The paper presents the results of two action-research projects conducted in multilingual classes in public primary schools in Italy, focusing on fostering metalinguistic awareness (MLA), here defined as practices involving language at a metalevel, taking linguistic form and/or meaning as their object. Two sociolinguistic and educational contexts were involved: the dominant monolingual school model in the area of Turin, and schools in the bilingual area of South-Tyrol, where also the minority language is a curricular language. The projects draw inspiration from the Language awakening - Éveil aux langues approach. Students (aged 7–10) were exposed to input in an unknown language, serving as a decentring language, and were then asked to manipulate language fragments at some linguistic level and prompted to jointly articulate their observations. Drawing upon the analysis of teacher-students interactions occurring during the sessions, the study observes the cognitive resources mobilised by the workshops and the way the students were able to involve in their reasoning not only the object language, but the curricular and home languages as well. Il presente contributo illustra i risultati di due progetti di ricerca-azione condotti in classi multilingui di scuole primarie pubbliche in Italia, aventi come obiettivo la promozione della consapevolezza metalinguistica (MLA), qui intesa come l’insieme di pratiche che implicano un uso del linguaggio a livello metalinguistico, assumendo come oggetto di riflessione la forma e/o il significato linguistico. La ricerca ha coinvolto due contesti sociolinguistici ed educativi distinti: da un lato, il modello scolastico monolingue dominante nell’area di Torino; dall’altro, le scuole dell’area bilingue dell’Alto Adige, in cui la lingua minoritaria riveste lo status di lingua curricolare. I progetti traggono ispirazione dall’approccio Éveil aux langues – Risveglio alle lingue. Gli alunni (di età compresa tra i 7 e i 10 anni) sono stati esposti a input in una lingua sconosciuta, utilizzata come lingua di decentramento, e successivamente invitati a manipolare frammenti linguistici a diversi livelli, elaborando congiuntamente le proprie osservazioni. Attraverso l’analisi delle interazioni tra insegnanti e studenti durante le attività, lo studio indaga le risorse cognitive attivate nei laboratori e la modalità con cui tali pratiche hanno consentito di integrare nel processo di ragionamento non solo la lingua oggetto, ma anche le lingue curricolari e quelle d’uso familiare.

As gender-fair language (GFL) gains prominence, the choice of epicene pronouns in English as a Second Language (ESL) writing remains underexplored, particularly in conservative educational settings. This study investigates the pronoun preferences of Filipino college English majors when referring to gender-unspecified individuals, addressing a gap in the literature on GFL in ESL contexts. A survey, which included both closed- and open-ended questions, was administered to 113 third-year English majors to examine their pronoun choices in writing. Findings reveal a preference for singular they over traditional forms such as he or she, although the latter persists due to grammatical familiarity. The results highlight an ongoing linguistic shift towards inclusivity, underscoring the role of education in shaping GFL practices. This study contributes to discussions on linguistic equity in ESL education, advocating for pedagogical strategies that normalise inclusive pronoun use in academic and professional discourse.

Chinese nationals constitute the largest foreign community in Japan. To better understand how Chinese learners of Japanese (CLJs) make choices regarding formal forms – an essential communicative skill – this study examines the formality choices of eleven CLJs and the pragmatic awareness underlying their choices from an intercultural perspective through a bottom-up approach. A multiple-choice discourse completion task (MDCT) comprising 64 scenarios was developed, each presenting three semantically equivalent responses differing in formality level. Five recurrent patterns of divergence from Japanese native speakers (JNSs) were observed: CLJs tended to select more formal expressions when imposing a high burden on others and less formal expressions in (1) familiar, hierarchical relationships, (2) when offering benefits, (3) interactions with unfamiliar, equal-status interlocutors, and (4) situations involving infringements of personal interests. Thematic analysis of concurrent think-aloud protocols and post-test interviews revealed three dimensions of their pragmatic awareness: (1) intercultural understandings of Japanese language and culture, (2) learners’ identity and agency, and (3) perceived personality. These findings highlight how CLJs’ formal form choices and pragmatic awareness can be understood through an intercultural lens, offering pedagogical implications for empowering learners as agentive and legitimate language users and promoting mutual understanding between CLJs and JNSs.

This corpus-based study investigates the linguistic construction of social roles in children’s graded readers through a systematic analysis of 85,000 tokens across five proficiency levels (L1–L5) from the Little Fox English learning platform. Employing Systemic Functional Linguistics and Language Socialisation Theory as our theoretical framework, we examine three critical dimensions of social role representation: (1) the evolution of authority relationships from directive control to negotiated interaction, (2) the development of peer interaction strategies from physical to verbal negotiation, and (3) the progression of anthropomorphism from action-based to psychologically complex characterisation. The mixed-methods approach combines quantitative corpus analysis with qualitative discourse analysis to track the developmental trajectories of key linguistic features including imperatives, mental state verbs, politeness markers, and conflict resolution strategies. The results demonstrate a systematic calibration of linguistic complexity to children’s developing social cognition, with particularly significant transitions occurring between L2–L3 (emergence of perspective-taking) and L4–L5 (development of meta-cognitive abilities). These findings have important implications for understanding how educational materials can scaffold both linguistic and social development in age-appropriate ways.

