AILA Review - Volume 39, Issue 1, 2026

The Declaration on the Construction of New liberal Arts released in 2020 put forward curriculum-based ideological and moral education, quality culture, interdisciplinary integration and mode innovation as principles for new liberal arts construction, which are later adopted as language policy support underlying Chinese Russian language teachers’ (RLTs) career development. Against this backdrop, we focused on the issue of Russian language teachers’ agency in response to the call under the guidance of the ecological theory. We applied the ecological lens to researching how RLTs interact with diverse contextual factors at different subsystems to seek their professional development. The current study explored RLTs’ agency exercise experiences through semi-structured interviews with three RLTs working in Chinese universities. The findings showed that Chinese RLTs generally held a positive attitude towards the new education policy, while their potential for mobilizing was directly associated with the contingent policy of their local institutions. What’s more, their career prospects rested upon their career planning and personality. The study provides useful insights into teacher agency for less-commonly-taught languages and the different subsystems constraining their agencies. Given the relatively small sample size involved in the study and the strong dependence on interview-based data, further study based on larger sample size and multidimensional data with adequate cross-validation is expected.

In developing English as a Lingua Franca, educators and researchers must employ new methods in language acquisition to make the learners internationally intelligible and comprehensible. This study aimed to determine the implication of infinite access to Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)-based language-learning program promoting pronunciation skills acquisition of vocational higher education students. In this study, the students learned English as Lingua Franca (ELF) through a collaborative approach. It applied a qualitative approach with 67 first-year university students from three intact classes as participants. One class of 24 students was assigned as the first group utilising the ASR BoldVoice as the additional learning materials in their speaking class. In contrast, the other two classes of 43 students were set as the second and third groups carrying out conventional learning procedures. The development of participants’ utterances was analysed in terms of fluency, completeness, and accuracy at pre- and post-test. In order to support the obtained data, a semi-structured interview was performed right after the post-test. The result showed that the pronunciation skill of the experimental group was significantly improved in particular phones of pronunciation: /ch/, /th/, /sh/, and /j/. The analysis of the interview data confirmed that the students gained substantial improvement with regard to their pronunciation and communicative competence compared to the conventional learning process.

Over the past two decades, translanguaging has become a powerful concept in applied linguistics, enabling teachers and students to respond to linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom. However, how teachers and students prepare for translanguaging pedagogy and practice in writing has so far received less attention (Huang & Chalmers, 2023). Therefore, this systematic review focuses on the application of translanguaging strategies in the English as a Foreign/Second Language (EFL/ESL) writing classroom. Following the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews, this study searched five databases to obtain articles spanning from 2013 to 2023. We reviewed 23 articles focusing on translanguaging, writing and higher education. Our results show that (1) most studies were conducted in North America and Northern Asia, with qualitative studies being predominant; (2) most researchers implemented translanguaging interventions in the EFL/ESL classroom to study the impact of translanguaging on students’ English writing skills; (3) students applied translanguaging strategies during the writing process to communicate with others on content and vocabulary; (4) translanguaging strategies provided teachers with diverse perspectives and enhanced students’ various skills; (5) the use of digital resources and different types of activities contributed to the application of translanguaging in the writing classroom, but students’ limited language skills in their L2 but also in their L1, and their uncertainty about their linguistic identity limited implementation of translanguaging in the English writing classroom. This systematic review points towards the need for educators to consider the various factors, functions and applications of the use of translanguaging strategies in English writing classrooms.

Purpose: Experimental research on the processing of literary metaphors in a foreign language (L2) is scarce, as well as research on how non-native speakers perceive the aesthetic value of such metaphors. The paper aims to gain a deeper insight into the topic.

Method: The team experiment was conducted in 2022 at the University of Warsaw. The methodology consisted of both online (eye tracking) and offline (comprehension tests, appreciation ratings) methods. The following research questions were formulated: (a) How do we process literary metaphors in L2? (b) Is their processing cognitively demanding? (c) How well do people understand literary metaphors in a foreign language? (d) How do we evaluate their aesthetic value? The participants were Polish EFL students (English level B2 and higher) who were given an excerpt from “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde. The experimental group read the original text with metaphors, and the control group read an adapted text where metaphors were rewritten in plain language.

Results: (1) Non-native readers process metaphors significantly slower than they do non-metaphorical expressions (a three-stage model of metaphor processing in L2). (2) All eye-tracking parameters were much higher for metaphors, indicating increased cognitive load. (3) Non-native readers rate the aesthetic value of metaphors in L2 higher than they do the corresponding non-metaphorical expressions. In addition, the more aesthetically appreciated the metaphor was for the respondents, the more time they spent on its reading.

Conclusion: The processing of literary metaphors in L2 is associated with increased cognitive load and enhanced aesthetic evaluation.

Barack Obama is widely held to be the first sitting president to explicitly articulate the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. This paper uses the framing analysis methodology to explore his reconstruction of the exceptional American identity in a set of his public speeches and statements. It analyses the framing devices, such as lexical choices, metaphors and catchphrases, as well as the reasoning devices he used to reproduce new representations of American exceptionalism. Results point that Barack Obama’s ideational construct of American uniqueness resists the taken-for-granted narrative of America as a nation better than the rest of the world. His framing of the exceptional American identity is rather deeply rooted in John Winthrop’s image of the conditional shining of the city upon a hill. It conveys meanings of responsibility, hard work and commitment to common good as conditions for the fulfilment of an exceptionally “leading American self”. This paper contributes to both literatures on the discursive performance of the idea of American exceptionalism in the discourse of Barack Obama and the ongoing process of defining and redefining such a highly contested value in the American political discourse.