As a widely discussed AI tool in recent times, ChatGPT has been the subject of extensive research, particularly in EFL learning contexts where it is often utilized as a sophisticated grammar reviewer. This study shifted its focus to exploring ChatGPT's role in Chinese Mandarin acquisition. Seven senior students from an undergraduate Chinese-Portuguese/Portuguese-Chinese translation program in Portugal participated, with six completing a structured four-task learning activity. Analysis of participant conversations with ChatGPT, a written test conducted immediately after the activity, and a questionnaire assessing satisfaction, perceived learning effectiveness, prior tool usage, and learning outcomes revealed that ChatGPT can function as an interactive, adaptable, and comprehensive real-time dictionary for Chinese Mandarin. It effectively explains word meanings and expressions in specific linguistic contexts and suggests appropriate idiomatic expressions based on learners’ prompts. Contrary to previous findings, participants reported lower satisfaction and limited perceived learning effectiveness. This may be due to the role ChatGPT played in the present study, where it was used merely as a chatbot for target-language interaction rather than as a tool facilitating their learning process by providing ready-made responses. Additionally, participants’ attitudes and preferences for traditional learning methods may also have contributed to these results. The study suggests that effective integration of ChatGPT into Chinese language learning practices requires time and careful consideration.

Claire Kramsch has a long and distinguished career in the field of applied linguistics. This is not the first and nor will it be the last occasion to honour her contribution to the field of language education and applied linguistics more broadly. Yet we are pleased nonetheless to present this collection of essays which pay tribute to the reach of Claire’s scholarship. Claire has authored many texts that serve as key references in intercultural and multilingual research and has developed several seminal concepts that have guided generations of teachers’ and researchers’ thinking and practice. The aim of this special issue is to celebrate Claire’s influence through the voices of a range of scholars whose professional trajectory she has influenced. As well as being an outstanding scholar, Claire’s personable character and lucid, fresh manner of articulation have won her the admiration and affection of all those who have worked alongside her in different capacities, whether as students, colleagues, co-authors, or collaborators.

Taking Kramsch’s characterization of language pedagogy (1993, p.12) as its point of departure, this article offers symbolic, poetic and permaculture design principles as an ideologically restorative way of transforming a “little bit of this and a little bit of that” into a holistic, ethical framework which begins from the frameworks established by Indigenous cultivation of the land and codified into permaculture design principles by Holmgren and Mollison (Holmgren, 2017; Mollison, 1988; Whitefield, 2004). In addition, the article offers a view of UNESCO’s Languages Matter: Global Guidance on Multilingual Education, for which I have been a key author and from which the connections to the multilingual and ecological fields have been set. Drawing extensively on project work in the global majority world (aka Global South and Indigenous Peoples as well as those forcibly displaced) and from work with people seeking refuge through languages and arts, the article will demonstrate the enduring power of Kramsch’s tonal style and conceptual traction. As such the article contributes to discussions of multilingual activism and Indigenous reconciliation.

Symbolic Competence (SC) has emerged as one of the key intellectual and critical contributions from Claire Kramsch’s five decades of published research so far, though we scholars and teachers still hesitate at times to apply it in our analyses of practical, multilingual settings. This essay takes the opportunity to reflect personally on the concept, and on how the complex features it illuminates in everyday life have shaped the author’s own formation in various dimensions. The piece takes as its particular inspiration Kramsch’s 2023 “Poetic Equivalence: Key to the Development of Symbolic Competence” as a model for self-reflection, historical contextualization, for its rigorous, fresh understanding of what “symbolic” does and doesn’t mean in everyday, multilingual life, and—to use a Kramschian turn of phrase—for articulating “why it matters.”

Applying the single case analysis methodology, this study investigates how a peer tutee demonstrated his understanding of his peer tutor’s advice by using a particular type of formulation, response formulations to advice, to negotiate the pair’s participation framework in second language (L2) online peer tutorials. Although the tutor initially held the floor more often during the verbal interaction in the online tutorial, the tutee was able to move from peripheral to fuller participation by offering response formulations to advice. Two types of response formulations to advice were identified: (1) expressing the gist of the tutor’s advice to indicate direct comprehension, and (2) constructing an upshot to add a new viewpoint to the previous utterance by conveying unstated information (e.g., offering an account of what was not discussed in previous discourse). The tutee’s response formulations to advice provided the tutor with an opportunity to access the tutee’s L2 knowledge and thereby offer more mediation to enhance the tutee’s metalinguistic knowledge of the target language. The tutee’s upshot formulation in particular also influenced the type of advice he received. Overall, this study highlights how peer tutees’ use of response formulations to advice, enhanced by the affordances of online mediation such as real-time audio interaction, facilitates greater conversational participation and deeper engagement, which leads to more meaningful, cooperative, and effective tutorials.

