News

SIGN The SPERTUS Research Group is involved in the organization of the II Congreso Internacional de Aplicacións da lingüística de corpus na didáctica das linguas in collaboration with the Spanish Grammar Group (USC), the Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILGA), and Carmen Ballestero de Celis (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle). This international conference will be held at the Faculty of Philology, University of Santiago de Compostela, 13-14 May 2024. Two members of the group, Mario Cal Varela and Javier Fernández Polo, will present a paper entitled "Using the SUNCODAC corpus to teach effective communicative skills in student forum discussions" in this conference.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies will present a paper entitled "Introducing WhatsApp in the English for Tourism classroom to foster collaborative writing and the learning of informal language" in the 1st International ELT, EFL & ELL Conference (Ineeec), to be held at the University of Kütahya Dumlupınar (Turkey) on May 10th-11th, 2024.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies will present two papers in the Third International CIINECO Conference (Congreso Internacional de Innovación Docente, Eduación y Transferencia del Conocimiento), Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 23-24 April 2024:

  • "Levelling up the English for Tourism Classroom with AI tools: Practical contributions for preparing and succeeding in job interviews".
  • "Informal language learning in the English for Tourism classroom: A didactic approach for enhancing productive skills via social networks" (first author, with Naara Queiruga).

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Transforming the EFL and ESP Classroom: Innovative Ways for Using AI Tools to Teach Languages" in the I Congreso Internacional de Paratraducción, Interlinguas y Transmedia, University of Vigo, 20-22 March 2024.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies was invited to give a talk entitled "Artificial Intelligence tools in the English language classroom: A didactic approach for teachers and students" within the Master in Teacher Training at the University of La Rioja, 26th February 2024.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies was invited to give a talk entitled "Teaching English with AI Tools: A Review and Didactic Proposal" within the Master in Teacher Training of the University of Santiago de Compostela, 7th March 2024.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented two papers in the VI Jornadas de Experiencias Docentes en la UIB, University of the Balearic Islands, 1-7 February 2024:

  • "Las redes sociales y el lenguaje informal en el aula universitaria: un primer acercamiento al uso de WhatsApp en la materia de inglés 1 en el Grado de Turismo para incentivar un trabajo colaborativo y el desarrollo de la destreza de producción escrita".
  • "Retroalimentación y recursos educativos digitales en la adquisición de vocabulario específico y habilidades en producción oral en inglés como lengua extranjera" (fourth author, with Andrea Robin Ruthven, Iria María Bello Viruega, Miquel Pomar and Eugenio Guillermo Iglesias Díaz).

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies will be a collaborator in a teaching innovation project entitled Optimización de los Materiales Didácticos para el Desarrollo de los Valores de una Cultura Democrática mediante el Uso de la Inteligencia Artificial en el Aula de Lengua Extranjera. The project coordinator is María Daniela Cifone Ponte from the University of La Rioja.
 SIGN Ignacio Palacios delivered an invited talk in the ISLE Online Forum 2024: English Linguistics in Teacher Education, 17 January 2024 (https://www.isle-linguistics.org/activities/outreach).
SIGN On 11 December 2023 (Falculty of Philology, Salón de Graos, 10:30), Eva Piñeiro Fariña defended her doctoral dissertation entitled The influence of English on U.S. Spanish: A corpus-based study on the use of lexical anglicisms in the Hispanic digital press of the Northeast, completed under the supervision of Ignacio Palacios. She was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente cum laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo (University of Alicante) and Carmen Luján García (University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria).
SIGN Members of the SPERTUS research team presented papers in the XXIV Congreso Internacional de SEDLL, to be held in the University of Santiago de Compostela, 29 November - 1 December 2003:

  • Marian Amengual, Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies and Karen Jacob: "Out-of-class contact with English: Enriching L2 students' learning experience"
  • Karen Jacob and Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "Hi Mr John, okay, don't worry, okay, give me your name?* The use of formal and informal structures to express politeness in tourism-related role-plays by ESP university students”
  • Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez Pertejo: "El aprendizaje y la investigación lingüística a través de las redes sociales: un estudio piloto con alumnado del grado en Estudios Ingleses"
  • Yonay Rodríguez: "Las creencias sobre el inglés como lengua vehicular en la enseñanza de materias de contenido en la USC"

SIGN Ignacio Palacios delivered a plenary lecture entitled "Trends in teen talk from a cross-linguistic perspective" in the 4th International Symposium PaCor 2023, University of León, 22-24 November 2023.
SIGN Member of the SPERTUS research team presented papers in the 46th AEDEAN Conference, to be held in the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 8-10 November 2023:

  • Marian Amengual, Karen Jacob and Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "Out of class contact with English among Spanish ESP university students"
  • Elsa González Álvarez and Susana M. Doval Suárez: "Effects of Exposure to English Online on the L2 English Proficiency Level of Spanish University Students"

SIGN  SPERTUS in collaboration with the Research Network English Linguistics Circle (ELC) has organised a series of online seminars (via Microsoft Teams) from March to December 2023:

  • 40th ELC Research Seminar: "Exploring the constructicon: Construction families, grammatical paradigms and syntactic neighborhoods", Holger Diessel (University of Jena, Germany), 7 March 2023.
  • 41st ELC Research Seminar: "A study of heritage and second language learners' interaction and learning: A mixed methods approach", Ana Fernández Dobao (University of Washington, USA), 18 April 2023.
  • 42nd ELC Research Seminar: "The changing linguistic landscape of Gibraltar: External and internal forces", Elena Seoane (University of Vigo) and Cristina Suárez-Gómez (University of the Balearic Islands), 3 October 2023.
  • 43rd ELC Research Seminar: "The pragmatics of advertising", Marisa Díez Arroyo (University of Oviedo), 7 November 2023.
  • 44th ELC Research Seminar: “A corpus perspective on spoken language in and across film dialogue”, Maria Gabriella Pavesi (University of Pavia), 19 December 2023.

SIGN Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez Pertejo presented a paper entitled "Novas prácticas lingüísticas dos falantes urbanos xoves de Londres e Madrid. Un estudo contrastivo baseado en corpus" in the II Xornada sobre Variación e Cambio Lingüístico, organised by the Instituto da Lingua Galega and held in the Faculty of Philology of the University of Santiago de Compostela, 9 October 2023.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "From face-to-face to online business meeting simulations: Project-work and the development of soft-skills by tourism ESP students during the Covid-19 pandemic” in the 8th CUICIID Conference (Congreso Universitario Internacional sobre la Comunicación en la profesión y en la Universidad de hoy: Contenidos, Investigación, Innovación y Docencia), organised by the research group Concilium (Complutense University of Madrid) and held online, 4-6 October 2023.
SIGN Grzegorz Drożdż, Lecturer at the Institute of Linguistics of the University of Silesia (Poland), was invited by the SPERTUS group under the Erasmus+ Mobility Programme for teaching staff at Higher Education institutions for the period between September 25 and 29, 2023. He delivered two research seminars (25 & 27 September 2023) entitled: “Modern English word-formation processes” and “Prefixation and suffixation”. 
SIGN Xabier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "Balancing expert and peer-student identities in online discussion forums" in the 10th International Conference on CMC and Social Media Corpora for the Humanities, held in the University of Mannheim (Germany), 14-15 September, 2023.
SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Understanding digital literacies in blended environments. What do we need to know?" in the Contemporary Crossroads Conferences-4, Hungary, Budapest, 16 June 2023.
SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Translaguaging - a birth of new languages or a threat to language loss? The analysis of in-migrant and out-migrant contexts" in the Sustainable Multilingualism Conference, Lithuania, Kaunar, 9-10 June 2023.
SIGN  On 30 May 2023 (Falculty of Philology, Salón de Graos, 10:30), Yonay Rodríguez Rodríguez defended her doctoral dissertation entitled A Study of the Beliefs of University Students about Learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), completed under the supervision of Mario Cal Varela and Ignacio Palacios. She was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente cum laude (with International Mention). The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Andrés Canga Alonso (University of La Rioja) and Ana Fernández Dobao (University of Washington). [Click here for a photograph of the event. Piece of news about her doctoral dissertation - Xornal USC]
SIGN Two members of SPERTUS presented papers in the XIV Congreso Internacional de Lingüística de Corpus (CILC2023), University of Oviedo, 10-12 May 2023:

  • Emma Nemishalyan: "Do learners acquire the function of the English passive along with its form? A case study of Armenian learners"
  • Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez Pertejo: "The role of age in the use of emoji and emoticons in Twitter discourse"

SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Facilitating collaboration via LMS and non-academic digital tools" in the Ditital Symposium, USA, online, Anthology Academy, 4-5 May 2023.
SIGN Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "The development of intercultural skills in the English class through a task-based methodology based on projects" in the 40th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA 2023), Mérida, 26-28 April 2023.
SIGN Ekaterina Sinyashina presented a paper entitled "Docencia feminista online e investigación sensible al género en entornos digitales de aprendizaje" in the FORO DONNA: I Foro Internacional Transdisciplinar en Entornos Digitales de Aprendizaje, University of Málaga [online], 16-17 March 2023.
SIGN Rosa Alonso Alonso has just published the following research monograph: Factores individuales en el aprendizaje de segundas lenguas. 2023. Berlin: Peter Lang, 338 pp. ISBN 978-3631-87950-4. Further information here: https://doi.org/10.3726/b20300
SIGN Two members of the SPERTUS team delivered invited lectures in the workshop Modelling the Linguistic Architecture of English: Cognitive and Empirical Developments, University of Vigo, 19-20 January 2023:

  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "'Hello girlsss 😊' 'It's soooo beautiful 😍' 'Yes. *And how much does it costs? 💶'. Using WhatsApp in the Tourism ESP classroom: A linguistic analyis and didactic proposal"
  • Eva Piñeiro Fariña: "Technology-related anglicism in the Hispanic digital press of the U.S."

