Many erroneous literal translations, often produced by low-proficiency bilinguals, can be attributed to a tendency to favor typical translation equivalents; however, the underlying neural mechanism remains poorly understood. This study investigated this typicality effect in real-time translation with the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique. Mandarin Chinese–English bilinguals were presented with a Chinese verb phrase (e.g., kāi chuānghù “open the window” or kāi diànnăo “turn on the computer”) followed by an English verb (e.g., open (a typical translation) or turn on (an atypical translation)) and judged whether the English verb was an appropriate/congruent translation of the verb in the Chinese verb phrase previously presented (e.g., kāi). Compared to typical translation equivalents, atypical equivalents elicited an N400, indicating retrieval difficulty, and an f-PNP in congruent trials, reflecting the effort to inhibit typical translations and integrate atypical ones. This pattern may arise from differences in resting-level activation between typical and atypical equivalents.

Decades before educators were forced to confront the disruption posed by widely accessible generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, language learners, instructors, and researchers began dealing with its game-changing predecessor: machine translation (MT). Researchers began assessing MT systems and proposing language teaching applications for them as soon as universities and schools gained access to them in the mid-1980s (*Anderson, 1995*; Ball, 1989*; Corness, 1985; French 1991; Lewis, 1997; Richmond, 1994*). These inquiries accelerated in the early 2000s, when internet-enabled computer labs and increasingly smarter devices put free online MT services such as Babel Fish and Google Translate (GT) at students' fingertips, triggering concerns over output quality, academic dishonesty, and the short-circuiting of actual learning. In recent years, there has been a veritable explosion of research on MT's role in and impact on language teaching and learning, with many dozens of peer-reviewed articles published in the past five years alone, as documented in a handful of comprehensive literatures reviews (Gokgoz-Kurt, 2023; Jiang et al., 2024; Jolley & Maimone, 2022; Klimova et al., 2023; Lee, 2023). The present article provides a timeline of this rapidly expanding research domain.

Although accumulating evidence has demonstrated the foreign language (FL) effect in various scenarios, it remains underexplored whether the FL effect (FLe) would be modulated by the affective valence of scenarios. Hence, we investigated the FLe on the perception of egoistic lies and altruistic lies behaviorally and electrophysiologically. Behavior results showed that compared to using a native language (NL), using a FL led to more agreement with egoistic lies but a comparable level with altruistic lies. Electrophysiological results showed that skin conductance responses (SCRs) elicited by the truth were stronger in the FL compared to that in the NL, whereas SCRs elicited by lies, although strong, exhibited less sensitivity to the altruistic/egoistic condition. SCRs suggested that increased cognitive thinking and reduced affective thinking may contribute to the FLe on egoistic lies dependently or interactively, but these mechanisms cannot accommodate altruistic lies. The results implied the FLe is more stable and obvious in negative contexts.

As higher education increasingly embraces internationalisation, the surge in demand for English as the medium of education (EME) poses significant challenges for stakeholders. This keynote places disciplinary literacies (DLs), defined as the ability to appropriately participate in the communicative practices of a discipline (Airey, 2011), centre stage as a crucial construct for effective teaching and learning within specific subjects. Despite their critical role in facilitating comprehension and production of discipline-specific practices and texts, their integration into EME settings often remains overlooked, raising concerns about students’ mastery of disciplinary content. Against this backdrop, with the help of the ROAD-MAPPING framework (Dafouz & Smit, 2020) as a conceptual and analytical tool, and drawing on data from the SHIFT research project, I will illustrate how ROAD-MAPPING can be used to examine comprehensively and in a socially situated way the role of DLs in students’ learning experiences. The paper advocates for the importance of supporting students (and lecturers) in the development of DLs in EME underscoring the pivotal role ESP (English for Specific Purposes) and EAP (English for Academic Purposes) professionals play in facilitating effective EME implementation.

Young learners' attitudes and motivation are important indicators of foreign language learning success and have thus attracted increasing attention over the last decades. As a large country where English is taught as a foreign language (EFL) and children generally start learning English at an early age, China provides an ideal context to study the attitudes and motivation of young EFL learners. Drawing upon the socio-educational model, this study surveyed 521 Chinese parents using an online questionnaire and interviewed eight of them to examine their perspectives on their children's attitudes and motivation towards EFL learning. The findings suggest that parental factors – socioeconomic status and parental involvement – influence young learners' EFL attitudes and motivation, as perceived by their parents. Parental factors, age at the onset of English language learning and intensity of exposure explained a significant amount of the variation in parents’ reports on the attitudes and motivation of young learners. Furthermore, the parents reported that their children's EFL attitudes and motivation were constantly changing, and that family, school and extracurricular training appeared to play different roles in this process of change.

This study investigates the stability and instability of the language control network in bilinguals using longitudinal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data. We compared the language control network of Chinese university students majoring in English with those not, using three other functional networks as controls. Results indicate that the English major group exhibits reduced stability and increased instability in the language control network compared with the non-English major group. This suggests that second language (L2) learning experience may induce adaptive neural changes. Moreover, the coexistence of stability and instability in the language control network appears less modular in the English major group, implying a more integrated response to language experience. Notably, these results were not observed in the control networks. Overall, these findings enhance the understanding of bilingual language control and the impact of L2 learning on neural plasticity.

