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The primary aim of this paper is to examine students´ relational engagement in a short story, as well as their use of mental state expressions in responding to it in three different writing assignments, one of which involved photo elicitation. A secondary aim is to examine and compare the relational engagement between students reading the story in Swedish (i.e., their L1) and English (i.e., their L2), respectively. The theoretical framework draws on research in relational engagement/transactional theory, the Appraisal system, Dual Code Theory (DCT), and the Linguistic Threshold Hypothesis. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. A total of 33 students participated in the study, half of whom read the story in Swedish, and half in English. The results show that the students used a wide range of mental state expressions, but also that these expressions changed in accordance with task formulation. The results also show that the photo-elicitation assignment yielded the strongest relational engagement. Furthermore, students reading the story in Swedish generally demonstrated a stronger relational engagement than students reading the story in English.

The present study deals with the meanings conveyed by verbal periphrases with the auxiliaries estar ‘to be in a place’, ir ‘to go’, and venir ‘to come’, plus a gerund, as in: te lo está explicando ‘he is explaining it to you’, te lo va explicando ‘he [gradually] explains it to you’, and te lo viene explicando ‘he keeps explaining it to you’. These verbs underwent a process of grammaticalization which turned them into auxiliaries, conveying mainly tense and aspect. There has been a cross-domain mapping from the literal spatial meaning into metaphorical temporal values. In the periphrases, all three verbs perform a common role: they provide a temporal frame for the progressive situations (expressed by the gerund) to occur. However, the cognitive topology of the source domain still applies to the auxiliaries, whose different metaphorical meanings are responsible for the contrast in meanings and functions among the three periphrases. The analysis is based on a corpus of 20 hours of informal conversations.

Readers’ emotional engagement with fiction is a busy research area situated at the intersection between cognitive, affective and narrative theory. Perspective taking is a feature that cuts across these disciplines since the narrative situation is crucial for communicating the experiences of narrators and characters in literary texts. However, what has been explored in less detail is how the vocalisation of printed text facilitates an empathetic response due to the expressive impact of the human voice so that narratives may be visualised and experienced in a variety of ways. Within audionarratology, the concept of voice is undergoing a redefinition since it has ceased to be textually mediated and can be experienced directly. Audiobook narration is a case in point. In the present study, it is argued that empathy is a mediating agent that resides in the vocalisation of text rather than in the text itself. For the purpose of exploring this phenomenon, a pilot study was carried out. Three canonical English texts that had previously been studied in their entirety in print by a group of students were accessed in part in a remediated audio format. The listening experiment showed that the individual voice profile of each of the narrating actors had a significant impact on perspective taking and emotional engagement.

Vocabulary is a key factor in successful language acquisition and as the textbook is central in the teaching of English, ideas behind vocabulary input in teaching materials should be based on research findings. The present study is an analysis of seven teaching materials used for young learners in Sweden. The results show that only a limited amount of the vocabulary students encounter in textbooks features in the exercises, with the focus placed on practising words already occurring with high frequency in the textbooks. Most exercises have an incidental vocabulary-learning focus and also require students to deal with language only in a mechanical way. This suggests there is no pedagogical thought behind the vocabulary input and that the inadequacies of textbooks are not properly addressed in workbooks. A conclusion to be drawn is that many teaching materials intended for younger learners in Swedish schools are questionable from a language learning perspective.

The aim of this study is to explore how different semiotic resources are used and shaped by and within social interaction during read-aloud situations between one parent and two children. The study is based on multimodal interaction analysis and the data is based on six read-aloud occasions with one parent and two children during a period of two weeks. The point of departure is the interaction between the children, the parent and the book, focusing on the semiotic resources the participants use in relation to the reader’s performance and the children’s identity production. The results highlight the impact of the reader and the importance of the reader’s approach and skills. The results also show that when children are asked to take part in conversations and participate on their own terms, the read-aloud occasion can offer a significant arena for children’s identity production.

This study aimed to explore language areas where students need support, practice, and feedback in their IELTS academic Task 2 writing. To fulfill the purpose of the study, a convenient sample of 200 IELTS candidates (N=200) at Amir Kabir University of Technology were invited to write an IELTS academic task 2 essay. Two certified IELTS examiners rated the essays based on the following criteria: Task Achievement (TA), Cohesion and Coherence (CC), Lexical Resource (LR), and Grammar Range and Accuracy (GRA). The results revealed that students need more training, practice, and feedback on Task Achievement in comparison with the other three writing task rubrics. Following TA stood CC, LR, and GRA. This study suggests that writing instructors in general, and IELTS teachers in specific, introduce the writing assessment rubrics (IELTS writing band descriptor for IELTS candidates) to students fully and analyze some sample writings in their classrooms for the students to familiarize them with IELTS examiners’ expectations. It was concluded that teachers should spend more quality time on providing students with task achievement feedback as it tops the error gravity list.

Metadiscourse, defined as discourse about discourse, has been borrowed from philosophy into applied linguistics and has evolved as a new area of research in this field. Although metadiscourse is a relatively new subfield in applied linguistics, it has been researched by a range of scholars around the world. The current paper reports the findings of a qualitative library research conducted to identify the functions and forms of metadiscursive hedging in applied linguistics. First, it defines the topic briefly and reviews the existing, but still burgeoning, literature on it. Then, it establishes an interface between fuzzy logic, linguistics, pragmatics, politeness, and applied linguistics. The paper concludes with a discussion of the future directions of research on metadiscursive hedging in applied linguistics.