This study investigates the impact of language proficiency on EFL learners' ability to identify and comprehend complex linguistic features, focusing on ellipsis and substitution. It aims to determine which of these features presents greater challenges and contributes to a higher frequency of errors, shedding light on the specific difficulties learners face in processing and using these structures across different contexts. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, involving 30 EFL learners from the University of Jordan, divided into intermediate and advanced proficiency groups, to investigate their ability to identify and comprehend ellipsis and substitution. Quantitative data were obtained from test results and analyzed using t-tests, while qualitative insights were gathered from post-test introspective discussions to explore learners' cognitive processes and challenges. The findings revealed significant differences in performance between advanced and intermediate EFL learners, with advanced learners consistently outperforming their counterparts in identifying and comprehending ellipsis and substitution. Substitution was found to be relatively easier for learners, as evidenced by higher scores and its explicit lexical markers, whereas ellipsis posed greater challenges due to its implicit, context-dependent nature, which aligns with Halliday and Hasan's (1976) Cohesion Theory. The study highlights the critical role of proficiency in mastering these linguistic features and highlights the need for designed instructional strategies to address learners’ difficulties, particularly with ellipsis. It also emphasizes the need for targeted practice and authentic text exposure to enhance EFL learners' ability to comprehend and apply cohesive devices like ellipsis and substitution effectively.

Linda Daniela presents her edited volume, New Perspectives on Virtual and Augmented Reality: Finding New Ways to Teach in a Transformed Learning Environment, as a comprehensive and multidisciplinary exploration of the role of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in education. The book unites contributions from researchers and practitioners who navigate through innovative strategies, technological tools, and pedagogical approaches to integrate immersive technologies into diverse teaching and learning contexts. The volume underscores how immersive environments foster active, situated, and collaborative learning experiences. VR and AR enable learners to engage in embodied cognition, where knowledge is constructed through direct interaction with digital simulations and contextualized experiences. These theoretical foundations highlight the pedagogical value of immersion, presence, and interactivity in promoting deeper understanding, skill development, and emotional engagement.

This article explores how epistemic adverbials, particularly assuredly, indeed, perhaps, possibly, probably, and surely, function interpersonally in Late Modern English instructive texts authored by women. Drawing on Hyland’s polypragmatic model of stance and hedging, the study investigates how these forms serve to modulate epistemic commitment, negotiate writer-reader alignment, and reinforce or attenuate claims. The data are drawn from the Corpus of Women’s Instructive Texts in English (CoWITE), specifically the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century subcorpora. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, the analysis reveals clear differences in frequency, syntactic distribution, and rhetorical function between the two centuries. While reinforcing adverbials such as indeed become more prominent over time, tentative forms such as perhaps and possibly are used strategically to preserve politeness, express contingency, and accommodate variability. These findings shed light on how women employed epistemic adverbials not only to structure instructional discourse but also to assert authority and manage interpersonal rapport in contexts shaped by social and rhetorical constraint.

Film titles are often comprised of single words or short phrases, their length rarely exceeding a sentence. Despite this, translating titles for new audiences is a complex task. This study examines this complexity by comparing how the same phrases are translated from English into Arabic when used as film titles versus when they appear within the dialogue as subtitles. Films where the title was uttered during the film were selected. The subtitles of the lines that contained the title reference were contrasted with the official target language title. The comparison focused on the influence of context and function on the translation strategies. The analysis confirmed the extent of this influence and showed that translating titles tended to take a more general approach that focuses on appeal rather than fidelity, while subtitles were specified by context and were thus more sense-oriented. The study recommends that both title localisers and subtitlers resort to the context of the film to produce accurate renditions.

The rise of computer-based testing has transformed language assessment, with computer-based English speaking tests (CBESTs) offering scalable and efficient evaluations. However, the extent to which automated scoring aligns with analytic measures, such as complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) indices, remains unclear. This study examines the relationship between automated CBEST scores and CAF indices in 418 Chinese junior high school students’ spoken responses. Findings revealed strong correlations between automated accuracy and fluency scores and their respective analytic indices, demonstrating the system’s ability to assess grammatical precision and temporal fluency. However, automated complexity scores correlated only moderately with mean length of clauses, with no significant links to lexical diversity. Cross-dimensional correlations suggested potential overlap in scoring constructs. These results highlight CBESTs’ strengths and limitations in assessing oral proficiency, emphasizing the need to refine scoring algorithms to improve validity and comprehensiveness in automated language assessments.

A significant amount of research exists on how the media cover environmental disasters and thus articulate climate concerns. However, there is a lack of studies on how news media outlets discursively presented the 2023 earthquake that took place in Turkey and Syria. To address the existing gap, the study seeks to investigate how the selected news media vocalised the climate concerns during the seismic event. For this purpose, we scrutinised the news pieces published by prominent news outlets. The study implemented mixed-methods tools to correlate the specific climate concerns and their representation. We qualitatively examined the obtained keywords earthquake, quake, and rubble, focusing on nomination and predication strategies employed for their discursive framing. Our research reveals a general trend exhibited by the three media outlets to place their discursive emphasis on a more immediate scale of repercussions (casualties, destruction, rescue efforts). The more global, climate-related issues might require more attention.

Advances in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) have significantly influenced second language (L2) learning by increasing access to English through digital media. This study investigates the evolving role of audiovisual input among 91 prospective primary-school teachers in Spain, a traditionally dubbing country. Employing a mixed-methods approach, the study analyzes participants’ preferences for viewing English-language media with subtitles versus captions, as well as their motivations for doing so. Results show a marked preference for subtitled content, with significant differences between intralingual and interlingual modalities. The main reasons provided were driven by a desire to improve comprehension and specific language skills, such as vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, and spelling. Participants also viewed audiovisual input as a source of increased motivation and a means to acquire conversational English suited to informal contexts. These findings reflect evolving media consumption patterns in dubbing contexts and suggest pedagogical value in leveraging subtitled media for L2 learning.

Whole issue 18.2

Whole issue 18.1

This study explores the challenges Croatian legal professionals face in international legal communication, focusing on the use of foreign legal languages, particularly English. As globalization increases cross-border legal interactions, lawyers, judges, notaries, and corporate counsel are required to communicate across legal systems and cultures. Through interviews with 16 professionals, the research identifies key difficulties, including conceptual and terminological mismatches, system-bound legal terms, and divergent legal procedures. While most participants actively engage in multilingual legal work, many lack formal training in legal language and rely on personal strategies such as online research, peer consultation, and bilingual documentation. The study highlights a strong need for specialized training in foreign legal languages, comparative law, and drafting, especially in areas like contract and company law. It concludes that enhancing intercultural and linguistic competence is essential for improving communication accuracy and legal certainty in international contexts.