The fascinating world of language teaching and learning varieties

As is clear in this issue, as in all others, Language Learning in Higher Education welcomes contributions that present and discuss situations in which the authors are actively involved either in research-based teaching or teaching-based research. This is obviously the focus of our work as language educators, where our research helps us to improve as teachers and where our teaching provokes research into improving language learning in all its multiple aspects. What is especially important is that by contributing to the journal, we wish to share the knowledge that we have gained and developed through critical reflection. We also wish to share our individual experiences as language teachers, not only by focusing on how we teach the language but how we teach about the language in all its cultural facets.

The themes that run through Issue 13.1 2023 and link one paper to the next, focus on the learners and the opportunities that we offer with the aim of assisting them to develop their language skills. This gives our readers the chance to discover the innumerable realities of modern language education around the world.

We have divided the Issue into four sections. The first one includes a set of Research Articles that describe different academic settings dealing with the implementation of multilingual experiences, such as in Finland with Aspiring multilinguals or contented bilinguals? University students negotiating their multilingual and professional identities (Hillamaria Pirhonen) or in Australia with The (im)possibility of breaking the cycle of rippling circularities affecting Australian language education programs: A Queensland example (Adriana R. Díaz, Naomi Fillmore, Marisa Cordella). By starting with the concept of multilingualism, the section paves the way for the teaching of various modern languages through current didactic techniques, such as German in a Jordan university with Lernen mit LMOOCs im universitären Deutschunterricht. Entscheidungshilfen für Deutschlehrende (Renata Asali-van der Wal), Chinese in a US university where education for sustainable development plays an important role as described in Enhance Sustainability and Environmental Protection Awareness: Agency in Chinese Informal Video Learning (Ting Huang), Spanish in Gamification and learning Spanish as a modern language: student perceptions in the university context (Jaume Batlle Rodríguez and María Vicenta González Argüello) and, finally, Seeing innovation from different prisms: University students’ and instructors’ perspectives on flipping the Spanish language classroom (Ana García-Allén and Shelley K. Taylor). All these papers provide interesting insights for the attentive reader.

The second section includes Papers that deal with several forms of writing skills. The reader can enjoy texts on corpus-based analyses as in Investigating syntactic complexity and language-related error patterns in EFL students’ writing: Corpus-based and epistemic network analyses (Nang Kham Thi and De Van Voand Marianne Nikolov), or academic writing as in Using Google Docs for guided Academic Writing assessments: Students’ perspectives (Francesco Screti), or Digital storytelling as practice-based participatory pedagogy for English for Specific Purposes (Margarida Morgado and Tanja Vesala-Varttala). A particular mention goes to translation skills discussed in Is Individual Competition in Translators’ Training Compatible with Collaborative Learning? The Case of the MTIE Translation Award (Laura Tallone, Sandra Ribeiro, and Alexandra Albuquerque) and to Tackling the elephant in the language classroom: Introducing machine translation literacy in a Swiss language centre (Sara Cotelli Kureth and Elana Summers). Indeed, machine translation has recently become the focus of many language experts who are interested in this sub-field of computational linguistics and in the practical use in language classrooms of software used to translate text or speech from one language to another.

The third section takes the readers’ attention back to the widely discussed and researched topic of autonomous language learning. The section opens with the description of how such an important learning philosophy has become an institutional practice in a Language Centre. Institutionalised autonomisation of language learning in a French Language Centre (Anne Chateau and Nicolas Molle) is, in fact, an example for many junior language practitioners of how to start the process that leads to the creation of a structure accurately dedicated to modern language teaching. This process, which has become one of the cornerstones of many Language Centres throughout Europe, is described through a qualitative case observed in a Slovak university and reported in The story of becoming an autonomous learner: A case study of a student’s learning management (Martina Šindelářová Skupeňová) and in The Effect of Collaborative Activities on Tertiary-level EFL Students’ Learner Autonomy in the Turkish Context (Demet Turan-Öztürk and Çağrı Özköse-Bıyık). This common practice is described also in Learner Autonomy and English Achievement in Chinese EFL Undergraduates: The Mediating Role of Ambiguity Tolerance and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (Lilan Chen) where the factors that affect language performance among Chinese EFL learners when aiming to improve their level of English are closely explored. Once again, we can confirm that autonomous language learning plays a key role in the field of language teaching and research.

The fourth final, but no less important section is devoted to Activity Reports. LLHE has always given space to this section since reports about best practices are a source of reflection and encouragement for action for the large numbers of people (leaders, teachers, tutors, technicians, administrative personnel) who work and offer their expertise in Language Centres.

The section opens with Lehre am Sprachenzentrum der UZH und ETH Zürich: Positionspapier (Sabina Schaffner) which, through a detailed description of the activities implemented in a Swiss university throughout the years, offers an interesting contribution to the (inter)national positioning of university Language Centres. The second contribution, Communication Course for Future Engineers – Effective Data Presentation and its interpretation during LSP courses (Katarzyna Matuszak and Liliana Szczuka-Dorna) offers a sample from a communication course prepared for engineers encompassing effective data presentation and its interpretation during LSP lessons. In the specific, the report analyses the existing practical difficulties for language and subject teachers alike in maintaining a distinction between “knowledge of a subject” and “knowledge of the language of a subject.” This leads to the key concept that underlines why academics should integrate professional knowledge and specialist language within the same course. Finally, Dialogic co-creation in language teaching and learning: a personal experience (Henry Finch) is explored in a report where the keywords that emerge are co-creation, dialogue, exploratory talk, flexibility, learner autonomy, teacher autonomy. The report discusses the development and implementation of a dialogic co-creation model for language teaching in a Language Resource Centre at a German university. The focus is on a collaborative, dialogic model that enhances principles of dialogism and exploratory talk integrated with a learner-centred method for curriculum development and teaching in Higher Education.

Once again, with these numerous ideas^[1] for reflection and future studies that may spring from them, we hope you will enjoy this 13.1 2023 Issue of the CercleS Journal, LLHE, as much as we did in compiling it for you.