This study investigated how L2 learners of German and English responded to their partners’ errors during a video-based exchange after participating in metacognitive instruction on corrective feedback. Participants were three L2 learners of German from a US university and three L2 learners of English from a German high school. All learners participated in a 75-min metacognitive instruction session during which they were introduced to six types of input-providing and output-prompting feedback. Following the training, each pair met on Zoom ten times throughout the semester to discuss various topics in German and English for approximately 40 min. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were performed to determine the amount and types of feedback provided, and stimulated recall interviews were conducted to understand learners’ reasoning behind using or not using specific feedback types. Results suggest that Germany-based students regularly provided feedback on their partners’ errors whereas US-based students provided little feedback due to a lack of noticing and confidence. Both groups favoured input-providing over output-prompting feedback, which they considered easy, intuitive, efficient and appropriate for most errors. Pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed, including recommendations for designing effective metacognitive instruction sessions for virtual exchange programs.

This study examines how ELT teacher educators conceptualise and reason about interculturality in their pedagogical practices. Although interculturality is a central concern in language education, little is known about how educators justify its place in teacher preparation. Drawing on linguistic reasoning as the main lens, supported by epistemic cognition, the study explores how educators describe, compare, and justify intercultural aims, and how their epistemic orientations shape these processes. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews and metaphor-elicitation tasks with 12 teacher educators, analysed thematically to capture pragmatic and critical dimensions of reasoning. Findings reveal fragmented conceptualizations: while many treated interculturality as instrumental support for language learning, others framed it as central to fostering reflection, empathy, and identity development. Epistemic orientations proved decisive: essentialist views of culture led to pragmatic, fact-based reasoning, whereas constructivist and evaluativist orientations supported dialogic and critical justifications. Tensions between aspirations and institutional constraints, particularly exam-driven curricula and English-only ideologies, further shaped how intercultural aims were enacted. The study concludes that intercultural pedagogy in Turkish ELT remains marginal yet resilient, sustained through educators’ epistemic awareness, reasoning, and agency. These insights extend linguistic reasoning research, foreground epistemic cognition, and offer implications for intercultural pedagogy in global ELT contexts.

Motivated by a complex-dynamic systems (CDS) perspective, this longitudinal study explored metalinguistic awareness (MLA) and its development in the early stages of formal schooling. MLA is understood as using knowledge about language at a point in real time. Elementary school children in Norway (N = 169) were administered two parallel versions of a new MLA-test: at the beginning (age 7–8) and end of grade 3 (age 8–9), and at the end of grade 4 (age 9–10). This comprehensive test encompasses phonological, lexical, and grammatical MLA, along with a cross-linguistic dimension. At the macro-level of the group, we found a significant linear growth of MLA over the two school years, despite some differences among the subdimensions. At the micro-level, profile plots revealed considerable variability in individual development, suggesting both a non-linear growth pattern and an asymmetrical development within the sample. These findings advance theoretical discussions on MLA by highlighting (1) the interplay between individual developmental pathways and group-level trends, and (2) the applicability of a CDS-guided approach to studying MLA. Ultimately, the study underscores the necessity of considering both macro and micro perspectives in understanding MLA development, particularly in educational contexts.

Informed by the latest instructional approaches of linguistically and culturally responsive content teaching (LcRCT), this study examined U.S. classroom teachers’ perceived confidence in their pedagogical practices with multilingual learners in the content classroom. Using a newly developed and initially validated survey scale, ‘Critical Practice toward Content-Integrated Education for Multilingual Learners’, this study addressed the research gap on classroom teachers’ practice of incorporating students’ home languages (translanguaging) and/or multiple modalities for classroom instruction and assessment (transmodalising). Particularly, the study examined distinctions in teachers’ perceived confidence in practising LcRCT by their teaching role (English for Speakers of Other Languages [ESOL] and Content), teaching grade (Elementary and Secondary) or teaching subjects (STEM, non-STEM and Both), and their interaction effects. Analyses of 307 survey responses collected across the United States suggested that ESOL training had a significant impact in implementing the two identified constructs of LcRCT: (1) transmodal collaboration (TC) and (2) translanguaging pedagogy (TP), especially in the elementary school classroom. Results also suggested that teachers of STEM-only subjects were the least confident group in practising TC and TP. Implications for reforming teacher development programs are discussed in relation to ESOL-specific training for secondary school teachers and STEM teachers.