants from East Europe, while Marconia by men from North Africa. The social-network and the process of integration into the local community is very different in the two groups and, so, our paper questions how these variables impact on the perceived linguistic behaviour of 1st generation migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at finding evidence of positive effects of the metacognitive approach on the self-efficacy of English learners. The first paragraph offers a theoretical overview on the concept of metacognitive competence applied to language learning, we discuss then the psychological problems dyslexia could lead to if it is not treated in the right way. In the second part of the paper we present a case study involving a young English learner with dyslexia who revealed to have very negative results in language learning. The learner was involved in a number of metacognitive activities and his self-efficacy was tested before, during and after the intervention to demonstrate that the metacognitive project had a positive effect on his self-efficacy toward English language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the sociolinguistic analysis of two Italian communities in England and with the role of English pragmatic markers (hereafter PMs) used by 58 first generation Italian migrants in several interviews in Italian. The migrants interviewed are resident in Cambridge and Bedford. In this paper, a qualitative and micro-socio-linguistic perspective was adopted. The use of well, you know and anyhow/anyway in the corpus gathered in the two English cities will be described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the use of fairy tales as a tool for early foreign language teaching. In order for the storytelling in a foreign language to be effective, tales need to be comprehensible in terms of both narrative and linguistic style. Since comprehension also involves cognitive abilities that vary according to the pupils' age, teachers need specific methodological guidelines to enhance comprehension at an early age. This paper could be divided into two parts. The first section is devoted to a general outline of both children's narrative competence and the textual features of traditional fairy tales. The second part provides some general guidelines to enhance the comprehension of a fairy tale by simplifying its narrative structure and linguistic style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to discuss how to use corpora to create a flexible and "open" learning environment, building on the concepts of learner autonomy and learner-centred instruction. The paper discusses ways in which corpus and discourse activities can be integrated to provide learners with an introduction to register studies and the concepts of genre and disciplinary knowledge. Materials have been created with the aim of raising students' awareness of evaluative language and providing them with tools for autonomous language analysis. The object of the present paper is to discuss the materials produced and relate their rationale -- in terms of awareness and autonomy -- to a sequence of activities in the classroom and/or multimedia lab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) is a discipline inside applied linguistics concerned with theoretical approaches to language teaching and learning. This paper, intended as a contribution to SLA, will analyse the practice of language learning advising based on the concept of autonomous learning. The first part of the paper will give an overview of existing literature on language learning advising and of SLA studies which led to the development of the concept of autonomous learning. The main part will focus on the practice of language learning advising and discuss four case studies in an academic context. It will be concluded that an interdisciplinary approach to research on language learning advising will emphasise the advisor's functions as facilitator and mediator within the process of autonomous language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with some theoretical issues regarding the epistemology of Language Teaching Methodology. According to an Italian research tradition, Language Teaching Methodology is based on the principle of implication, which is sometimes misinterpreted as a one-way path that starts from theories -- mostly borrowed from other science fields -- and leads to practical resources and guidelines. On the contrary, this paper will show that research in Language Teaching Methodology follows a two-way path that leads not only to practical tools but also to theoretical principles that are specific to this research area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of foreign language teaching is currently exploring the benefits of new methods and pedagogical approaches, among them CLIL (Content and Language Integrating Learning). Recent approaches give priority to tasks which are both content and language oriented and the challenge for foreign language teaching is to find tasks which motivate learners to use the target language but which also give them a fair chance to learn to cognitively cope with the content subject and the language forms which they find themselves confronted with. Developing and using effective tasks and activities is a priority for the CLIL methodology. This paper firstly outlines the use of tasks and activities in a CLIL environment with particular attention to those that promote students' oral skills. Then the paper reports on an analysis of videos of ten CLIL lessons with the aim of evaluating tasks and activities designed in the context of CLIL classes of secondary schools of the Veneto region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the several advantages of using conceptual maps (CMs) in the teaching of English as a foreign language in Italian elementary schools. Traditionally, CMs are used to favour the acquisition