Despite often featuring in theoretical accounts, the exact impact of typological similarity on non-native language comprehension and its corresponding neural correlates remains unclear. We examined the modulatory role of typological similarity in syntactic violation processing in the non-native language Spanish, for example [el volcán] versus [*la volcán], and in cross-linguistic influence. Participants were Italian late learners of Spanish (similar language pair) or German late learners of Spanish (less similar language pair). We measured P600 amplitudes, accuracy and response times. In line with our predictions, we found a larger P600 effect and differential CLI effects for Italian-Spanish speakers compared to German-Spanish speakers. Behaviourally, Italian-Spanish speakers responded slower compared to German-Spanish speakers. Together, these results indicate typological similarity effects in non-native comprehension as reflected in a processing advantage for typologically similar languages, but only at the neural level. These findings have critical implications for the interplay of different languages in the multilingual brain.

This agenda identifies future research trajectories for the corpus revolution, proposing five specific research tasks designed to explore and advance the application of corpus linguistics in language education. These tasks focus on: (1) contrastive data-driven learning, (2) the development of corpus research for informing national language curricula, (3) the use of artificial intelligence for corpus informed language teaching and learning, (4) the reconsideration of the design and development of pedagogical corpora, and (5) the need for stakeholder engagement with corpus research design. Addressing these tasks requires a unified and collaborative effort as they sit at a number of key intersections in corpus applications to language pedagogy. We ask scholars executing them to engage in broad and cooperative research to meet the evolving needs of learners globally, to examine the potential of corpus linguistics for addressing new challenges in language education, and to influence and shape future directions in applied linguistics.

This paper aims to demonstrate that robust is currently undergoing a semantic shift, transforming itself into a quasi-intensifier of nouns, conveying positive evaluative meanings. The etymology and semantic development of robust is traced using information from the Oxford English Dictionary Online. In addition, examples from the British National Corpus up to the 1990's are used to analyse the semantic development of robust and to examine the origins of the intensifying or evaluative use of robust. It is argued that there are several patterns in the usage examples where robust behaves like a quasi-intensifier: involving noun gradability, repetition of adjectives and modal meaning of nouns. The final means of intensification is evaluative uses, where there is a multi-layered positive nuance that can be read into robust, making robust a versatile term. While the evaluative role of intensifiers has not been discussed in detail in previous studies, the present study shows that the language users often add positive evaluative meanings to their remarks, which can often be tantamount to an intensification.

Visual attention span (VAS) refers to the number of visual elements processed simultaneously in a multielement array. It is causally related to reading skills and may be impaired in readers with dyslexia. VAS is influenced by orthographic depth with opaque orthographies boosting it. Such orthography-specific VAS modulations are subject to crosslinguistic interactions in early biliterates, leading to advantages associated with learning to read in an opaque orthography. However, little is known about potential VAS bootstrapping effects in late biliterates. This study investigates potential VAS modulation in late biliterates with and without dyslexia. Participants were first language (L1) Italian native speakers (transparent orthography) learning English as a second language (L2). Our results show that the VAS capacity of typical readers is modulated by English orthographic knowledge, providing the first evidence that experience with a nonnative orthography boosts VAS skills also in late biliterates. This effect was reduced in dyslexic learners, possibly due to a VAS deficit.

This paper analyses (t)-glottaling – the replacement of /t/ with the glottal stop [Ɂ] – in word-final position (e.g. that). This variable has been largely explored in relation to the following phonological environment, which is commonly divided into three main contexts: pre-consonantal (e.g. that man), pre-vocalic (e.g. that apple) and pre-pausal (e.g. what?). However, little research has been carried out on the preceding phonological context. This paper aims at expanding the usual limited set of constraints employed for (t) by considering both following and preceding phonological environments. Data was collected in three East Anglian communities (Colchester, Ipswich, and Norwich) from 36 participants, stratified by age, social class, and sex. Results show that (a) the preceding phonological environment plays a remarkable role, with vowels and nasals favouring glottalled variants, and (b) that (t)-glottaling has nearly completed its social change word-finally in spontaneous speech.

This study investigates linguistic convergence in Spanish–English bilinguals’ demonstrative use in English (this/that) and Spanish (este/ese). Participants completed a task that tested the influence of speaker-referent distance on demonstrative use. Study 1 includes Spanish-speaking monolinguals in Mexico, English-speaking monolinguals in the USA, and Spanish–English bilinguals who were born in the USA or arrived at a young age. Results show that speaker-referent distance constrained all groups’ demonstrative use; however, this effect was weaker in the bilinguals’ Spanish as compared to the Spanish-speaking monolinguals. Study 2 focuses on the bilinguals’ demonstratives. Group-level and individual analyses present evidence for linguistic convergence: the bilinguals’ usage patterns were similar across their languages. Additionally, language dominance predicted usage patterns: the more English-dominant the participant, the greater the likelihood of producing proximal demonstratives for near and far referents alike. This pattern mirrors common diachronic changes, supporting the view that bilinguals may propel language change.

In reply to a recent article in English Today by David Li, it is pointed out that the use of a noun as a premodifier rather than an adjective appears to be increasing in English, perhaps particularly in the area of sports. The Australia team seems to be gaining ground at the expense of the Australian team, for example. Just why this should be happening is obscure, but multiple factors appear to be involved in the change. There are also instances where the change appears to be blocked.