Multimodal discourse has become increasingly relevant in language education. Although conventional texts continue to dominate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction, interest in multimodal forms of communication has grown in recent years. This study systematises the features and functions of multimodal texts and evaluates their pedagogical relevance for language learning. The research combines theoretical analysis with an empirical investigation involving bachelor’s students from non-linguistic majors and English language teachers. Data was collected through a pedagogical experiment, classroom observation, and questionnaire surveys. The study analyses how multimodal texts contribute to the development of students’ language and communicative competence and identifies potential difficulties students may encounter when working with multimodal materials. The findings suggest that multimodal discourse may support the development of language proficiency, communicative competence, and learner motivation in EFL instruction. At the same time, certain challenges related to the interpretation of multiple semiotic resources were identified. Based on these results, the study proposes a structured instructional sequence for working with multimodal texts in the language classroom. The results indicate that multimodal discourse represents a potentially valuable resource for foreign language teaching and may contribute to the development of more effective pedagogical practices in diverse educational settings.

This article focuses on the subject of several independent sciences, in particular linguistics and language didactics, as well as interdisciplinary research: the acquisition of creative foreign language competences. Whereas creativity is a very complex concept and very difficult to describe, it is most commonly explained with the help of examples. Due to recent technological progress, imaging methods are now able to show where creative activity, especially linguistic creativity, is located in the human brain and where it might possibly originate. The following article presents recently collected data from language acquisition-related neuroscientific studies in contrast to existing findings of language acquisition research as well as implicit language acquisition. Subsequently, all findings are used in order to draw conclusions about general as well as specific language didactics. In addition, a second goal is the demystification of apparently unproductive and unfocused states, which are wrongly stigmatised and unfairly seen as wasted time in institutionalised contexts. The results of this article, therefore, try to make those situations available again for goal-oriented foreign language acquisition.

The article considers the relevance of creative writing in language development while emphasising the role of this type of writing in personal development through boosting imagination, creative thinking, self-esteem and the ability to find original solutions. The paper sets out to identify skills required to ensure productive creative writing, addresses various approaches towards defining creativity and compares creative writing to expository writing. The authors argue that in order to impart creative writing skills to high school students, teachers need to create favourable conditions to incorporate creative writing in the language classroom by means of different techniques and heuristics. The authors conclude that creative writing should receive more attention as part of the school curriculum since it transforms the learning process by rendering it more stimulating and enjoyable.

The fracture between a sender’s intent and a receiver’s actuality in the communication process is the result of a radical singularism, which maintains that meaning is not communicable at the level of deep structure. This, in turn, is the result of idiosyncratic cognition, a function of the value orientation sets, qualia, and hypostatisations of reality inhabited by the parties to the communication. It is a platitude, however, to point out that humans do in fact communicate at some level. The question addressed in this paper is how radical singularism has been defeated in selected works of English, Russian and American authors, supported by works of other figures in literary history. The conclusion is that the singularist interpretation of a word, text (or indeed the universe), which results from knowledge by acquaintance, is strongly mediated by its mode of presentation and description. In particular, counterfactuals are ensured despite experience. In conclusion, persuasion – the ancient method of successfully associating the systematised philosophical positions of speakers and hearers – is shown to proceed by abandonment, explanation, or assumption. The latter process may lead to exploitation, as the American singer Bruce Springsteen reveals of US President, Donald Trump.

Minitexts are of interest to scholars due to the ‘shrinking’ trend in communication which affects not only language products but also the human mental structures generating them. The correlation of these two planes of human interaction as reflected in minitexts presents a challenge for linguistics. A minitext is viewed as a text of limited length (up to 600 words). The present paper reveals cognitive, pragmasemantic and discursive aspects of minitexts, exemplified by the titles of children’s poems. The authors characterise the basic features of such texts (cohesion, coherence, wholeness, intentionality, etc.) and present their thematic typology. The analysis shows that adequate assessment of the identifying markers within poetic minitexts depends on the interaction of text discursive parameters, on the one hand, and their location in the hierarchy of other signs or markers, on the other. Choosing titles for English poems addressed to children, the authors focus on the unusual linguistic units involved in the creation of the titles’ artistic imagery and aesthetic effect. One of the evident advantages of the cognitive and pragmatic approach is that it illustrates how minitexts can be useful in developing children’s world perception, as well as their artistic tastes.

This pre-study investigates the effects of the font type and the contrast between the colour of the text and the colour of the background on the reading speed of readers a) with different age groups and b) with a different need for language-based learning support using state-of-the art eye-tracking technology. We determine no significant difference between participants who were or were not receiving learning support (special support with a specialist teacher) due to language-based reading disabilities when reading the font type Open Dyslexic. This suggests that this font increases the reading speed of participants who receive learning support for language-based learning disabilities. Comparison of the reading speed for different passages of text displayed in different colour combinations indicates that a contrast of light text on a dark background may improve reading ability and reading performance. Both of these findings have significant implications for foreign-language teaching.

Telecollaboration, or ‘Virtual Exchange’ refers to the application of online communication tools to bring together classes of learners in geographically distant locations with the aim of developing their foreign language skills, digital competence and intercultural competence through online collaborative tasks and project work. In recent years approaches to Virtual Exchange have evolved in different contexts and different areas of university education and these approaches have had, at times, very diverse organisational structures and pedagogical objectives. This article provides an overview of the different models and approaches to Virtual Exchange which are currently being used in higher education contexts and outlines how the activity has contributed to internationalising university education to date.