of cultural elements rather than grammatical means, a limitation which does not depend on the CMs but on the misleading way teachers interpret their use. Our informants are students of two different elementary schools in Campobasso (Molise). On the basis of the most recent works by Novak, Guastavigna e Gineprini and in contrast with the traditional employment of CMs, this paper proposes some experiments in order to test the following hypotheses: a) Do CMs represent a valid means to teach the grammar of a foreign language (FL)?; b) Do they help students to acquire simultaneously both the grammar of a language and cultural elements by reducing the teaching hours of a FL? The answers to these two questions are positive. In particular, the b point is clearly supported by some tests we gave to the students involved in the inquiry, which demonstrated that students exposed to CMs show better results in the acquisition of the FL than students who have been taught the same subjects in a traditional way, namely without CMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is based on a corpus of prefaces to recent tesi di laurea in different academic disciplines elaborated at the University of Modena and examines the presence of discourse deictic reference. We suppose that a certain type and frequency of discourse deictic references is characteristic for the text type scientific text. Therefore, the presence of discourse deictic reference is a good indicator if the texts of the corpus are good samples of the text type. The analysis of the corpus has proven that the texts of student authors present indeed a number of typical shortcomings, compared to texts of professional scientists, the texts of future physicists being the most deficient. The paper concludes with some suggestions on didactic remedy to the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effectiveness of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) as an educational approach in teaching Italian as a second language to immigrant students. Moving from the consideration that many young and adult immigrants have trouble in going beyond an instrumental use of the Italian language, the paper highlights the advantages of CLIL in order to promote in immigrant students both the cognitive academic language proficiency (or CALP, according to Cummins' definition) and the intercultural awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on work in progress on reformulation sequences in a corpus of non-pedagogical natural interactions in Italian between native and non-native speakers. The purpose of this paper is to show the multidimensional processes behind the act of reformulating, which may be best described by adopting a global approach which cuts across different levels of linguistic analysis (e.g. structural, functional and interactional). The features of institutional talk, the parameters of being a non-native speaker and asymmetry in an interaction will be critically evaluated with special reference to the doctor/patient interactions in the corpus. Although the paper contains a qualitative analysis, some of the results emerging from such a description will be further pursued in the future to develop a quantitative analysis aimed at identifying recurrent patterns of reformulation markers and the functional value of repetitions and paraphrases in the corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to investigate the form/response relationship in natural language reformulation. Linguistic reformulation is the typical instance of intralinguistic translation. If it is possible to "say the same thing with other constituents" (as it is the case with mathematical writing), then it is possible to say it in the words of another natural language. But in the case of trigger-texts, the concept of "sameness" moves from a merely semiotic to a cognitive, internal response. The paper investigates the complexity of jokes as opposed to that of humorous texts (according to Pirandello's definition). Both are trigger-texts producing different responses in the target mind (the former triggers fun, the latter fun and melancholy); both have a particular aphoristic form, whose reformulation prevents the expected response; but unlike jokes, humorous texts produce a "de-programming" action, a sort of cognitive subversion. Consequently, the translation of non-jocular humour into another natural language is not (as in the case of jokes) a mere operation of decoding and re-coding, but an act of deprogramming. The translator of humorous texts acts paradoxically like a "switch" of an existing de-programming action into another de-programming action having a different material form (linguistic writing), but producing an analogous internal response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the meshing power of paraphrase in a corpus of biological English. The corpus consists of chapters drawn from biology textbooks, which are a kind of specialised text, especially designed for didactic purposes, i.e. for an audience who needs to be taught the basic notions of a discipline. As a consequence, the genre is one that presents specialist knowledge couched in a didactic style. Reformulative strategies are one of the pivotal instruments that an author can rely on to communicate his/her message more successfully to an audience of lay readers. In particular, after illustrating how paraphrastic strategies in textbooks can apply either to the linguistic code or to the message, this paper reports on paraphrase types introduced by i.e. and that is, and shows the most recursive patterns introduced by each reformulative marker. It emerges that in the genre under investigation paraphrases extend over long text chunks and are therefore global coherence strategies. Furthermore, the use of implicit coherence strategies (reformulations that are not signalled by overt connectives) is often preferred, especially to