Informal contact with English. A case study of Italian postgraduate students

In today’s globalised world a variety of media and new affordances enable unprecedented opportunities of contact with English. At the same time, English is increasingly moving out of the domain of formal education in Europe and worldwide to be learned and appropriated naturally by L2 learners and users during recreation, study and work. Contributing to an emergent and vibrant research area in contemporary applied linguistics,

this volume innovatively explores the role of informal exposure to L2 English in Italy via an empirical study conducted on university students. The questionnaire-based findings are considered within the broader European context and in relation to the growing incidence of informal L2 learning through the media and multimodal input. They offer novel insights into spontaneous second language acquisition and the changing status of English in Italy. The volume addresses applied linguists and experts in English language, language learning and second language acquisition.

Maria Pavesi is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Pavia, where she was Head of the University Language Centre. Her research has addressed several topics in English applied linguistics, focussing on informal second language acquisition, the language of dubbing and corpus-based translation studies. Elisa Ghia is Lecturer in English Language and Translation at the University for Foreigners of Siena, where she also taught in the Language Teachers’ Education programme. Her research interests include second language acquisition, audiovisual
translation and spoken English usage.