SIGN The SPERTUS team in collaboration with the ELC Network organised the International Workshop Modelling the linguistic architecture of English: cognitive and empirical developments (MODELLING 2023), MARCO (Museum of Contemporary Art), Vigo. This conference was intended as a discussion forum which will bring together senior and junior scholars and researchers from different countries for the purpose of presenting new strategies and methodologies applicable to the theoretical and empirical description of language(s), with a focus on English. Conference updates on Twitter: @ModellingLing #ModellingLinguisticArchitecture.

SIGN Several members of the SPERTUS team presented papers in the 45th AEDEAN Conference, University of Extremadura (Cáceres Campus), 16-18 November 2022:

  • Marian Amengual, Karen Jacob and Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "What kind of English-related activities do Spanish university students indulge outside the classroom?"
  • Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez Pertejo: "The expression of (im)politeness in the language of teenagers: The courtesy marker please, taboo vocatives and swear words as three cases in point"

SIGN Ignacio Palacios delivered a keynote lecture entitled "Principios, factores y teorías en el aprendizaje de una segunda lengua" in the XII Congreso Estatal de Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas: O Camiño das Linguas, held in Santiago de Compostela, 27-29 October 2022.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Bringing medical series into the English classroom to enhance authentic vocabulary" in the VI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Literatura, held online, 27-28 October 2022.
SIGN Angela George, Associate Professor at the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures: Spanish of the University of Calgary (Canada), was invited by the SPERTUS team to deliver a one-hour seminar entitled “Code-switching in heritage language learners”, Faculty of Philology, 27 October 2022.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Contributions of Social Networks to the Learning of English outside the Classroom: A Case Study on the Use of Whatsapp with Tourism Students to Improve their Writing Skills” in the 7th CUICIID Conference (Congreso Universitario Internacional sobre la Comunicación en la profesión y en la Universidad de hoy: Contenidos, Investigación, Innovación y Docencia), organised by the research group Concilium (Complutense University of Madrid) and held online on 5-7 October 2022.
SIGN  SPERTUS in collaboration with the Research Network English Linguistics Circle (ELC) has organised a series of online seminars (via Microsoft Teams) from February to October 2022:

  • 34th ELC Research Seminar: "What is Multicultural London English?", Christian Ilbury (The University of Edinburgh, UK), 8 February 2022.
  • 35th ELC Research Seminar: "The Multimodal Discourse of Persuasion in Instastories", Stefan Diemer (Trier University of Applied Sciences, Germany), 7 March 2022.
  • 36th ELC Research Seminar: "Meaning in the making: The expression of surprise in the history of English", Mario Serrano-Losada (Complutense University of Madrid), 4 April 2022.
  • 37th ELC Research Seminar: "Global Naijá, Global Patois: Migration, Media and the Emergence of Pidgin and Creole-Based Informal Epicentres", Christian Mair (University of Freiburg, Germany), 9 May 2022.
  • 38th ELC Research Seminar: "Uniformity and variability in code-switching across multilingual communities", María del Carmen Parafita Couto (Language Variation and Textual Categorisation (LVTC), Universidade de Vigo & Center for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden University, The Netherlands), 21 June 2022.
  • 39th ELC Research Seminar: “Multiple modality in World Englishes: Perspectives from dialect typology”, Daniel Schreier (University of Zurich, Switzerland), 10 October 2022.

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies will be a collaborator in two teaching innovation projects to be carried out within the Faculty of Tourism at the University of the Balearic Islands for the period 12-09-2022 / 30-06-2024. Both projects have received funding from the Institut de Recerca i Innovació Educativa (IRIE - UIB). The projects are: Retroalimentación y recursos educativos digitales en la adquisición de vocabulario específico y habilidades de producción oral en inglés como lengua extranjera (IP Andrea Ruthven; code PID222403) and Implantació de les TIC contemporànies en el procés d´aprenentatge (IP Inna Tsener; code PID222419).
SIGN SPERTUS organised the 9th Conference on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Social Media Corpora (CMC-corpora 2022) held in Santiago de Compostela, 28-29 September 2022. Further information: https://www.usc.es/en/congresos/cmc2022. Two members of our team, Elsa González Álvarez and Susana Doval Suárez, presented a paper in the conference entitled: "Concessives, hedges and positive sentiment words as persuasive strategies in online discussion forums".
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Emphasizing the development of spoken skills and the learning of specific vocabulary during the COVID-19 pandemic: A survey-based study on Tourism ESP student views on the use of Anchor to create podcasts" in the EUROCALL 2022 Conference, held online, 16-19 August 2022.
SIGN Emma Nemishalyan presented a paper entitled "The use of passive voice by the Armenian learners" in The European Conference on Education (ECE2022), University College London (UK), 14-17 July 2022.
SIGN Eva Piñeiro Fariña presented a paper entitled "Language Contact: The Influence of English in the Hispanic Community of the United States" in the III AEDEAN Doctoral Seminar, University of Cantabria (Santander), 7-8 July 2022.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies and Karen Jacob presented two papers in the First International CIINECO Conference (Congreso Internacional de Innovación Docente, Eduación y Transferencia del Conocimiento), Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, 7-8 July 2022:

  • "Anchor: Is it a useful tool for enhancing students' oral communication proficiency?"
  • "Using Anchor and Flipgrid to provide opportunities for student autonomy in ESL speaking practice"

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The family lived in small farm*, The little sheep went to the school*. An analysis of Social Education ESP problems with verb tenses, prepositions, articles, pronouns and subjects", in the 5th International English for Specific Purposes Conference held in Ankara (Turkey), 1-2 July 2022.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "An Analysis of Tourism Students' Problems with English Pronunciation during a Simulated Job Interview" in the International Conference on Language Education, Literature and Linguistics (ICLELL-2022), hosted by Kutahya Dumlupinar University School of Foreign Languages (Turkey), 24-26 June 2022.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited to participate in the seminar entitled "Corpus escritos del español como L2" within the IBER-LAB International Doctoral Summer School 2022, University of Granada, 20-24 June 2022.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Repetitive Task-Formats and the Enhancement of Receptive Skills: A Critical Review of Pronunciation Learning Mobile Apps" in the 10th OpenTesol International Conference 2022, Ho Chi Minh City Open University (Vietnam), 27-28 May 2022.
SIGN Naara Queiruga Domínguez and Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Using Social Networks with Tourism Students to Develop Productive Skills" in the 10th OpenTesol International Conference 2022, Ho Chi Minh City Open University (Vietnam), 27-28 May 2022.
SIGN Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez Pertejo presented a paper entitled "The role of the age factor in English Twitter discourse" in the 13th International Corpus Linguistics Conference - CILC2022, Università degli Studi di Bergamo (Italy), 26-28 May 2022.
SIGN Rosa Alonso gave an invited lecture entitled "Thinking-for-translating in comics: a case study of Asterix" in the Workshop on Typlogical Contrasts and their impact on cognition, language learning and bilingual mediation, 19-20 May, University of Aarhus, Denmark.
SIGN Two members of SPERTUS presented presented their PhD research work at IDAES GRADUATE DAY 2022 , 19-20 May 2022, Universtiy of Santiago de Compostela:

  • Emma Nemishalyan: "The use of passive voice by Armenian learners "
  • Eva Piñeiro Fariña: "Social life and human type anglicisms in the Hispanic Press in the US"

SIGN Ignacio Palacios was one of the keynote speakers at the SEING IV seminar with a lecture entitled "Recent changes in London English. An overview of the main lexical, grammar and discourse features of Multicultural London English (MLE)”, University of Zaragoza, 6 May 2022.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies was part of a round table within the IV Jornades d´Experiencies Docents at the University of the Balearic Islands, 5 May 2022. She delivered a paper entitled “Desarrollo de competencias en expresión oral y vocabulario específico en inglés a través de la plataforma Anchor”.
SIGN F. Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "Gendered language in students’ asynchronous online discussions: a look at closings and references to other participants" in the international conference AESLA 2022, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 27-29 April 2022.
SIGN Mario Cal Varela and F. J. Fernández Polo were invited to give an online talk about their work on student online forums in higher education within the framework of the MOOCresearch2.0 seminars organized by a multidisciplinary group at the Catholic University of Leuven (UC Louvain) investigating socio-cognitive conflicts (i.e. differences in point of view that are socially experienced and cognitively resolved) in online educational platforms. Date: April 22, 2022. Title: "The SUNCODAC corpus of student forum discussions: description, aims and major findings".
SIGN Ibo Buzek, Associate Professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures of Masaryk University at Brno (Czech Republic), was invited by the SPERTUS group under the Erasmus+ Mobility Programme for teaching staff at Higher Education institutions for the period between March 28 and April 1. He delivered two research seminars (28-29 March 2022) entitled "Caló: historia de un término" and "Actitudes e ideologías lingüísticas".
 SIGN A new version of CAES (Corpus de Aprendices de Español), v. 2.1., has just been published (March 2022). This version contains 911,248 linguistic elements, from 6,561 tasks completed by a total of 2,544 students of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL). Five new L1s have been added to the already six present in the previous version. This means that it is now  possible to find representative samples of students of SFL with the following L1s: German, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, Greek, English, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. The corpus search tool keeps all the characteristics of the previous version (v. 2.0) published in October 2021.
SIGN SUNCODAC (A Corpus of Online Forums in Higher Education) compiled by F. Javier Fernández Polo and Mario Cal Varela can now be accessed at: http://www.suncodac.com/
SIGN Several members of SPERTUS participated in the international conference techLING2021-UVigo-T&P, University of Vigo, 15-17 December 2021:

  • Scott Jarvis, Rosa Alonso & Scott Crossley: "Native Language Identification in English as a Second Language"
  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "Using Anchor to develop Tourism and Hotel Management ESP student's spoken skills and the use of specific language in authentic-like contexts: A preliminary approach"
  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez and Lidia Gómez García: "Some Insights into the Teaching of Vocabulary with New Technological Tools"
  • Naara Queiruga Domínguez: "Using Instagram as a Motivational Learning Tool in English Language Classes at University Level"

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Gamifying the ESP classroom at university level: A comparative study on Law, Tourism and Social Work students' perspectives on Kahoot" in the XIV Congreso CIEI (Congreso Internacional de Educación e Innovación), Universitá degli Studi di Firenze (Italy), 13-15 December 2021.
SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Facilitating Collaboration — Challenges and Solutions of Online Group Works: Best Practices" at the 2nd International Conference on Innovation and Technology in Language Teaching – iTel 2021, Open University, Lisbon, Portugal, 29-30 November 2021. 
SIGN Several members of SPERTUS participated in the  44th AEDEAN Conference, University of Cantabria (Santander), 24-26 November 2021:

  • Elsa González Álvarez & Susana Doval Suárez: "Although I find your job brilliant, I would like to suggest some changes. The use of argumentative concession as persuasive strategies in online discussion forums"
  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez: "MLE as perceived by the media, social networks and the speakers themselves"
  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez: participant in the round table La materia Adquisición y enseñanza del inglés como segunda lengua en la universidad: actividades de aprendizaje y evaluación y su adaptación a un entorno no presencial, coordinated by M. Luz Celaya (U. of Barcelona).
  • Yonay Rodríguez Rodríguez: "The EMI Experience at the University of Santiago de Compostela at a Glance"

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Bringing authentic materials into the ESP classroom to enhance oral skills: A case study on Tourism students' attitudes towards a simulated job interview" in the 5th Foreign Languages and Tourism conference, online conference organised by the Foreign Languages and Tourism Teaching and Research Network, 12-13 November 2021.
SIGN  SPERTUS in collaboration with the Research Network English Linguistics Circle (ELC) has organised a series of online seminars (via Microsoft Teams) from April to November 2021:

  • 29th ELC Research Seminar: “Grammaticalization, analogy, and linguistic cycles – insights from the development of (mainly) purpose subordinators in the history of English”, Jerzy Nykiel (University of Bergen, Norway), 20 April 2021.
  • 30th ELC Research Seminar: “The discursive representation of migrants and refugees in the written press from a CADS perspective”, Gema Alcaraz-Mármol (University of Castilla-La Mancha) & Jorge Soto-Almela (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), 18 May 2021.
  • 31st ELC Research Seminar: “Reflections on the quantitative turn in linguistics”, Bernd Kortmann (University of Freiburg, Germany), 15 June 2021.
  • 32nd ELC Research Seminar: “Contact-induced variation and change in World Englishes”, Raquel P. Romasanta (University of Vigo), 28 September 2021.
  • 33rd ELC Research Seminar: "The pragmatics of intensifiers in the Late Modern English courtroom", Claudia Claridge (University of Ausburg, Germany), 9 November 2021.

SIGN  Several members of SPERTUS participated in the 8th Conference on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Social Media Corpora, Nijmegen (The Netherlands), 28-29 October 2021:

  • F. Javier Fernández Polo and Mario Cal Varela: "Referring to other participants in asynchronous online discussions: Citation patterns in a higher education context" [full paper]
  • F. Javier Fernández Polo and Mario Cal Varela: "SUNCODAC. A corpus of students’ forum discussions in Higher Education" [poster]
  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez: "Familiarisers and taboo vocatives in Twitter discourse" [poster]

SIGN Mohamed Yeou, from the Chouaib Doukkali University (Morocco) was invited by SPERTUS to deliver two research seminars entitled: “The Moroccan linguistic situation” and “The status of English Language teaching in state schoosl and universities in Morocco”. Faculty of Philology, USC, 19 and 21 October 2021.
 SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies received funding from the Institut de Recerca i Innovació Educativa (IRIE - University of the Balearic Islands) for the research project "Desarrollo de competencias de expresión oral y vocabulario específico en inglés a través de la plataforma Anchor"; grant PID212252; for the period: 30/09/2021-31/10/2022; funding: 400€; members: Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies (IP), Karen Jacob (colllaborator), Andrea Ruthven (collaborator).
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited to participate in the seminar entitled "Corpus escritos del español como L2" within the IBER-LAB International Doctoral Summer School 2021 , University of Granada, 20-24 September 2021.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez delivered a keynote lecture entitled "Grammatical and lexical innovation in London English. New linguistic practices among teenagers and young adults" at the 15th ESSE (European Society for the Study of English) Conference, 30 August-2 September 2021, University of Lyon (France).
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled " The development of soft skills within recorded business meetings by Tourism ESP students in lockdown times" at the EUROCALL 2021 Conference, 26-27 August 2021, Sorbonne Université, Paris.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited by Cursos Internacionales de la Universidade de Santiago de Compostela to give a two-hour lecture entitled "El CAES y sus aplicaciones para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera", Faculty of Law, 19 July 2021.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios coordinated the II AEDEAN Doctoral Seminar held at the University of Alicante, 1-2 July 2021.
SIGN  Two members of SPERTUS presented their PhD research work at IDAES GRADUATE DAY 2021, 4 June 2021, Universtiy of Vigo:

  • Eva Piñeiro Fariña: "Language Contact: The Influence of English in the Hispanic Community of the United States"
  • Yonay Rodríguez: "Fostering EFL learning autonomy through the use of technological resources"

SIGN Teba Villar Rodríguez presented a paper entitled “The use of audio description to improve motivation and linguistic competences in EFL education” at the III Seminar in English Studies: Building Bridges and Filling Gaps in English Studies Research, University of Zaragoza, 27-28 May 2021.
SIGN  Two members of SPERTUS presented papers at the International Conference on Youth Languages, 26-28 May 2021, Metropolitan University of Manchester (United Kingdom):

  • Paloma Núñez-Pertejo and Ignacio Palacios: "Pragmatic reversal in the expression of (im)politeness in the language of (London) teenagers"
  • Tamilla Mammadova: "University exchange programmes: Towards new European identity and cross-linguistic competences"

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Adapting Face-to-Face Business Meeting Simulations to Virtual Format: A Case Study with ESP Tourism Undergraduates" at the 9th OpenTESOL International Conference 2021, 21-22 May 2021, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Vietnam.
SIGN  Susana Doval Suárez & Elsa González Álvarez presented a paper entitled “A comparison of NS and NNS use of concessive markers in computer- and non- computer mediated discourse” at the 9th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference ICLC9, University of Genoa (Italy), 20-21 May 2021.
SIGN  Several members of SPERTUS presented papers at the CILC2021 conference, University of Murcia, 28-30 April 2021:

  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez & Paloma Núnez Pertejo: "New Linguistic Practices of Urban Youths in London and Madrid. A Contrastive Corpus-based Study" 
  • Francisco J. Fernández Polo: "See you on class man. Closing formulae in ELF students' forums"
  • Susana Doval Suárez & Elsa González Álvarez: "Linguistic features of argumentative concessions in online discussion forums"

SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "An analysis and classification of Social-Education ESP students' grammatical mistakes" at the Fifth International Conference LANGUAGE - PROFESSION - SCIENCE - 2.1, organised by the IATEFL ESPSIG, 24-25 April 2021, University of Belgrade (Serbia).
SIGN  Several members of our team presented papers at the 38 AESLA International Conference, University of A Coruña, 14-16 April 2021.

  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies and Marian Amengual Pizarro: "Are ESP students applying their computer  literacy to the learning of Englisn as an L2?"
  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies and María Nuria Borrull Cubo:  "Today I am going to /'prezent/ to you our /'hǝʊtel/ which /re'saɪvz/ over two million /kʊs'tɒmerz/ a /ʤɪr/*. Tourism students' problems with English vowels, consonants and word stress patterns"
  • Elsa González Álvarez and Susana Doval Suárez: "Even though the translation is good, I think this option sounds more natural. Using concessive markers to develop arguments in academic computer-mediated discourse"
  • Ignacio Palacios: "Del corpus al aula: Una investigación y propuesta didáctica sobre la flexión nominal de género basadas en datos del CAES (Corpus de Aprendices de Español)
  • Eva Piñeiro Fariña: "'Alphabet soup made in the USA': A corpus-based analysis of initialisms in the Hispanic Press of the Northeast of the United States"

SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled “Implementation of a Cultural Approach into the Modern ESP Classes” at the 42 Colloque Annuel de GERAS, France, Nancy, 18-20 March 2021.
SIGN  SPERTUS in collaboration with the Research Network English Linguistics Circle (ELC) has organised a series of online seminars (via Microsoft Teams) from January to March 2021:

  • 28th ELC Research Seminar: “Discourse Grammar and its applications: Evidence from language disorder and diachrony”,  Gunther Kaltenböck (University of Graz, Austria), 15 March 2021.
  • 27th ELC Research Seminar: “Don’t take it out on words, blame the suffixes: On the morphopragmatic properties of pejorative suffixation in English”, José Antonio Sánchez Fajardo (University of Alicante), 22 February 2021.
  • 26th ELC Research Seminar: “Negative Polarity Item illusions: experimental and theoretical insights”, Iria de Dios Flores (USC), 28 January 2021.

SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled “Virtual Sightseeing as a Replacement of Real-Life Inspiration in Creative Writing” at the Cultural Construction Conference, USA, Texas, 4-5 March 2021.
SIGN  F. Javier Fernández Polo and Mario Cal Varela gave a four-hour workshop on "Using Moodle to promote student participation, engagement and collaboration". This workshop is included in the activities of the Erasmus+ project "EL@N" (n. 610361-EPP-1-2001-1-DZ-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP; Modernisation de l'enseignement des langues dans les centres de langues des universités algériennes), coordinated by the University of Tlemcen (Algeria), and was organised by the USC research group "EL@N: Modernisation de l'enseignement des langues dans les centres de langues des universités algériennes" (2019-PI108, PI: Mª Isabel González Rey (Dpto. Filoloxía Clásica, Francesa e Italiana)), 21 January 2021.
SIGN The new issue of VIAL - Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics has been published. All papers can be downloaded from VIAL's website: https://revistas.webs.uvigo/index.php/vial/issue/view/208.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "ESP students' reactions to the creation of simulations outside the classroom. A case-study involving the recording of a business meeting" at the XIV Congreso CIEI (Congreso Internacional de Educación e Innovación), 9-11 December 2020.
SIGN Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Using English-learning apps inside Tourism and Business classes: Analysis and critical review" at the 4th ESP Conference 2020, organised by IESPTA, UNED, 28-30 October 2020.
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Misimplementation of English interjections as a result of L1 effect" at the 56th Linguistics Colloquium, Greece, 26-28 November 2020.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios and Guillermo Rojo were invited to give and online lecture entitled "El Corpus de Aprendices de Español", at the workshop El Corpus de Aprendices de Español (CAES): propuestas para la investigación digital y la enseñanza de español basada en datos, organised by ELEUK on 14 November 2020.
SIGN  SPERTUS in collaboration with the Research Network English Linguistics Circle (ELC) has organised a series of online seminars (via Microsoft Teams) from October to December 2020:

  • 22nd ELC research seminar: "Democratization, prescriptivism and gender-neutrality: the good, the bad and the ugly?", Prof. Lucía Loureiro-Porto (UIB), 27 October 2020.
  • 23rd ELC research seminar: "On the syntactic vs. lexical nature of grammatical gender: the Gender Acquisition and Processing (GAP) hypothesis", Ana Rita Sá Leite Dias (USC), 11 November 2020.
  • 24th ELC research seminar: "Sure he does be always telling me my heart is too near my mouth: Irish English discourse markers in perspective", Carolina Amador-Moreno (University of Extremadura/University of Bergen), 26 November 2020.
  • 25th ELC research seminar: "Pathways to English complement clauses: from adverbial subordination to complementation in object territory", Noelia Castro-Chao (USC), 15 December 2020.

SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Intercultural communication breakdown as a result of discourse particles misuse" at the 5th Interlinguistics Symposium, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan (Poland), 17-18 September 2020.
SIGN  On 11 August 2020, Ignacio Palacios Martínez was officially promoted to Full Professor of English at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova was invited to give an online lecture to EFL teachers by the International University of Central Asia: "Assessment changes in new teaching reality of distant learning", 5 August 2020.
SIGN  Ana Fernández Dobao & Julia Herschensohn presented a paper entitled "A receptive-expressive gap for Spanish-English HL and L2 bilingual children?" at the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Austin, Texas (USA), 1-3 & 6-8 July 2020.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited by the University of Saarland to give an on line lecture on June 23, 2020, with the title "Teenagers as language innovators. An overview of British teentalk".
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited by the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya to give an on line lecture on June 22, 2020, with the title "Language Learning Strategies: Training Students in their Use in the English Class".
SIGN  We are very pleased to announce that VIAL (Vigo International Journal of Applied LInguistics), edited by Rosa Alonso, SPERTUS member and Associate Professor at the Unviersity of Vigo, has achieved an impact factor of 0.3 for 2019, being ranked as Q1 in SJR (Scimago Journal and Country Rank).
SIGN Ignacio Palacios Martínez and Guillermo Rojo gave a one-hour lecture entitled "Diseño, construcción y aplicaciones del CAES" at the Xornada de estudos: Corpus e ensino do español, a one-day seminar organised by the research group Grupo de Gramática do Español, at the Faculty of Philology, USC, 24 January 2020.
SIGN  From September 15 to December 15, 2019, Tamilla Mammadova was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. During those three months, she collected data on the use of discourse particles by native speakers of French, German, Italian and Spanish.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Social issues portrayed in stories written by ESP students" at the XX International Conference of SEDLL (Sociedad Española de Didáctica de la Lengua y la Literatura), Univesity of the Basque Country (Bilbao), 27-29 November 2019.
SIGN  Ana Fernández Dobao presented a paper entitled "Collaborative writing between heritage and second language learners: who is helping whom?" at the 18th Symposium on Second Language Writing, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona (USA), 13-16 November 2019.
SIGN Several members of our team presented papers at the 43rd AEDEAN Conference, University of Alicante, 13-15 November 2019:

  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez: "Vocatives in digital discourse. The case of Twitter"
  • Eva Piñeiro Fariña: "Anglicisms in the Hispanic Press of the Northeast of the United States: A Corpus-based Analysis of Angliscisms 'Made in the USA'"
  • Yonay Rodríguez Rodríguez: "Students' beliefs about learning English as a foreign language: A survey at the Univesity of Santiago de Compostela"

SIGN David González Gándara presented a paper entitled "Understanding 'Auxiliares de conversación'. Making the most of the experience" at CIEB 2019, V Congreso Internacional de Enseñanza Bilingüe en Centros Educativos, University of Granada, 18-20 October 2019.
SIGN  SPERTUS invited Dr Rob Drummond (Reader in Linguistics and Head of Youth Language, MCYS, Manchester Metropolitan University) to give two seminars at the Faculty of Philology (USC): "The Manchester Voices Project <www.manchestervoices.org> and The Accentism Project <www.accentism.org>" (3 October 2019) and "Researching Youth Language" (4 October 2019).
SIGN  On 1 October 2019, Xurxo Fernández Carballido defended his doctoral dissertation entitled O ensino do portugués na Galiza, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios and Professor José Antonio Souto Cabo. He was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente Cum Laude.
SIGN  In September 2019, Tammilla Mammadova was promoted to the position of 'Assistant Professor' at the School of Education of ADA University (Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy).
SIGN  F. Xabier Fernández Polo & Mario Cal Varela presented a paper entitled "Preparing the ground for critical feedback in online discussions: A look at mitigation strategies" at CMC-Corpora 2019: 7th Conference on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Social Media Corpora, University of Cergy-Pontoise (France), 9-10 September 2019.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited by Cursos Internacionales de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela to give a session entitled "El CAES y sus aplicaciones para la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera", Faculty of Law, 15 July 2019.
SIGN  Two members of SPERTUS presented papers at the I Seminario Doctoral AEDEAN, University of Alcalá, 11-12 July 2019:

  • Yonay Rodríguez Rodríguez: "Students' beliefs about learning English as a foreign language: A survey at the University of Santiago de Compostela"
  • Eva Piñeiro Fariña: "Language Contact: The Influence of English in the Hispanic Community of the United States"

