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This study aims to develop an emotion evaluation method for second language learners, utilizing multimodal information to comprehensively evaluate students’ emotional expressions. Addressing the limitations of existing emotion evaluation methods, which primarily focus on the acoustic features of speech (e.g., pronunciation, frequency, and rhythm) and often neglect the emotional expressions conveyed through voice and facial videos, this paper proposes an emotion evaluation method based on multimodal information. The method includes the following three main parts: (1) generating virtual data using a Large Language Model (LLM) and audio-driven facial video synthesis, as well as integrating the IEMOCAP dataset with self-recorded student videos and audios containing teacher ratings to construct a multimodal emotion evaluation dataset; (2) a graph convolution-based emotion feature encoding network to extract emotion features from multimodal information; and (3) an emotion evaluation network based on Kolmogorov–Arnold Networks (KAN) to compare students’ emotion features with standard synthetic data for precise evaluation. The emotion recognition method achieves an unweighted accuracy (UA) of 68.02% and an F1 score of 67.11% in experiments with the IEMOCAP dataset and TTS data. The emotion evaluation model, using the KAN network, outperforms the MLP network, with a mean squared error (MSE) of 0.811 compared to 0.943, providing a reliable tool for evaluating language learners’ emotional expressions.

People with disabilities have been among the most marginalised groups both within society and within post-secondary/higher education. Over the last two decades, an increasing number of inclusive educational programmes have come into existence both nationally and internationally for this group of learners. The Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities (TCPID), School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, offers students with intellectual disabilities a two-year programme entitled Arts, Science and Inclusive Applied Practice (ASIAP). This paper presents a selection of voices from ASIAP students which highlights their experiences of becoming both co-researchers and second language learners. These studies present a variety of ways in which power relationships are negotiated between faculty and students through utilising creative and inclusive approaches to the research process.

This paper aims to examine the morpho-syntactic process of noun plural endings, “-n” and “-s”, in adult second language (L2) learners using event-related potentials (ERPs). German noun plural endings consist of many inflectional forms. They are one of the difficulties faced by German L2 learners. We recorded an electroencephalogram (EEG) study of German L2 learners by dividing study subjects into low and high L2 learners according to the learning level. We examined what ERP components were associated with L2 language processing. All participants were Korean German L2 learners who had achieved varying levels of proficiency. As a result of our analysis, we confirmed different morpho-syntactic processing between the two groups. First, N400 was detected at any learning level. It confirmed language processing supportive of the Full-Listing Model for irregular endings. Second, we confirmed left anterior negativity (LAN), as detected in both low and high proficiency L2 learners. LAN is supportive of a Full-Parsing Model for regular endings, as it was detected in both low and high proficiency L2 learners. However, P600 was detected in highly proficient L2 learners only. It implies that high proficiency learners differ from low proficiency L2 learners. P600 is processed in a reparsing process after recognition of grammatical errors. Based on this result, more active use of a Dual Mechanism Model is possible as learning levels improve. It confirms that improvement in L2 learners results in an approach to cognitive processing similar to that of German first language (L1) speakers.

This paper conceptually discusses why it is essential to foster intercultural responsiveness through learning a language other than English (LOTE) and developing intercultural communication competence at Australian universities. Learning a LOTE is meaningful and helps second language learners develop social skills and cognitive competence, understand the linguistic system of the LOTEs, and sense differences between their home language/culture and target language/culture, and then pave the way to developing intercultural communication competence. However, a LOTE as a compulsory unit has little presence in Australian university curricula. No Australian universities require that students need to learn a LOTE to meet the course requirements. Learning a LOTE is conducive to both bilingual/multilingual and intercultural communication competence development. Furthermore, most current work studies intercultural verbal communication competence more than intercultural nonverbal communication competence. While intercultural verbal communication is audio-oriented, voiced, and externalized with open messages, intercultural nonverbal communication is visually oriented, silent, and internalized with hidden cues. Only when both components are considered can people achieve effective intercultural communication. The implications for learning a LOTE and developing intercultural communication competence are discussed.