How do speakers of two or more languages access grammatical structures in these languages? How are syntactic structures associated between languages? This talk looks at crosslinguistic correspondences in bilingual language processing and thinking, focusing on how structural priming happens across languages, and how translational languages embody the grammatical traits of the source languages in terms of syntactic complexity and dependencies, and are susceptible to sentence processing constraints due to the directionality of head-dependent relations and structural typology. By examining the differences between translational and non-translational texts, I will discuss the effect of linearization on conceptual planning during text production, which sheds light on how working memory interacts with head-dependent ordering to constrain the complexity of linguistic units in thinking for speaking.

In this talk, I will evaluate the use of a Virtual Exchange (VE) writing task which was assigned to groups of UK and Finnish business students. There were two groups of learners in the study: one based in the UK (mainly Chinese students), the other in Finland (mainly Finnish students). The Finns wrote authentic case studies about businesses in Nordic countries, including Finland, while the students in the UK adopted what I call a “Stimulus Writing approach” to create a report based on one of the case studies (sent to them by one of the Finnish students). An earlier study, Smith & Keng (2017), reported on the experiences of the Finnish students in the collaboration. In this study, which is based on Smith (2021), I examine the perceptions of the UK-based Chinese students. They found the approach motivating, and believed that through it their academic English skills improved, as did their understanding of business and culture.

Knowledge of academic vocabulary (i.e., vocabulary used in academic writing and speech across disciplines) has been found to predict students’ performance in both writing and reading tasks across educational levels (i.e., primary, secondary and higher education). Research into English academic vocabulary is particularly valuable because a) English is the most widespread lingua franca and is dominant in academia and b) English academic vocabulary poses challenges to students both in first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) settings. This presentation will first discuss the nature of English academic vocabulary and the challenges that English academic vocabulary poses to students. It will then review two relevant recent studies (Perez Urdaniz and Skoufaki, 2019; Skoufaki and Petrić, 2021). It will conclude with a discussion of research that remains to be conducted on English academic vocabulary.

The talk will focus on the experience of teaching Chinese at the University of Mississippi (UM) in the United States. The ultimate goal of learning a new language is to accomplish any kind of communication mission that might happen in the target-language environment. The Chinese classes at UM apply massive authentic materials to learners, design scenarios for learners to complete the tasks from every lesson. As instructors, we try to build an authentic immersive environment for students to efficiently acquire the language.