SIGN Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited to give a session entitled "Language Contact and Language Change in London and Madrid Urban Youth Speech Styles" at the summer course Competencia comunicativa intercultural en el aula de lenguas / Intercultural communicative competence in the language classroom, University of La Rioja (Logroño), 9-10 July 2019.
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela & F. Xabier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "Learning translation skills through project work: Translating the Wikipedia" at the 7º Congreso Internacional Entreculturas de Traducción e Interpretación, University of Málaga, 26-28 June 2019.
SIGN   Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited to deliver a keynote lecture entitled "Teenagers and social networking. Twitter as a data source for the study of the language of London teenagers and young adults" at the 6th ASYRAS (Association of Young Researchers on Anglophone Studies) Conference, University of Cantabria, 26-28 June 2019.
SIGN  On June 20-22, 2019 Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled “The essence of Mobile Technology in present day ESP classes” at AMODE-Approaches to Multimodal Digital Environments: from theory to practice International Conference in Rome.  The conference hosted over 240 attendees from more than 40 countries. The main theme of the conference is Multimodal Digital Communication which attracted multidisciplinary research on a wide range of issues from teaching and learning to analysing multimodal digital data appearing in multiple communication arenas.
SIGN Ignacio Palacios Martínez was invited to deliver a keynote lecture entitled "Aplicaciones del CAES para la enseñanza/aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera" at the meeting El CAES (Corpus de Aprendices de Español): de la concepción a la expotación, Université de la Sorbonne (Paris, France), 19 June 2019.
SIGN  On 18 June 2019, David González Gándara defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Discourse Analysis in the CLIL Classroom. The Effects of Task Dimensions on L2 Oral Performance, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios. He was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Marian Amengual Pizarro (University of the Balearic Islands) and Andrés Canga Alonso (University of La Rioja).
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez presented a paper entiled "Taboo vocatives in the language of London teenagers" at ICAME 40, University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), 1-5 June 2019.
SIGN  David González Gándara presented a paper entitled "New insights on the role of students in CLIL tasks" at the III Congreso Internacional para Profesionales de la Educación Bilingüe, Madrid, 31 May-1 June 2019.
SIGN   Paloma Núñez-Pertejo & Ignacio Palacios Martínez presented a paper entiled "Teenagers and new technologies. Twitter as a means of investigating (London) teen talk" at the International Conference 'Youth Language: Multilingualism in a Global Context', University of Leiden (The Netherlands), 23-25 May 2019.
SIGN  F. Xabier Fernández Polo participated in the meeting Tendendo pontes entre as Ciencias Sociais e Humanidades e as Tecnoloxías Dixitais, Faculty of Philology, USC, 23 May 2019.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez presented a paper entiled "Los corpus de aprendices y la enseñanza de lenguas: Aplicaciones y posibilidades del CAES “Corpus de Aprendices de Español” para la enseñanza del español" at the XI International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (CILC 2019) , University of Valencia, 15-17 May 2019.
SIGN  F. Javier Fernández Polo delivered a keynote lecture entitled "Building and analyzing a corpus of computer-mediated communication: the SUNCODAC corpus of academic forums"at the seminar Research in a Globalized World. First Seminar in English Studies (SEING). This seminar was held at the University of Zaragoza on May 9, 2019.
SIGN F. Javier Fernández Polo conducted a seminar entitled "Innovation and cooperation in ELF conversations" at the University of Zaragoza on May 9, 2019. 
SIGN Yonay Rodríguez Rodríguez presented a paper entitled "Students' beliefs about learning English as a foreign language" at AESLA 37, University of Valladolid, 27-29 March 2019.
SIGN Professor Flávia Vieira (Institute of Education, University of Minho, Braga-Portugal) was invited by SPERTUS to give a two-hour seminar entitled "Pedagogy for autonomy in English language teaching. What can teachers do?", Faculty of Education, USC, 13 March 2019.
SIGN  Dr Katarzyna Papaja (Institute of English, University of Silesia, Poland) was invited by SPERTUS to give a two-hour seminar entitled "CLIL and English language teaching in Poland", Faculty of Education, USC, 14 March 2019.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies (University of the Balearic Islands) was invited by SPERTUS to give a two-hour seminar entitled "Main issues in the teaching of pronunciation", Faculty of Education, USC, 2 February 2019.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies has been officially accredited as 'Contratada Doctora' by the Balearic Agency for Quality Assessment and Accreditation (AQUIB).
SIGN  Gäetanelle Gilquin, Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), was invited by SPERTUS to give a lecture entitled "Corpus Linguistics an language teaching: How can teachers, students and other educational actors benefit from corpora" in the seminar Corpus e construcións: perspectivas hispánicas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, held at the Faculty of Philology of the USC, 22-23 November 2018.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios and Guillermo Rojo presented a paper entitled “El Corpus de Aprendices de Español (CAES). Objetivos, características generales, herramientas y aplicaciones” in the seminar Corpus e construcións: perspectivas hispánicas, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, held at the Faculty of Philology of the USC, 22-23 November 2018.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented two papers at the 42nd AEDEAN Conference, held at the University of Córdoba, 7-9 November 2018: “From Theory to Practice. The Results of a Survey on Methods of Data Collection in (English) Empirical Linguistics” and “Up for Debate: English Tests in the Spanish University Entrance Exams”.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios and Guillermo Rojo presented a paper entitled "Aplicaciones del CAES. Corpus de Aprendices de Español como Lengua Extranjera" in the XXIX International Conference of ASELE (Spanish Association for the Teaching of Spanish as a Foreign Language), held at the University of Santiago de Compostela, 5-7 September 2018.
SIGN SPERTUS organised ICNICE2018: Pushing English to the limit. Innovation, creativity and communicative negotiation in native and non-native contexts. The symposium took place at the University of Santiago (Facultad de Filología), 14-15 June 2018, and several members of our team presented their work:

  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez & Lidia Gómez García: “You said Amy, didn’t you? No, I never. A study of never as a marker of negation in the language of London English adults and teenagers”
  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: “Law and Tourism ESP students’ attitudes towards different non-native ELF accents used in the classroom. A survey-based study”
  • Mario Cal Varela: “National identity alignment in intercultural communication: Shifting patterns of deixis in ELF encounters”
  • F. Javier Fernández Polo: “Cooperative and uncooperative backchannelling in an ELF Skype conversation”
  • David González Gándara: “A new insight on the role of students in classroom tasks”
  • Tamilla Mammadova: ““L1 empty words” in the conversations of university students of English as a Foreign Language”

SIGN Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled: comunicación, “Language Contact and Language Change in Multicultural London English” in the X Congreso Internacional de Lingüística de Corpus, held at the University of Extremadura (Cáceres), 9-11 May 2018.
SIGN  Francisco J. Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "Backchanneling in ELF video-conversations: a case study" in the 8th International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication, held at the University of Cyprus, 8-10 June 2018.
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "The paradigm of immature teaching to “mature” students in Azerbaijan" in the ADA 2018 Education Conference: “Strategizing Education Development: Reflections and Way Forward”, at ADA University, Baku (Azerbaijan), 7-8 June 2018.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios gave an invited lecture entitled “Tools for research on Linguistics” in the Research Workshop in English Studies: Skills, challenges and new horizons, held at the University of Alicante, 25-26 May 2018.
SIGN  F. Javier Fernández Polo e Mario Cal Varela presented a paper entitled “Utilizando as novas tecnoloxías para o ensino/aprendizaxe das unidades fraseoló́xicas en inglé́s” in the Xornadas de Fraseoloxía Multilingüe na Aula, held at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 12 May 2018.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Eliciting technical and legal vocabulary with job interviews. A preliminary study with university ESP Law students" in the LexESP 2018: V International Seminar on English and ESP Lexicology and Lexicography: The Words of the Law,  held at the University of Alicante, 29-27 April 2018.
SIGN  Francisco J. Fernández Polo and Mario Cal Varela presented a paper entitled "Modulating distance to the national group: Pronoun choice in ELF contexts" in the XXXVI Congreso Internacional de AESLA: "Lingüística aplicada y transferencia del conocimiento: empleabilidad, internacionalización y retos sociales", held at the University of Cádiz, 19-21 April 2018.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "ESP students' perspectives on the use of Kahoot in class" in the 52nd Annual International IATEFL Conference and Exhibition, held in Brighton, 10-13 April 2018.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Bringing fill in the gaps and multiple-choice activities back into the language classroom with online learning games. A first approach to using Kahoot with ESP students" in the XVIII Congreso SEDLL, held at the University of Castilla la Mancha (Ciudad Real) from the 29th of November to the 1st of December 2017.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez presented a paper entitled "Man as a term of address in Multicultural London English" in the 41st AEDEAN Conference held at the University of La Laguna from the 8th to the 10th of November 2017.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "ESP students' reactions to the creation of authentic simulations outside the classroom. A case study involving the recording of a business meeting" in the 41st AEDEAN Conference, held at the University of La Laguna from the 8th to the 10th of November 2017.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez and Paloma Núñez Pertejo presented a paper entitled "Intensifiers in Multicultural London English: New trends and developments" in the 7th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English held at the University of Vigo from the 28th to the 30th of September 2017.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The use of simulations in the ESP classroom to identify Spanish students’ problems with word stress" in the 7th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English held at the University of Vigo from the 28th to the 30th of September 2017.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies was one of the plenary speakers of the 2nd International UCM Predoctoral Conference on English Linguistics (UPCEL) which was held on September 20, 21 and 22, 2017 at the Facultad de Filología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The title of her plenary talk was "The teaching of EFL pronunciation in Spain from three different perspectives. What can we learn from the research conducted and how can it be applied to the real world?".
SIGN  On July 7th 2017, Tamilla Mammadova defended her doctoral dissertation entitled The teaching and learning of English Grammar in Azerbaijan at the University level. An analysis and appraisal of students' and teachers' views, and teaching materials, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios. She was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Roberto Valdeón García (University of Oviedo) and Isabel Flávia Vieira (University of Minho, Braga).
SIGN  On the 14th and 15th June 2017, the research group SPERTUS, in collaboration with the research group GRAMÁTICA DEL ESPAÑOL (USC), invited Professor Stefan Th. Gries (Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Barbara) to give an 8-hour workshop entitled Statistical analysis of, and corpus approaches to, lexicogrammar. Further information and poster.
SIGN  On the 6th June 2017, the research group SPERTUS organised a research seminar entitled "Thinking for Speaking". The purpose of this seminar was to get deeper into the study of the 'thinking for speaking hypothesis', which is mainly concerned with the possible effects of language in the kind of thinking that occurs on-line in the process of using language. Speakers: Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano (U. of Zaragoza), Teresa Cadierno (U. of Southern Denmark), Barbara Lübke, Victoria Vázquez-Rozas, Elsa Liste-Lamas (U. of Santiago de Compostela). Further information: flyer & poster.
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela & Francisco Javier Fernández Polo presented an invited paper entitled "Negotiating identity in ELF interaction" in the lecture series New Trends in International Communication – Doing Business in a Digital World, held at Trier University of Applied Sciences,Birkenfeld (Germany), from the 5th April to the 28th June, 2017.
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela & Francisco Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "A Spanish-English corpus of computer-mediated student discussions" in the 9th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (CILC2017) held at the Université Paris-Diderot, Paris 7 (Paris) from the 31st May to the 2nd June, 2017.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Help me move to that, blood. A corpus-based study on the syntax and pragmatics of vocatives in the language of British teenagers" at the ICAME 38 Conference, held at the Faculty of Arts, Carolinum, Charles University, Prague from the 24th to the 28th May, 2017.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies and Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Language contact and language change in the London and Madrid urban youth styles. A corpus-based study" at the International Conference on Multilingualism and Multilingual Education (ICMME 17), held at the University of Minho (Braga) from the 11th to the 13th May, 2017.
SIGN  Several members of our team presented papers at the AESLA 35th International Conference held at the University of Jaén from the 4th to the 6th May, 2017:

  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "Bringing Real Life Situations into the ESP Classroom. A Case Study on the Use of Authentic Touristic Language through Simulations".
  • Francisco Javier Fernández Polo & Mario Cal Varela: "A structural analysis of student online forum discussions".