The authors, a language instructor and a museum educator, collaborated to enhance a textbook’s cultural content in a Spanish L2-third semester class. We integrated the university museum’s artifacts and one exhibition within regular classroom instruction and co-designed two activities. The activities were connected to the textbook’s cultural content. Each activity included a visit to the museum, a worksheet to work in the museum, and a written and oral task after the visit. Thirty-five students completed a questionnaire at the end of the semester to rate the integration of these museum visits with the rest of the Spanish curriculum. Most students were positive about the effects of the experience on their learning and did not see the activities as something extraneous to the language curriculum. This article offers food for thought to other language practitioners and museum educators regarding textbooks’ cultural content and university museums.

As we strive to improve speaking skills in the L2 classroom, we often aim at “correct,” standardized language over the actual meaning of the spoken words. With less investment in the content, it is difficult for L2 students to appreciate the interactions and enjoy, for example, humor using the target language as they tend to remain continuously passive in the learning process under the pressure to speak accurately. In order to motivate students to communicate with their own voices in a relaxed learning environment, this report introduces a new way of expression and communication using a target language, that is, the use of linked poetry, in which students follow the rules of a mora/syllable pattern and exchange written poetic expressions with one another. This exercise of student-driven word choice in a stress-free setting triggers laughter and enjoyment that increase students’ incentive to appreciate the meaning of each word and the possibility of word combinations in the target language.

This autoethnographic narrative inquiry explores the lived experiences and identities of a transnational English language teacher (educator). The aim of this research was to gain insight into my own transnationality, in order both to better inform my beliefs and practices as an educator, and to highlight the value of exploring transnationality as an important dimension in language teacher identity (LTI) construction. Drawing on autobiographical writing and art work as data sources, constant comparison and line-by-line analysis were employed to identify themes in the data, which were synthesized with relevant literature to further make sense of and theorize (my) transnational LTIs. Featuring theme-focused experiences from my life, findings are organized in a past-present-future structure, looking back at how my past identities can inform my present identities, and how these past and present identities are informing my future imagined identities. Major insights gained from this research into transnational LTI include: (a) social categorization, whether conferring high or low status, is a form of objectification, closely linked to the concept of (un)desire; (b) viewing emotions as signals of sites of growth can help to free us from emotional overwhelm; and (c) identifying and acknowledging our strengths can emancipate us from unjust power dynamics and empower others to do the same. Implications for language teacher education are discussed.

This article presents a comprehensive and systematic review of empirical studies on translanguaging in the field of applied linguistics, covering the period between 2008 and 2022. The review focuses on the characteristics of the studies, including the contexts and educational stages in which they were conducted, and the linguistic diversity of the participants. The review also examines the research methodologies and conceptual frameworks utilized by the studies. The major findings of the review reveal that translanguaging practices were employed for educational, social, and sociopolitical purposes. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the findings, recommendations for future research, and limitations of the review.

Due to health and travel restrictions, COVID-19 has presented unusual challenges to international education. Meanwhile, the pandemic has also become a historical juncture overlapping with other political and cultural moments (e.g., renewed Black Lives Matter movement, resurgence of anti-Asian racism, extreme weather phenomena). These events have propelled a reconsideration of the complex relationship between access to and participation in study abroad, language learning, and social and environmental justice. In this paper, we draw on our collective experiences as practitioners and researchers across three languages (Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish) to argue that study abroad must be a part of equitable and sustainable world language education curricula. We begin by reflecting on existing issues related to access and participation in U.S.-based study abroad and the underlying ideologies that reinforce them. We then provide possibilities – within our spheres of influence – to reconceptualize study abroad from critical and translingual perspectives in an effort to contest ideologies and shift towards a more diverse and inclusive study abroad programming. Lastly, we suggest possible ways to better integrate at home, virtual, and study abroad opportunities in language learning curricula, some of which may serve as alternatives to study abroad, especially in an environmentally and politically volatile world where social privilege shapes access to international education.