introduce denominations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the relationship between spontaneous acts of reformulation performed by both speaker and addressee and shared structures and goals. The goal of an act of communication is to bring the addressee to share a contingent content of a message, but its success presupposes the previous sharing of a stock of long-lasting structures, both linguistic and conceptual. The idea defended in this paper is that acts of reformulation spring out of the perception of a lack of sharing, so that their contents and ruling criteria change according to whether the lack of sharing is about long-lasting structures or contingent aims. In particular, we shall examine the case of word meaning and utterance meaning in the field of long-lasting structures, and the case of the intended message as a contingent aim of an occasional act of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marcovaldo ovvero Le stagioni in città is a collection of short novels written by Italo Calvino between 1958 and 1963. In 1963 all the stories are collected in a single book by the publisher Einaudi. Based on the lexicongrammar data collected from the novels, the paper aims to describe Marcovaldo's stories and passions, in order to analyse the data quantitatively. The text will be semi-automatically processed to draw attention to the latent information it could potentially hide. Examples are recurring patterns or other phenomena which are difficult to directly observe by human readers. The text processing will focus on lexical, morpho-syntactic and semantic analyses, starting from the mere machine-readable representation of the text to the topic modeling tasks based on machine learning methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims at analyzing the communication by way of a kanga, a popular dress amongst the Swahili women. Kangas contain a printed inscription, so they work as message-bearing doth. After having described kangas and traced back their history, this paper will show how the kanga is constituted as a communicative sign and how it works as a text in which strategic ambiguity is pervasive. The forms and functions of kangas will be analyzed basing on a corpus of 143 kanga's inscriptions: almost 2/3 of the messages exhibit the formal structure of a proverb, while the remaining 1/3 of kanga's inscriptions are structured as a direct message, but they are still ambiguous, as addressee, content, context and even addresser are ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of the following paper is to investigate the teachers' points of view in secondary schools referring to assessment and evaluation in CLIL. In the first part, the frame of problems concerning assessment and evaluation in CLIL in Italy is analysed; then the results of a research conducted through a focus group are introduced. The data collected show different aspects that are outstanding when evaluation is taken into consideration and the feedback given by these informants is useful in order tofocus on the critical aspects and at the same time to think of suitable instalments to assess the students ' performance in a more complete and precise way without creating anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata is the property of Bulzoni Editore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper aims at investigating the relationship between phonetic changes and the perception of identity in three different generations of Calabrian emigrants in Munich. Data have been collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with thirty-one Calabrian emigrants in Munich and with ten Calabrian informants living in Calabria, who represented the control group. A perceptive test has been administered to a group of Calabrian naive evaluators in order to understand the kind of phonetic elements they associate to the informants' origin. Data analysis has shown that the individual perception of identity plays an important role in maintaining or losing Italian and/ or Calabrian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we analyze a corpus of Tweets produced by several influential politicians during the campaign for Italian general elections in 2013. Our aim is to belter understand how and why politicians use Twitter and, in particular, for what purposes they use reported speech. There are two ways of quoting on Twitter: the 'traditional' forms of direct/indirect speech and the Retweet function. Our analysis reveals that these forms vary in frequency and tend to associate with different kinds of quoted speakers, but they do not have a shared pragmatic specialization in the corpus. Specific pragmatic functions emerge, though, within some of the profiles under examination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide a contextualized reflection on strategies to facilitate the intercomprehension of romanophone speakers in plurilingual online communication in chat-rooms and discussion forums by analysing the language productions of the Italian-speaking participants in recent Galanet sessions. On the basis of the studies on foreigner talk and computer- mediated communication, we will analyse some linguistic and sociolinguistic aspects which are particularly sensitive in a learning environment of Romance Intercomprehension. With a view to their teachability, we will discuss the most appropriate "interproduction strategies" in online plurilingual interaction, drawing examples of modified linguistic input both from synchronous and non-synchronous communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After an introductory excursus on the recent legislation regarding the adoption of digital textbooks in Italian schools, this paper focuses on the possible effects of the digitizing process on language teaching, also taking into account the data of some ongoing classroom experiments. The results of a mainly qualitative