SIGN Professor Gale Stam (College of Arts and Sciences, National Louis University, Chicago) was invited by our team to give a seminar on "Gesture as a window onto learners' L2 thinking for speaking". It was held at the Faculty of Philology (USC) on the 7th February, 2017.
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela and Francisco Javier Fernández Polo participated in the MUST kickoff meeting held at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and organised by Sylviane Granger and Maria-Aude Lefer (2nd and 3rd December 2016).
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled “Communicative English Language Teaching or What is wrong in present-day EFL classes?" at the Georgia Technical University, 25th-27th, November 2016.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo was awarded the "Catalina Montes" 2016 prize for one of the best papers presented in the last AEDEAN Conference held at the University of Zaragoza in Huesca (9th-11th November, 2016).
SIGN  Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez presented a paper entitled "Lexical Innovation in Contemporary London English. A Corpus-based Study" at the 40th AEDEAN Conference, held at the University of Zaragoza in Huesca from the 9th to the 11th of November, 2016.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Helping students learn English pronunciation with new technologies" at the 40th AEDEAN Conference, held at the University of Zaragoza in Huesca from the 9th to the 11th of November, 2016.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso presented a paper entitled "Boundary-crossing events across languages" at the 10th Conference of the Spanish Society of Cognitive Linguistics (AELCO2016), held at the University of Alcalá de Henares from the 26th to the 28th October 2016.
SIGN  Russell Stannard was invited by the SPERTUS research team to give a talk on "Key Technologies that can really impact on teaching and learning". He also gave a workshop on "Edmodo". Both events were held at the Faculty of Philology (USC) on the 20th October, 2016.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies and Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez presented a paper entitled "New perspectives in the teaching and learning of English pronunciation. The use of new technologies" at the First International TECHLING Conference, held at the University of Minho from the 12th to the 14th of October, 2016. Ignacio Palacios also presented a paper entitled "Learner corpora and language teaching. SULEC and CAES as two cases in point" at this same conference.
SIGN  Stefan Diemer and Marie-Louise Brunner, from the Universität des Saarlandes (Germany), were invited by our team to give a workshop on the topic "<well> u:hm .. I am doing this:, s- skype thing": Possibilities and Issues in the Compilation and Transcription of Multimodal Spoken Corpora". It was held at the Faculty of Philology (USC) on the 26th September, 2016.
SIGN  Javier Fernández Polo and Mario Cal Varela presented a poster entitled "El foro de debate en línea en el aula de traducción" at IN-RED 2016. Congreso Nacional de Innovación Educativa y de Docencia en Red, held at the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia the 7th and 8th of July, 2016.
SIGN  Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "Directives in ELF conference presentations" at the 9th International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF9) held at the University of Lleida from the 27t to the 29th of June, 2016.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "A preliminary study of plurilingual teaching programmes in Galicia. A state of the art" at the APROLINGUAS 2016 International Colloquium, held at the University of Porto from the 16th to the 18th of June, 2016.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Lexical innovation in the language of teenagers. A cross-linguistic perspective" at the 8th International Conference on Youth Language, held at the University of Graz (Austria) from the 26th to the 28th of May, 2016.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "/də/ /'mʊsɪk/ /ɪn'dʊstrɪ/ /jas/ /es'tarted/ /teɪkɪn/ /le'gal/ /ak'ʃɒn/. A preliminary study on the nature and impact of phonological and orthographic transfer in the language of bilingual speakers of Spanish and Galician when communicating in English" at the LASLAB Workshop on Crosslinguistic Influence, held at the University of the Basque Country on the 27th of April, 2016.
SIGN  Several members of our team presented papers at the AESLA 34th International Conference held at the University of Alicante from the 14th to the 16th April, 2016:

  • Rosa Alonso Alonso participated in the roundtable entitled El inglés como lengua vehicular en la educación superior: logros y retos, coordinated by Cristina Escobar and Carmen Pérez-Vidal.
  • Mario Cal Varela & Xabier Fernández Polo: "A description of asynchronous online discussions in higher education".
  • Yolanda Calvo Benzies: "Integrating the teaching of pronunciation in English classes so as to make it more meaningful and enjoyable for students"
  • Ignacio Palacios: "Applications of learner corpora to language teaching. The CAES (Corpus de Aprendices de Español) Project as a case in point".

SIGN Susan Fox, from the Univerty of Bern (Switzerland), was invited by the SPERTUS research team to give a workshop at the Faculty of Philology on "Contemporary London English", it was held on the 6th and 7th April, 2016.
SIGN  Ana Fernández Dobao presented a paper entitled "Interacción entre estudiantes de herencia y estudiantes de lengua extranjera: oportunidades para el aprendizaje" at the 3rd National Symposium on Spanish as a Heritage Language which was held at the University of Oregon (USA) from the 18th to the 20th February 2016.  
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios was invited by the Association of the Teachers of English of the Balearic Islands to host a workshop on "English teenagers as Linguistic Innovators" on the 12th February 2016 at the University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca.
SIGN  On February 5th 2016, Ana Cea Álvarez defended her doctoral dissertation entitled Desarrollo de la competencia estratégica en el aprendizaje de la expresión oral de una lengua extranjera, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios and Professor Xaquín Núñez Sabarís (University of Minho). She was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Gabriela Prego (University of Santiago de Compostela), Manuel Jiménez Raya (University of Granada), Noelia Ibarra Rius (University of Valencia) and Isabel Flávia Vieira (University of Minho).
SIGN  On January 14th 2016, Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies defended her doctoral dissertation entitled The teaching and learning of English pronunciation in Spain. An analysis and appraisal of students’ and teachers’ views and teaching materials, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios. She was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Paloma Núñez Pertejo (University of Santiago de Compostela), Gäetanelle Gilquin (Université Catholique de Louvain), Marian Amengual Pizarro (University of the Balearic Islands) and Rosa Rabadán (University of León).
SIGN  Rosa Alonso Rosa Alonso was keynote speaker in the 3rd Global Conference on Linguistics and Foreign Language Teaching held at Istambul University (Turkey) from the 16th to the 18th November 2015. Her presentation was entitled "L1 influence in L2 acquisition". She was also a participant in the roundtable "Foreign Language Teaching: Key Issues and Challenges" held in this same conference.
SIGN  Two members of our team presented papers at the 39th AEDEAN Conference, held at the University of Deusto (Bilbao) from the 11th to the 13th November 2015:

  • Ignacio Palacios Martínez: “Vernon never called for me yesterday: A study of the uses and meanings of never as a temporal and non-temporal negative marker in the spoken language of British teenagers"
  • Begoña Soneira Beloso: “A Purpose-Made Corpus Approach for the Teaching of English for Architecture”

SIGN Two members of our team presented papers at the PRISEAL 3 Conference, held at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) from the 30th October to the 1st November 2015:

  • Mario Cal Varela: "Discussing numerical data in Linguistics conference presentations: The use of graphs and tables"
  • Francisco Javier Fernández Polo: "Directives in conference presentations and university lectures: A cross-generic comparison"

SIGN Mario Cal Varela and Ignacio Palacios presented the Diccionario de enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas/Language Teaching and Language Learning Dictionary at the MULTILEX2015 Conference which was held at the Facultade de Filoloxía (USC) the 20th and 21st October 2015.
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela and  Xavier Fernández Polo, members of SPERTUS, presented a paper entitled "Investigating Spoken Academic English with Corpus Tools" at the New Trends in Spoken Corpora Workshop which was held at the Facultade de Filoloxía (USC) the 24th and 25th September 2015. This workshop was organised by SPERTUS, the research team "Grupo de Gramática do Español" and the ELC (English Linguistics Circle) network.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso Alonso hosted a thematic colloquium on "New approaches to cross-linguistic influence" at the 25th Annual Conference of the European Second Language Association (EUROSLA 25) held at Aix-en-Provence, France, from the 26th to the 29th August 2015.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso presented an invited paper entitled "Spatial configuration and construal in L2 English" in the International Symposium on Language Processing in Bilingual Children and Adults: Psycholinguistic and Educational Perspectives, held at the University of Minho (Portugal) on the 19th June 2015.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Learner Spanish on Computer: The CAES Project" in the workshop Spanish Learner Corpus Research held at the University of Coruña on July 14th, 2015. This workshop has been organised by the research group LyS (Lengua y Sociedad de la Información), main investigador Margarita Alonso.
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova attended the "Training for Language Teachers" within the framework of the project "544293-TEMPUS-1-2013-1-AZ-TEMPUS-JPCR-Foreign Languages Education for Professional Purposes" (FLEPP), held at the International Academy of the University of Essex (UK) from the 8th to the 12th june, 2015.
SIGN  Luisa Roca Varela presented a paper entitled "Getting Confused with Learner Language" at the English Acquisition and Corpora Building Conference, held at the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic, on 4th June 2015.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso Alonso presented a paper entitled "Thinking for speaking in SLA: Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of boundary-crossing events" at the Thinking, Doing, Learning (TDL2) Conference held at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, from the 3rd to the 5th June 2015.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Negative concord in the language of British adults and teenagers" at the ICAME 36 Conference held at the University of Trier (Germany) from the 27th to the 31st May, 2015.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented her Ph.D research project at the Graduate Day 2015 held at the Univesity of Vigo on the 15th May, 2015.
SIGN  Ana Fernández Dobao presented an invited paper entitled "El aprendizaje a través de la escritura colaborativa. Resultados de un estudio en la clase de E/LE" on the 13th May, 2015, at the Cycle of Conferences "Temas actuais da Lingüística e as súas aplicacións no ámbito das segundas linguas (ELE, DaF, EFL)" held at the University of Santiago de Compostela from April to December, 2015.
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Why present-day EFL teachers cannot adjust to innovations in language teaching methodology?" at the conference The Magic of Innovation: New trends in language research and teaching foreign language, held at the MGIMO (Moscow State University of International Affairs) on the 24th and the 25th April, 2015.
SIGN  Two members of our team presented papers at the AESLA 33rd International Conference held at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid from the 16th to the 18th April, 2015:

  • Rosa Alonso Alonso: "Acquiring boundary-crossing events in the second language: The effect of cross-linguistic influence"
  • Begoña Soneira Beloso: "Some insights on the teaching of English for Architecture"

SIGN Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "Do we deal with innovations while teaching grammar?" at the 19th Scientific Conference of Post-Graduate Students and Young Researchers held at Baku (Azerbaijan) on the 7th and the 8th April, 2015.
SIGN  Begoña Soneira Beloso presented a paper entitled "Designing, describing and compiling a corpus of English for Architecture" at the 7th International Conference on Corpus Linguistics, held at the University of Valladolid from the 5th to the 7th March, 2015.
SIGN  Tamilla Mammadova presented a paper entitled "How is grammar presented in modern English textbooks?" at the Fourth International Postgraduate Conference of Language and Cognition (ELC4), held at the University of Vigo from the 4th to the 6th February, 2015.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "El uso de las nuevas tecnologías en la enseñanza de la pronunciación inglesa " at the XV Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Didáctica de la Lengua y la Literatura, held at the University of Valencia from the 19th to the 21st of November, 2014.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "The Syntax of Spanish and British Teen Talk. A Preliminary Contrastive Corpus-Based Study" at the 38th AEDEAN Conference, held at the University of Alcalá de Henares from the 12th to the 14th November, 2014.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso was keynote speaker in the 5th World Conference on Learning, Teaching and Educational Leadership held in Prague from the 29th to the 30th October 2014. She presented a paper entitled "Exploring cross-linguistic influence in SLA".
SIGN  Rosa Alonso Alonso presented a paper entitled "Boundary-crossing events in second language acquisition" at the 9th International AELCO Conference, held at the University of Extremadura from the 15th to the 18th October, 2014.
SIGN  On September 16th 2014, José Ramón Varela Pérez defended his doctoral dissertation entitled Variation and change in negative constructions in contemporary British English: A corpus-based approach, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios. He was awarded the highest mark: Sobresaliente Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Montserrat Martínez Vázquez (Pablo de Olavide University), Javier Pérez Guerra (University of Vigo), Cristina Suárez Gómez (University of the Balearic Islands) and María José López Couso (University of Santiago de Compostela).
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela and Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "A corpus of conference presentations at the University of Santiago: data collection and transcription issues" at the 12th ESSE Conference, held at the University of Košice, Slovakia, from the 29th of August to the 2nd of September, 2014.
SIGN  Several members of the SPERTUS research team presented papers at the ICSE2014 conference (International Conference on Spoken English: Descriptive and Applied Perspectives), organised by our research team, and which took place in Santiago de Compostela from the 4th to the 6th of June, 2014:

  • Rosa Alonso Alonso (in collaboration with Patricia Argibay Suárez): "The teaching of spoken English in secondary education and state language schools"
  • Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies: "Pronunciation in Spanish EFL materials for advanced learners: An evaluation of activities and a remedial programme"
  • Araceli García Fuentes: "Fostering oral skills in the primary EFL classroom via Desktop Videoconferencing. A pilot study"
  • David González Gándara: "Discourse Analysis in the CLIL classroom. The effects of teaching activities on the learning process"
  • Tamilla Mammadova: "The treatment of English conversation grammar in modern advanced EFL textbooks"
  • Martiña Piñeiro de la Torre: "EFL learners' use of phrasal and phrasal prepositional verbs in spoken English: A preliminary corpus-based study" [poster presentation]
  • José Ramón Varela Pérez: "A critical review of corpora for studying grammatical changes in spoken English"

