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This article presents the results of a mixed‐method study that investigated the impact of an innovative project‐based learning module, entitled “I am an author,” on students' motivation and creativity, and also examined its positive and negative aspects emerging from students' evaluations. As part of this module, advanced learners of Italian are required to write and self‐publish a short, fully illustrated children's story in Italian. The results suggest that while students encountered some problems during the activity, overall the project had a positive impact on their intrinsic motivation—linked to the opportunity to use the language to target a nonacademic audience and to their investment in a personally relevant and world relevant task—and also helped them develop their creative skills. This study adds to scholarship on the effectiveness of experiential learning through a targeted project‐based activity and paves the way for future development of and research on the project. The Challenge How can we teach languages while also motivating students and helping them develop their creativity? We present a project‐based learning module centered around the production of a creative book in Italian and discuss its impact on motivation and creativity, as well as its positive and negative aspects.

Italian has a length contrast in its series of voiced and voiceless obstruents while also presenting phonetic differences across regional varieties. Northern varieties of the language, including Veneto Italian (VI), are described as maintaining the voicing contrast but, in some cases, not the length contrast. In central and southern varieties, the opposite trend may occur. For instance, Roman Italian (RI) is reported to optionally pre-voice intervocalic voiceless singleton obstruents whilst also maintaining the length contrast for this consonant class. This study looks at the acoustic realization of selected obstruents in VI and RI and investigates (a) prevoicing patterns and (b) the effects and interactions of regional variety, gemination, and (phonological and phonetic) voicing on consonant (C) and preceding-vowel (V) durations, as well as the ratio between the two (C/V), with a focus on that particular measure. An acoustic phonetic analysis is conducted on 3703 tokens from six speakers from each variety, producing eight repetitions of 40 real CV́C(C)V and CVC(C)V́CV words embedded in carrier sentences, with /p, pp, t, tt, k, kk, b, bb, d, dd, ɡ, ɡɡ, f, ff, v, vv, t∫, tt∫, dʒ, ddʒ/ as the target intervocalic consonants. The results show that both VI and RI speakers produce geminates, yielding high C/V ratios in both varieties, although there are cross-regional differences in the realization of singletons. On the one hand, RI speakers tend to pre-voice voiceless singletons and produce overall shorter C durations and lower C/V ratios for these consonants. On the other hand, VI speakers produce longer C durations and higher C/V ratios for all voiceless singletons, triggering some overlap between the C length categories, which results in partial degemination through singleton lengthening, although only for voiceless obstruents. The implications of a trading relationship between phonetic voicing and duration of obstruents in Italian gemination are discussed.

Eastern Andalusian Spanish (henceforth EAS), is spoken in the east of Andalusia, the southernmost autonomous region of Spain. EAS is most similar to Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS) and to Murcian Spanish, the latter spoken in the autonomous region of Murcia, immediately to the east of Andalusia, and it shares some phonetic traits with EAS, such as vowel lowering. Geographically, Eastern Andalusia includes the provinces of Almería, Granada, Jaén and Málaga, although the precise linguistic delimitation of this area is somewhat more complicated (Figure 1). The main criterion to differentiate EAS from WAS is the lowering or opening of vowels preceding underlying /s/ (Villena Ponsoda 2000). More detailed information on the differences between EAS and WAS can be found in Jiménez Fernández (1999), Villena Ponsoda (2000), Moya Corral (2010) and Valeš (2014). According to Alvar, Llorente & Salvador (1973: map 1696), Cádiz and Huelva in the west are the only Andalusian provinces where vowel lowering before underlying /s/ is not found. As the geographical extent of this phenomenon is widely debated, it is difficult to calculate the precise number of speakers of EAS, but we can assert that this geolect is the native variety of Spanish of approximately 2,800,000 speakers if we take into account the figures from the last census of Andalusia in 2011 (Instituto de Estadística y Cartografía de Andalucía 2011).