survey, conducted on a nonrepresentative sample of secondary school language teachers, highlight both the strengths of digital texts - especially with regard to students with special needs - and their weaknesses, which relate essentially to the need for a closer link between research and the dissemination of knowledge, the need to equip schools with appropriate technology, and, above all, the need for effective teacher training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text Linguistics has always been an important field in linguistic research and the contributions it can give to translation studies is a very important one. Among the text linguistics theories J.S. Petöfi's Semiotic Textology plays a relevant role, this is because it is one of the most structured and formalized models. However in developing his model J.S. Petöfi did not give translation issues the same attention he has given to other issues, even if Semiotic Textology can supply a crucial contribution to translation, especially in a theoretical perspective. After a short explanation of the semiotic-textological model in a translational perspective, this paper focuses on a practical analysis driven by means of a formal semiotic-textological interpretation of the source text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata is the property of Bulzoni Editore and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In our paper we initially touch upon some general issues of multimodality: its definition, the variety of its resources, its role in dialogic interaction, turn-taking, and the co-construction of discourse. Subsequently, we deal with transcription as a theory and a practice, by discussing both its selective and reflexive nature, and the challenges it presents to the analyst, that is, documenting and making the multiple details of human conduct accessible to the reader. Finally, on the grounds of some examples taken from a corpus of video-recordings of multilingual meetings (i.e., Dylan Project, FP6), we show the analytical implications of multimodal transcription for understanding and describing multilingual communicative phenomena and, more broadly, its relevance and support in any dialogic interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper attempts to investigate whether it is necessary to facilitate context-limited texts while identifying accommodation and simplifying criteria that can be adopted for this specific kind of texts. Can texts that are conceived for dyslexic students be also suitable for non-Italian speakers? In the attempt to provide an answer to a practical need in the classroom context, the authors have analyzed common context-limited texts and their use during classroom activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the outcome of an experiment conducted in 2011 with Italian students of Spanish L2 and German L2 attending the MA course in Modern European and American Languages and Literatures at the Faculty of Arts (University of Florence, Italy). The aim was to study the connexion between linguistic-textual consciousness and translation competence, foregrounding lexical and syntactic difficulties and strategies applied in L2-L1 translation of descriptive informative texts published on the website of the European Union. On the basis of the results, useful advice for teaching translation into Spanish L2 and German L2 is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of the new information and communication technologies (NTIC) in higher education constitutes a challenge for university institutions and deserves maximum integration in the planning of teaching programmes. In this short paper we will evaluate the use of blended syllabuses in language learning, which, thanks to the web, allows us to combine both traditional and innovative approaches: the combination of visual information, up-to-date subject material, and the novelty of the medium has become increasingly attractive to both learners and teachers. We have also analysed some on-line materials which could be an important support in the teaching of Spanish for special purposes. However, this has led us to create learning paths due to the lack of structured material so far available for this sector of learning. In particular we will examine some projects in blended learning for use on the Moodle-Sapienza platform, directed at our own students of Economics. We hope that these efforts in extending traditional methods will continue to be supported by the University authorities, support which is essential for any lasting improvements in didactic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at investigating whether, and to what extent, the mode in which a message is presented (audio alone or audiovisual recording) actually makes a difference in the comprehension ability of English L2 students. In particular an experiment was designed in which two parallel groups of undergraduate students of the Milan Faculty of Political Sciences were administered the same comprehension tests -- consisting of multiple choice questionnaires -- based on clips from the European Union website throughout the course. While group 1 was exposed to sound alone, group 2 could rely on both sound and image. Data regarding the performance as well as the perception of difficulty have been analysed statistically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the e-learning experience of the students of the Faculty of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome, who learn German and who for some reason cannot participate in face-to-face lessons. After a short introduction which outlines some principles on the concept of elearning, autonomy and tutoring, the paper illustrates the reasons for the introduction of alternatives to face-to-face lessons, the e-learning materials, the organisation of a tutoring service and the responses to e-learning from the students and the