SIGN Professor Anna Mauranen (Professor of English at the Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki) was invited by our research unit to give a two-hour seminar entitled “English as a Lingua Franca: ELF in academic and research contexts” at the Faculty of Philology on June 3rd 2014.
SIGN  Professor Marianne Gullberg (Professor of Psycholinguistics and Director of the Humanities Lab, University of Lund) was invited by our research unit to give a three-hour seminar entitled "People gesture when they speak - not when they do not speak. Reflections on gestures in acquisition research" at the Faculty of Philology on May 8th 2014.
SIGN  Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez presented a paper entitled "Negative intensification in the spoken language of British adults and teenagers. A preliminary corpus-based study" in the 35th ICAME Conference held at the University of Nottingham, UK, from the 30th April to the 4th May 2014.
SIGN  Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez was invited by the Spanish Embassy in Brussels to give a three-hour presentation to teachers of Spanish as a foreign language with the title "Language learning principles, factors and theories. From theory to practice" (26th April 2014, Brussels).
SIGN  Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez presented a paper entitled "Describing teen talk across languages. A preliminary corpus-based study" in the 7th International Conference on Youth Language, held at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, from 3rd to 6th April 2014.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso, in collaboration with Teresa Cadierno and Scott Jarvis, presented a paper entitled "CLI in English as an L2: The spatial domain" in the 32nd International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA), held at the Universidad de Pablo Olavide, Seville, from 3rd to 5th April 2014.
SIGN  María Luisa Roca-Varela presented a paper entitled "Can we trust lexical resemblance between languages? Some insights into the learner's awareness and understanding of English false friends" in the 32nd International Conference of the Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics (AESLA), held at the Universidad de Pablo Olavide, Seville, from 3rd to 5th April 2014.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso presented an invited paper entitled "CLI in spatial prepositions" at the Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology (Trondheim, Norway) in March 2014.
SIGN  Rosa Alonso, in collaboration with Teresa Cadierno and Scott Jarvis, presented a paper entitled "CLI in space categorization in English as an L2" in the Georgetown University Round Table of Language and Linguistics, held at Georgetown University (USA) from the 14th to the 16th March 2014.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Moving away from repetitions and discriminations: Introducing engaging and motivating activities into EFL pronunciation classes to help Spanish students improve their perception and production of English vowels" in the International Workshop on Cross-Language Speech Perception, which was held at the University of Minho from the 30th to the 31st of January, 2014.
SIGN  Araceli García Fuentes gave a three-hour presentation entitled "Project-based Language Learning and eTwinning" for the course Project Work in the English Classroom, organised by CAFI (Centro Autonómico de Formación e Innovación). The dates and places of her presentation were the following: November 19th, 2013àin Lugo’s CFR; November 25th, 2013 in Pontevedra’s CFR January 28th, 2014àin A Coruña’s CFR; and January 29th, 2014àin Ferrol’s CFR.
Total hours of the course: 30. In this presentation, Araceli described an eTwinning project she created for her lessons. It consisted of 5 units of work organised around oral computer-mediated communication tools in order to practise the oral skills in the EFL classroom. For each unit, students were asked to perform an oral task (speaking in English) for being recorded and uploaded to the twinspace of the project (online space with the tasks and products of the project) for all the etwinning members of the project to listen to and do listening comprehension activities with these recordings. After these asynchronous communication tasks, they performed a synchronous communication task consisting in a videoconferencing meeting with the other school, talking about the unit’s topic and dealing with intercultural aspects.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "A Comparative Study on the Importance Given to Grammar, Vocabulary and Pronunciation in EFL Spanish Secondary-School Coursebooks" in the 37th AEDEAN International Conference, which held at the University of Oviedo from the 13th to the 15th of November, 2013.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "'He don’t like football, does he?' A Corpus-based Study of Third Person Singular don’t in the Language of British Teenagers" at the conference Englishes Today 2013 held at the University of Vigo from the 18th to the 19th October, 2013.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "'Go up to Miss thingy'. 'He's probably like a whatsit or something'. Placeholders in focus.The differences in use between teenagers and adults in spoken English" at the 46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europae, held in Split (Croatia) from the 18th to the 21st September, 2013.
SIGN  Two members of SPERTUS, María Luisa Roca Varela and Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies, attended a summer course on CLIL titled “Multilingual education for multilingual citizens: Content and Language Integrate d Learning in Europe” held at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) from 15th to the 17th July, 2013.
SIGN  On July 5th 2013, Begoña Soneira Beloso defended her doctoral dissertation entitled A Lexical Description of English for Architecture: A Corpus-based Approach, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios. She was awarded the highest mark: Apto Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Guadalupe Aguado de Cea (Polytechnic University of Madrid), Isabel de la Cruz (Univeristy of Alcalá), Isabel Balteiro (University of Alicante) and Xabier Fernández Polo (University of Santiago and member of SPERTUS).
SIGN  The ICSE2014 conference (International Conference on Spoken English: Descriptive and Applied Perspectives), organised by the research group SPERTUS, took place in Santiato de Compostela from the 4th to the 6th of June, 2014. The aim of this conference was to bring together the latest research of scholars engaged in the analysis of spoken English from a variety of theoretical and applied perspectives. Specifically, the conference focused on such general areas of spoken English research as the differences between spoken and written English, interpersonal and textual issues in spoken English, spoken English and multimodality, Spoken English and second/foreign language teaching, varieties of spoken English, spoken English and language change, etc. Contributions representing different analytical approaches and disciplinary areas were welcomed: corpus linguistics, lexicology, grammar, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, among others. For further information visit the website of the conference at http://www.usc.es/en/congresos/icse/.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The role of pronunciation in EFL classes and teaching materials in Spanish secondary schools. A comparative study: students' versus teachers' views and perspectives" at the 3rd International Conference of Young Researchers on Anglophone Studies, held at the University of Gijón from the 5th to the 7th of June, 2013.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Not enough time is devoted to pronunciation. I would like my textbook to include other types of pronunciation activities". The views and perspectives of EFL fourth-year secondary school students on the teaching and learning of pronunciation. A survey-based study" at the 3rd International Conferencre on English Pronunciation: Issues & Practices (EPIP3), held at the University of Murcia from the 8th to the 10th of May, 2013.
SIGN  María Luisa Roca-Varela presented a paper entitled "Spice Up Your Life! Making Friends with English False Friends" at the Workshop Games, Activities, and Related Aspects in Second/Foreign Language Teaching. Jornadas sobre Aspectos Lúdicos en la Enseñanza de Lenguas Extranjeras/Segundas Lenguas, held at the University of Castilla la Mancha (Toledo Campus), from the 25th to the 26th April, 2013.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitiled "The teaching of pronunciation in Spain: students' and teachers' views" at the 47th Annual International IATEFL Conference and Exhibition, held at the University of Liverpoool from the 9th to the 12th of Apri, 2013.
SIGN  María Luisa Roca-Varela presented a paper entitled "The film Resurrection pretends to be like Seven: An Analysis of Actual, Career and Pretend in Spoken Learner Language" in the V Congreso Internacional de Lingüística de Corpus (CILC2013): Recursos de corpus para estudios descriptivos y aplicados: retos actuales y direcciones futuras, held at the University of Alicante from the 14th to the 16th March, 2013.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "An analysis and classification of the problems Spanish learners from different levels of proficiency have with the pronunciation of English vowels" at the Language Studies PhD Conference 2013 held at the University of Reading.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The inferior status of pronunciation in EFL classes in Obligatory Secondary Education in Spain" at a research seminar of the First and Second Language Skills and Processes Research group of the University of Reading on the 5th of March, 2013.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "El papel de la pronunciación en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera en Galicia" at the I ENCONTRO DA MOCIDADE INVESTIGADORA EDI-USC, held in Santiago de Compostela from the 13th to the 15th of December, 2012.
SIGN  Last 30th November, Mª Luisa Roca Varela defended her doctoral dissertation entitled New Insights into the Study of English False Friends: Their Use and Understanding by Spanish Learners of English, completed under the supervision of Professor Ignacio Palacios. She was awarded the highest mark: Apto Cum Laude. The assessment board was chaired by Professor Teresa Fanego (University of Santiago de Compostela). The other members of the board were: Gäetanelle Gilquin (University of Louvain), Rubén Chacón (UNED), Encarnación Postigo (University of Málaga) and Carlos Prado (University of Valencia). Click here to see a photograph.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The views and perspectives of EFL university students and teachers on the teaching and learning of pronunciation. A survey-based study" at the TEFL – 4th International Conference on Teaching English as a Foreign Language, held in Lisbon on the 23rd and 24th November, 2012.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Variation and Pragmatic Uses of innit in the Language of British and Adult Teenagers " at the XXVI Conference of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN), held at the University of Málaga (Spain), from the 14th to the 16th November, 2012.
SIGN  We are also pleased to announce that we have just received funding from the Autonomous Government of Galicia (Directorate General for Universities) under the following research grant: CN2012/81- for the period 1/10/2012 to 1/10/2014 (70.000€).
SIGN  We are pleased to announce that we have received funding from the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation for the research project: "Modern Spoken English: The Interpersonal Component in Informal and Academic Contexts” (grant FFI2012-31450 / €14.000). This projects will be carried out at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Principal Investigator: Ignacio M. Palacios Martínez).
SIGN  Francisco Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "“As you can see…” Functions of Explicit “you” in Conference Presentations" in the ESSE 2012 Conference, held in Istambul, 6-9 September, 2012.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "'He was /gəʊɪn/ to have a /bæθ/’, ‘Twenty /pɒrsent/ of /pɪpel daʊnlɒd /mʊsik/'. A preliminary study of the difficulties shown by Spanish students in the learning of English pronunciation" at the Third International Postgraduate Conference on Language and Cognition (ELC3), held at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) on the 21st and 22nd September, 2012.
SIGN  Yolanda Calvo Benzies attended a course entitled "Successful pronunciation: teaching and learning" organized by Pilgrims English Language Courses and lectured by Adrian Underhill. It was held in Canterbury from the 13th to the 18th of August, 2012.
SIGN  María Luisa Roca-Varela participated in the LOT Summer School organised by the Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics and hosted by the K.U. Leuven in Belgium from the 13th to the 24th June 2012.
SIGN  María Luisa Roca-Varela attended The Second Course of Specialisation in English Linguistics, held at the University of Vigo from the 9th of January to the 16th of May, 2012.
SIGN  María Luisa Roca-Varela presented a paper entitled "Deceptive Cognates in Speech and Writing: A corpus-based study of English false friends in the production of Spanish students" in the ICAME 33 Conference: Corpora at the centre and crossroads of English linguistics, held at the University of Leuven from the 30th of May to the 3rd of June, 2012.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios Martínez and Paloma Núñez Pertejo presented a poster entitled "The emergence of the intensifiers proper and bare in the language of British teenagers" in the ICAME 33 Conference, held in Leuven from the 30th of May to the 3rd of June, 2012.
SIGN  Francisco Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "The role of I mean in conference presentations by ELF speakers" in the ELF5 Conference, held in Istambul fron the 24th to the 26th of May, 2012.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios presented a paper entitled "Zero quoting in the language of British and Spanish teeangers. A contrastive corpus-based study" in the IV AELINCO International Conference, which was held at the University of Jaén from the 21st to the 24th of March, 2012.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios has been appointed Reviews Editor (Linguistics) of Atlantis, the official Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN).
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios has passed the national examination (‘acreditación’) qualifying him for promotion to a position as Full Professor of English.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "Was the servant hit on the head with a bowl by Mrs Jackson in the living room? Is the bag under the rug? Adapting some traditional games to the teaching of segmental and suprasegmental English pronunciation" in the XXX AESLA International Conference, which was held at the University of Lleida from the 19th to the 21st of April, 2012.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "La enseñanza de la pronunciación del inglés en Galicia: una asignatura pendiente" in the XLI SEL (Sociedad Española de Linguística) Symposium, held at the University of Valencia from teh 31st of January to the 3rd of February, 2012.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios gave a plenary lecture entitled "Teenagers as Linguistic Innovators. A Study of British Teenagers' Language" in the  IV International Conference on English and ESP Lexicology and Lexicography held at the University of Alicante from 24th to 26th November 2011.
SIGN  Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez presented a paper entitled "Strategies used by English and Spanish Teenagers to Intensify Language: A Contrastive Corpus-Based Study" in the XXXV AEDEAN annual conference held in Barcelona from 16th to 18th November 2011.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented the paper entitled "Students' views on the teaching of English pronunciation in Spain. A survey-based study" in the 2nd Conference of Young Researchers on Anglophone Studies (ASYRAS) held from 6th to 8th October, 2011 in Salamanca (Spain).
SIGN Ignacio Palacios and Paloma Núñez presented a paper entitled "That's absolutely crap, totally rubbish. The use of the intensifiers absolutely and totally in the spoken language of British adults and teenagers" in the 44th SLE annual conference held from 8th to 11th September, 2011 in Logroño (Spain).
SIGN  María Luisa Roca presented a paper entitled "False friends in everyday communication contexts" in the 44th SLE annual conference held from 8th to 11th September, 2011 in Logroño (Spain).
SIGN  Mario Cal Varela has obtained a position as Tenured Senior Lecture at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
SIGN  José Antonio Rodríguez Díaz presented his Ph.D dissertation entitled Anglicismos y germanismos en el lenguaje publicitario del español peninsular contemporáneo, 1998-2007 on the 18th of July, 2011.
SIGN  Francisco Javier Fernández Polo presented a paper entitled "Native and non-native speaker presenters at international conferences in English: managing interpersonal relationships and presentation resources" in the 2nd International PRISEAL Conference:Publishing and Presenting Research Internationally,Issues for Speakers of English as an Additional Language, held from the 9th to the 11th June, 2011, in Sosnowiec/Katowice (Poland). He also presented the paper "'The title of my paper is…' Introducing the topic in conference presentations" in the Genre Variation in English Academic Communication Conference, held from the 23rd to the 25th June, 2011, in Bergamo (Italy).
SIGN  Alba Cachafeiro presented her paper “The use of English in the discouse of Spanish teenagers" in the 13th ELC Research Seminar held on the 27th of April 2011 at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
SIGN  Mª Luisa Roca Varela presented a paper entitled “Corpora as Tools and Resources for the Teaching of English Vocabulary“ in the 3rd International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (CILC11) held in the University of Valencia from the 7th to the 9th April, 2011.
SIGN Ignacio Palacios Martínez and Alba Cachafeiro Requeijo have presented, respectively, the papers entitled "She goes like this:  urg, urg, urg; era como: fu fuf ufu fu. The Use of Quotative Markers by Spanish and English Teenagers. A Constrastive Corpus-Based Study" and "The presence of English in the Spanish teenagers' language" in the Sixth International Conference on Youth Languages "Youth Languages - Dynamics and Cultural Contexts" which took place at Freiburg University from March 31st until April 2nd, 2011.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented her MA dissertation entitled The teaching and learning of  the pronunciation of English in Spanish secondary schools and universities. A preliminary analysis on the 24th of March, 2011.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The importance given to pronunciation in EFL textbooks used in Spanish school. A preliminary study" in the XXIX Congreso de AESLA, held in Salamanca from the 4th to the 6th May, 2011.
SIGN  Yolanda Joy Calvo Benzies presented a paper entitled "The teaching of English pronunciation: some useful techniques and resources" in the XXVI Congreso Internacional de la Asociación de Jóvenes Lingüistas, held in Salamanca from the 9th to the 11th March, 2011.