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It tracks: your L1 affects how you read
Why would linguists be interested in tracking someone’s eyes as they read? Because eye movements give us a moment‑by‑moment record of how readers process text — what they notice, what they skip, where they hesitate & how they build meaning. It’s one of the few tools that lets us observe reading as it happens, rather…
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Dictation: ‘it may be used against you’
I’m sure we’ve all made use of dictation at one time or another: as a spelling focus or as a means to encourage learners to notice connected speech. It’s easy to think of dictation as something that belongs squarely in the classroom. However, it’s also common in the criminal justice system. Before electronic recording became…
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Blink & You’ll Miss It: Eye‑Tracking and Text Difficulty
A recent paper by Shingo Nahatame & Kazuhiro Yamaguchi, published in Language Learning, takes a fresh look at a classic ELT concern: what actually makes a text “hard” for L2 readers to process. Using eye‑tracking data from longer texts than most previous studies, the authors revisit readability a Bayesian lens, which essentially means the model…
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Pride & Prejudice & Plurilingualism
It’s easy to talk about motivation as if it lives entirely inside learners, but this recent study, published in the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, reminds us that emotions are social too. Pride, in particular, turns out to be far more than a fleeting feeling – it’s a powerful signal of identity, belonging &…
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Native Speakerism: When “Sounding Right” Outweighs Being Right
Sometimes a study pops up on your screen that feels uncomfortably familiar. This one does exactly that, because it holds up a mirror to a belief many in ELT quietly know is still shaping classrooms, hiring & professional identity: the idea that “nativeness” signals better teaching. The study The researchers used a sequential explanatory design…
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Thinking Out Loud… Literally: What Multilingual Minds Reveal
Every now & then I read a study that nudges me to rethink how I see a particular group of learners. In this instance it’s what we assume about multilingual learners’ “ability” versus their opportunity to show it. The study left me wondering what our assessments are measuring exactly. The study, published in Frontiers in…
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