teacher/tutor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the use of web-based multimodal resources in the teaching/learning of specialised discourse in English, and argues that reliance on the notion of text/discourse genre is especially useful in promoting learners' autonomy and exposing them to previously unaccessible authentic materials, while at the same time avoiding the problems raised by the overwhelming quantity of information and resources available through the lnternet. In particular, recourse to notions developed in genre analysis and research can play a key role not only in enhancing the ability of learners to recognize and/or enact linguistic and discursive variations in response to the semiotic co-ordinates of each single communicative event, but also in training them to acquire an adequate command of the methodological tools to be deployed in research on text genres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the European Union encourages the development and promotion of all languages and the respect of cultures as a value in diversity, opposite positions are taken in single countries: France tries to enrich and protect its language also by means of legislation, whereas Italy seems to absorb all sort of foreign words, specially English terms. The paper provides valuable insight into word analysis with particular reference to word-formation, term-creation and the use of synonyms and neologisms; it also gives several examples the user (may it be a student, a translator or simply a European citizen) should be aware of. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the use of a linguistic resource constituted by verbal locutions derived from the GRADIT, to be applied -- via an algorithm implemented in the TaLTaC2 software -- for analysing any text. Some of the quantitative characteristics of the resource and the construction of the local grammar of a locution are illustrated. This is done, following the logic of the linguistics of corpora, by applying the resource to a huge corpus of newspaper articles. The calculation of the frequency of these locutions at the level of lemmas provides knowledge of their use in the press, to be exploited for the analysis of specific corpora. Moreover, the key algorithm of automatic recognition is described, as well as the application of the resource to Obama's speech at the University of Cairo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a survey of the differences between the spoken and the written languages, seen from several perspectives: phonological, lexical, syntactic and above all pragmatic. The implications for teaching the spoken language are discussed, again ranging from primary schools to those upper secondary schools where languages for special/specific purposes are taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on one important aspect of in-service teacher education: the core competences language teachers should strive to attain. We start considering the 'can-do' descriptors of competences of the Common European Framework of Reference, the European Language Portfolio and the European Portfolio for Student-Teachers of Languages and compare them with both procedures used in teacher training in the Scuola Interuniversitaria Lombarda di Specializzazione per l'Insegnamento Secondario at the Università degli Studi di Milano and with the thoughts and reflections on classroom practices of two student teachers. The study aims to show that a reflection tool like the European Portfolio for Student-Teachers of languages, and observation and reflective practices in general, can be very effective in initial teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we assess the effectiveness of a set of tasks specifically devised for elicitating two Italian interlanguage structures, namely passive and object topicalisation. These structures occur rarely in natural conversations because they are highly dependent on discourse-pragmatic choices. Therefore, in order to ensure good data density we cannot rely on naturally occurring speech, and need an elicitation instrument that prevents learners from choosing options other than the targeted ones, After briefly presenting the structures and the task design, we discuss the results of the validation procedure showing the strengths and weaknesses of our elicitation instrument. On the basis of the results, we suggest how it could be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the different roles that linguistics and psycholinguistics may assume when applied to foreign language teaching at school. Both disciplines are useful and necessary for language teaching: applied psycholinguistics plays a role in developing language teaching activities and strategies, while applied linguistics may be used for assessing the learner's language competence, for evaluating the teaching process. We discuss this point by describing a study regarding an experimentation in which developmental psycholinguistics offered the way of teaching and applied linguistics the evaluation analysis of first and second graders' linguistic production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reporting briefly on the difficulties in the development of Translation Theory as a bottom-up science within the Italian academic system, this paper focuses on a recent theoretical model of human translation processes which aims to be universal, economical, testable, and both internally and externally consistent. The model offers a single macro-parameter to be used in the decision making process by the translator's "internal ear" selecting the L2 f-equivalent of any minimal translation L1 unit. A serendipitous application of the model in Foreign Language Teaching is then discussed which shows, in the case of beginners, the existence of a significant cognitive difference between oral, simultaneous translation/switching and the old-fashioned method of written, mechanical "translation" (the latter having reasonably been rejected in contemporary pedagogical theories). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Holodynamic Model was put forward by Renzo Titone in the 1960s. Among the many proposals for explaining language proficiency and second language acquisition in formal scholastic environments, the Model remains, to this day, the most insightful one. It not only has the capacity to describe successful language acquisition but also, as a consequence, to suggest to teachers what pedagogical techniques are the most effective ones for bringing acquisition about. Above all else, the Model suggests that a humane learning environment is the essential condition for activating acquisition processes. This paper revisits the Holodynamic Model in the light of other models and also presents anecdotal evidence of its validity, based on a pilot project conducted at Middlebury College in Vermont in the summer of 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the epistemological status of the relationships between Applied Linguistics and Educational Linguistics, as well as the possibility of some boundary areas or "Middle-earth" between them, and the problem of identifying and defining Glottodidactics as an autonomous science. The analysis reflects the debates in Italian academic circles arising from new perspectives in psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and language pedagogy, the most notable of which were Acquisitional and Educational Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the foundations of the "Science of Language Education" with special reference to the trends and tensions in Italian academic circles. In particular, it reaffirms a clear-cut distinction between Applied Linguistics, on one hand, and Glottodidactics / Language Education / Language Pedagogy / Educational Linguistics etc. on the other hand. Different labels reflect different outlooks and major epistemological distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of using translation in language teaching has recently regained respectability as an eminently communicative activity, being expected to enhance L2 acquisition. However, if several theoretical assumptions are indeed rehabilitating this technique, the practical, and above all experimental front is still seeking attention. This paper offers three teaching sequences centred on pedagogical translation and, in particular, prose aimed at Anglophone learners reading any subject at University level It will be suggested that the prose class, by allowing to objectify the process of transferring meaning from L1 to L2, is an irreplaceable pedagogical tool leading to complex interlinguistic evaluations. The directional asymmetry it entails is a resource not to be overlooked even within a bilingual and bicultural syllabus targeting lower levels of competence (A1-B1). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses two CLIL textbooks of Science in English. One is published in Bulgaria and the other one in Spain. The evaluation of these textbooks takes into consideration two parameters: the Flesch readability index and the indexes stated by the Project 2061. The results of this analysis show that the Spanish textbook is more valid than the Bulgarian one. The Bulgarian has a low readability index and a low score at the Project 2061 index. The Spanish textbook, on the contrary, has a low readability index and a high score at the Project 2061 one. Extended reading rarely occurs in science lessons. Science is perceived as a practical, hands-on subject. Yet reading is an important scientific activity. "Minds-on" is as much a part of real science as "hands-on". Wellington, J., ed. (1998), Practical Work in School Science: Which Way Now?, London, Routledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have applied the concepts of Zone of Proximal Development described by Vygotsky and scaffolding, as defined by Bruner and his collaborators (1976) to observe what happens in two classrooms which are following the CLIL methodology where history is taught in French. In the two classes the same didactic technique of 'lezione partecipata frontale' is adopted. Thus, the difference between the two experiments is the age of the learners (high school and middle school), and therefore the degree of foreign language knowledge and cognitive abilities in historic discourse. We argue that the CLIL methodology is valid because it is situated inside the ZPD; we analyze the different operations involved in the scaffolding process with several examples that privilege the oral production competence. We discuss the validity of the model and make a proposal for modifying the model so that it fits a classroom situation better as well as collective teaching/learning -- and not only for individual learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is primarily a tribute to the late Luigi Castigliano, linguist and educator. His personal -- and peculiar -- collection of Limericks is presented, annotated and commented as a valuable tool for teachers of English as a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a social environment marked by constant change, the role and functions of teaching have to adapt to the learners' requirements and needs regarding acquisition and learning. This paper offers reflections and working suggestions to facilitate the teachers' assumption of an active and interactive role and the inclusion of their subjectivity into class dynamics and learning processes. The focus is on methodological suggestions that can be useful both in teaching and in the relational/behavioural management of the class as a group. The aim is to improve the students' involvement and performance by favouring an "atmosphere of work" suitable to building up personal profiles marked by commitment, intrinsic motivation and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]