There is no consensus on how the disruption or maintenance of heritage culture and language affect mental health outcomes in adolescents with a migrant (also known as \"immigrant\" or \"international migrant\") background. Even though previous literature reviews have investigated the association between acculturation and mental health in migrants, none have explicitly focused on adolescents. The aim of the scoping review described in this protocol is to understand (1) the focus, scope, and nature of quantitative empirical research investigating heritage cultural maintenance, including linguistic maintenance, and mental health outcomes in adolescents with a migrant background worldwide and (2) the potential effects of cultural and linguistic maintenance or disruption on migrant adolescent mental health outcomes. A total of 11 key electronic health, medical, social science, and language databases (APA PsycArticles Full Text; Embase Classic+Embase; Ovid MEDLINE All and Epub Ahead of Print, In-Process, In-Data-Review and Other Non-Indexed Citations and Daily; Ovid MEDLINE All; APA PsycInfo; University of Melbourne full-text journals; Science Citation Index Expanded; Social Sciences Citation Index; Arts & Humanities Citation Index; Scopus; Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts) were searched. Databases were searched without time restrictions from the beginning of their coverage. Publication date, location, and quantitative study design (except for literature reviews) were not restricted; however, the search was only conducted in English. Data from included studies will be extracted using a template with predefined data items, and results will be summarized in a structured, narrative summary. A search was conducted on April 20, 2021, returning 2569 results. We are currently at the final stages of screening titles and abstracts of our search results, which will be followed by a full-text review and the data extraction of included studies. We expect to submit the full review for publication by the end of 2023. The scoping review aims to provide a better understanding of existing research on the association between cultural (including linguistic) maintenance and mental health in migrant adolescents. It will help identify gaps in the existing literature and develop hypotheses that could inform future research, eventually facilitating the development of targeted prevention initiatives and improving migrant adolescents' well-being. DERR1-10.2196/40143.

In Eastern Andalusian Spanish, consonants are deleted in syllable-final position, triggering regular gemination of a following consonant, even across word boundaries. This paper investigates five underlying phonemic contexts involving /t/, including singleton /t/ and four different underlying /C+t/ sequences that typically surface as [t:], by analyzing how durational and formant differences vary depending on the presence and identity of the preceding underlying consonant. Following the acoustic and statistical analyses of 444 instances of /ˈeta/, /ˈesta/, /ˈekta/, /ˈepta/ and /ˈeksta/, a Discriminant Function Analysis shows that differences in the total duration of /t/ and in the duration of the closure of /t/ are the strongest cues to distinguishing singletons from geminated consonants, with 91.9% and 90.6% accurate classifications, respectively. Cues indicating which specific consonants have been deleted before /t/ are much less robust and more varied in nature. It is unclear, however, whether this outcome is due to different compensation strategies in each case or whether they are affected by some kind of underlying coarticulatory effect. Given that gemination in this language variety is the result of regular /C1C2/ to [Cː] assimilation, and that its underlying phonemic status has not been demonstrated, Eastern Andalusian Spanish is unusual amongst languages studied with respect to gemination, making this study typologically interesting.

Learners of a foreign language (FL) typically have to learn to process sounds that do not exist in their first language (L1). As this is known to be difficult for adults, in particular, it is important for FL pedagogy to be informed by phonetic research. This study examined the role of FL learners’ previous linguistic experience in the processing of a contrast absent in the L1. The FLs under investigation are Japanese and Italian, which both use contrastive consonant length. Two groups of non-native Japanese (NNJ) learners – L1 Australian English (OZ) and L1 Korean – participated in the consonant length identification task. Neither OZ nor Korean has an underlying consonant length contrast, but Korean has non-contrastive lengthening of tense obstruents with corresponding shorter preceding vowels, which may be beneficial in perceiving consonant length in an FL. We have taken a novel, two-stage approach. First, we compared the perception of Japanese long/geminate and short/singleton consonants by the two groups of NNJ learners. Second, we investigated whether FL Japanese learning by the two groups transfers to the processing of consonant length in an unknown language, Italian. Native speakers of Japanese (NJ) and Italian (NI) were included as controls. They were familiar with contrastive consonant length in their L1, but were naïve to the other language. The NJ and NI groups accurately identified the consonant length category in their L1 but were slightly less accurate in the unknown language. The two NNJ groups were generally accurate (> 80%) in perceiving consonant length not only in Japanese, but also in Italian. However, the direction of NNJ learners’ misperception (i.e. singleton as geminate or geminate as singleton) varied, suggesting that some learners, according to their L1, may categorize length in Japanese and Italian differently rather than uniformly applying the concept of [±long].

