The AILA Research Network on crosslinguistic perspectives on L2 studies seeks to improve collaboration across French-speaking and English-speaking scholarly communities by offering a forum for participants to review, clarify, and update terms and concepts in second language acquisition, second and foreign language teaching, educational linguistics, and language education across the two languages. While applied linguistics in English-speaking contexts has over the years extended its scope and aims beyond its original focus on the teaching and learning of foreign language, terminological slippage in French had led to a schism between la didactique des langues étrangères and other domains of la linguistique appliquée which is problematic for an international organisation named after the French acronym and appealing to a contemporary interdisciplinary interpretation of the field.

This symposium is positioned at the intersection of the conference focus on professionals and research and crosslinguistic perspectives on second and foreign language education. It aims to address methodological challenges and applications in language education in a range of areas within applied linguistics: corpus linguistics, language for specific purposes, contexts for language learning, and language pedagogy/didactics. We open with two papers on corpora in language research (Tyne, Boulton) focusing on methodological challenges and terminological issues. We then address terminology and translation in professional discourse (Olmo-Cazevieille) before turning to dimensions of language learning experiences both online and in immersion (Toffoli, Finardi & Archanjo, Howard). The final papers investigate classroom teaching and learning, focusing on the key terms acquisition, learning, communicative competence, and task (Leray, Whyte).

The aim of the symposium is to bring together a range of perspectives from language education scholars working in French and English to shed light on areas of agreement and points of divergence in this key area of applied linguistics.

Participants

Henry Tyne

Université de Perpignan

Corpus and corpora: uses of the term corpus in applied research in French and English

Alex Boulton

Université de Lorraine

Narrative synthesis and meta-analysis: issues of research methodology 

Françoise Olmo-Cazevieille

Universitat Politècnica de València

Questions de terminologie et de traduction dans la construction de discours professionnels

Denyze Toffoli

Université de Strasbourg

Online informal language learning: tackling complexity and diversity

Kyria Finardi and Renata Archanjo

Federal University of Espirito Santo and Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

Les langues dans l'internationalisation : Une approche collaborative à l'apprentissage en ligne (COIL) pour la mobilité éducative internationale

Martin Howard 

University College Cork

Study abroad and second language acquisition: methodological and terminological insights from the SAREP project

Maï Leray

Université de Perpignan

On the task/tâche in applied lingustics research

Shona Whyte

Université Côte d'Azur

Some key terms in L2 studies and didactique des langues: acquisition, learning, and communicative competence