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Elicited imitation (EI), a short-cut measure of global proficiency in second language (L2) research, requires participants to listen to sentences and repeat them as closely as possible. To support instrument sharing and assessment of L2 proficiency for longitudinal and crosslinguistic research, we created a parallel form of an EI task (EIT) for L2 English originally developed by the third author and colleagues and investigated the reliability and validity of the original and new forms. Eighty-two participants completed the two EITs, an oral narrative task, and a self-diagnostic survey. Both forms exhibited high reliability and good alignment with external criterion measures. Both distinguished well among four proficiency levels in the sample. Further, participants' perception of EI difficulty aligned well with their EI scores. We suggest some improvements to boost forms equivalence and discuss new insights about the nature of EI as reconstructive, integrative, modality independent, and with indirect links to communicative abilities. Our study seeks to make this English EIT instrument widely useful to the L2 research community.

The majority of the world is multilingual, but inequitably multilingual, and much of the world is also technologized, but inequitably so. Thus, researchers in the fields of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and second language acquisition (SLA) would profit from considering multilingualism and social justice when envisioning new CALL-SLA interfaces for the future. I first explain the connection I see among multilingualism, digital literacy, and social justice, and I characterize contemporary SLA as transformed by a social turn that is now complete, a bilingual turn slowly underway, and a social justice turn emerging on the horizon. I then review empirical evidence that suggests digital communication encourages multilingual practices, helps users appreciate the open nature of language resources, and perhaps even supports positive multilingual ideologies. Next I offer some illustrations of possible new research questions and CALL-SLA studies that would focus on embracing and exploiting the openness of language resources in language learning, and on doing multilingual learning. Finally, I examine what we know about the digital divide that is relevant to CALL-SLA researchers. I close with a checklist for researchers interested in contributing to these new research interfaces in support of equitable multilingualism in online and offline language learning and teaching.

Using the lenses of bilingualism and social justice, I reflect on relevant conceptual and methodological issues encountered in the study of the linguistic development of heritage language speakers. Themes examined include the early but varying timing of heritage language learning; the surrounding linguistic environment, including the link between parental input and linguistic outcomes and heritage language speakers' bilingualism, multilingualism, and multilectalism; the framing of literacy in the minority language; and the unique and language-shaping experience of minoritization, often an outcome of immigration. I argue that bilingualism is gradient and that better measurement of relevant variables--particularly those related to timing, input/exposure, and literacy--can invigorate the study of heritage language development and make new and more robust insights possible. I propose that heritage speakers and their languages must be understood as connected to minoritized communities and to the experience of inequitable multilingualism.

The Douglas Fir Group (2016) sought to articulate a transdisciplinary agenda for SLA but said little about multilingualism specifically. Moreover, many multilinguals are under siege in a worrisome world where threats to human difference have risen to the mainstream in the aftermath of Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. I argue that considering multilingualism as the central object of inquiry and embracing social justice as an explicit disciplinary goal are two moves necessary to provide sustainable support for the kind of transdisciplinary SLA that the Douglas Fir Group (2016) envisioned. I examine some missing pieces of the puzzle of transdisciplinary transformation that may make it possible for SLA researchers, and particularly those who investigate linguistic-cognitive dimensions of language learning, to contribute knowledge about the human capacity for language while supporting equitable multilingualism for all.

The formation of arteries is thought to occur by the induction of a highly conserved arterial genetic programme in a subset of vessels that will later experience an increase in oxygenated blood flow.sup.1,2. The initial steps of arterial specification require both the VEGF and Notch signalling pathways.sup.3-5. Here, we combine inducible genetic mosaics and transcriptomics to modulate and define the function of these signalling pathways in cell proliferation, arteriovenous differentiation and mobilization. We show that endothelial cells with high levels of VEGF or Notch signalling are intrinsically biased to mobilize and form arteries; however, they are not genetically pre-determined, and can also form veins. Mechanistically, we found that increased levels of VEGF and Notch signalling in pre-arterial capillaries suppresses MYC-dependent metabolic and cell-cycle activities, and promotes the incorporation of endothelial cells into arteries. Mosaic lineage-tracing studies showed that endothelial cells that lack the Notch-RBPJ transcriptional activator complex rarely form arteries; however, these cells regained the ability to form arteries when the function of MYC was suppressed. Thus, the development of arteries does not require the direct induction of a Notch-dependent arterial differentiation programme, but instead depends on the timely suppression of endothelial cell-cycle progression and metabolism, a process that precedes arterial mobilization and complete differentiation. Arterial development relies on the timely and MYC-dependent suppression of endothelial metabolism and the cell cycle in pre-arterial endothelial cells through Notch signalling., Author(s): Wen Luo [sup.1] , Irene Garcia-Gonzalez [sup.1] , Macarena Fernández-Chacón [sup.1] , Verónica Casquero-Garcia [sup.1] , Maria S. Sanchez-Muñoz [sup.1] , Severin Mühleder [sup.1] , Lourdes Garcia-Ortega [sup.1] , [...]

This study offers an account of the coming out by Amy, a 20-year-old student of Japanese in Boston who has 'been out to most' as a cisgender lesbian woman, to Yoko, a 19-year-old student of English in Tokyo who experiences culture shock with Amy's revelation. The data originated from an exchange on Google Hangouts that was part of a US–Japan telecollaboration project. Our goal is to examine the impact of this coming-out event on the students' experience of the virtual exchange and on their long-term cross-cultural understandings of LGBTQ+ issues and sexual diversity. We first analyze how Amy and Yoko managed the critical event discursively. We then examine the participants' retrospections collected at the end of the project and again about 5 years later. We find that the two students co-constructed the coming-out event as one of transforming culture shock into a mutual opportunity for interpersonal bonding and intercultural learning. Nevertheless, they also reproduced stereotypical constructions of the US as a country that is open to sexual diversity and Japan as a country where queer lives are invisible. We call for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ identities and gender and sexuality diversity in language pedagogy and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]