This book brings together current research by leading international scholars on the often contentious nature of language policies and their practical outcomes in North America, Australia and Europe. It presents a range of perspectives from which to engage with a variety of pressing issues raised by multilingualism, multiculturalism, immigration, exclusion, and identity. A recurrent theme is that of tension and conflict: between uniformity and diversity, between official policies and real day-to-day life experiences, but also between policies in schools and the corporate world and their implementation. Several chapters present research about language policy issues that has previously not been fully or easily available to an English-language audience. Many of the chapters also provide up-to-date analyses of language policy issues in particular regions or countries, focusing on recent developments.

Educational issues are a regular feature in mainstream media, and the ways in which particular issues are represented can influence public perceptions of the various discipline areas and, in turn, policy decisions that affect them. While the research literature includes media coverage analyses of a wide range of educational disciplines and sectors, missing is an understanding of the media representations of language education in the tertiary setting, despite languages being seen as a key pathway to generalised national multilingualism, social harmony, and economic prosperity. The authors address this gap using Australia as a case study, a country that has seen considerable policy and media attention to language education in general over many years. A content analysis of print newspaper coverage from 2007–2016 was conducted, revealing that the coverage of the discipline area at the tertiary level is extremely limited, is generally superficial in depth, narrow in scope, and negative in tone. This representation perpetuates the already precarious position of language education in Australian universities, and there is little support for a more positive and visible public agenda.

Background. Low-participation of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) patients in medical research remains a problem in migrant and refugee destination countries such as Australia. The aims of this study were to explore i) CALD persons’ perceptions and experiences of the medical system and medical research, in this case, older Italian Australians; and ii) the views of research professionals on CALD patient participation in medical research. Design and Methods. A qualitative study was conducted in Melbourne, Australia, in 2015 utilising in-depth interviews and focus groups with four stakeholder groups: older Italian Australians (n=21); adult children of older Italian Australians (n=10); hospital Human Research Ethics Committee administrators (n=4); and clinical researchers (n=4). The data were analysed for content and thematic analysis. Results. Themes for the CALD and family group were getting by in medical interactions; receptivity to medical research: testing the waters; and, receptivity to technology for support: passive versus active. Themes for the researcher and HREC groups about CALD patient participation in research were: exclusion; cultural factors; and e-consent. Conclusions. Our findings from four stakeholder perspectives and experiences confirm that there were considerable cultural, linguistic, and resourcing barriers hindering the participation of older Italian-Australians in medical research. Furthermore, our findings showed that in this study setting there were few enabling strategies in place to address these barriers despite the national ethics guidelines for equitable participation in research. The findings informed the creation of a multimedia tool whose purpose is to address and improve representation of CALD groups in clinical research.

This article examines the complex drivers of change in language education that have resulted in Australia having the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. An analysis of academic and non-academic literature, policy documents, and quantitative data helps trace the trajectory of the Italian language in the Australian education system, from the 1960s to the 1990s, illustrating the interaction of different variables that facilitated the shift in Italian's status from a largely immigrant language to one of the most widely studied languages in Australia. This research documents the factors behind the successful mainstreaming of Italian into schools, which, in addition to the active support it received from the Italian community and the Italian government, also included, notably, the ability of different Australian governments to address societal transformation and to respond to the emerging practical challenges in scaling up new language education initiatives in a detailed and comprehensive manner.