International Journal of English Linguistics, Issue: Vol.16, No.3

An Introduction to Informal Pathways to English Learning: Studies from the Pisa Research Unit

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:14:06 +0000

Over the last decade, Italian university students have come to encounter English increasingly outside formal instruction, through a broad and fast-changing media ecology that includes traditional and digital formats, platforms and everyday communicative practices. This introduction frames the monographic issue Informal Pathways to English Learning within the national PRIN project on media-driven informalisation of English learning in Italy, which first established a large-scale baseline by pairing the IECoL questionnaire on informal contact with English and a receptive vocabulary test. Building on that map of behaviours and correlates, the present issue pursues a second, more fine-grained stage of inquiry by asking what kinds of English are acquired informally, under which conditions and with what limits. Across contributions, learning outcomes are investigated through targeted designs that combine general and domain-specific vocabulary tests (often inspired by Vocabulary Size Test formats), reaction-time measures, corpus-based analyses of learner production and, in one case, longitudinal follow-up. The studies cover socio-political lexis, sports and cooking terminology, false friends, slang and pragmatic features such as vague language. Overall, they show that informal learning effects are substantial but uneven across domains, strongly mediated by proficiency and shaped by the quality and relevance of engagement, with clear implications for how instruction can build strategically on students’ extramural practices.

The Lexicon of Politics: The Acquisition of English Political Language through Informal Learning on Social Media

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:16:21 +0000

This paper presents an empirical-experimental study examining whether, and to what extent, undergraduate students of Political Science at an Italian university acquire English socio-political lexis through informal exposure to online media. The study was conducted at the University of Pisa and involved a small sample of 31 second-year students, tested prior to their attendance of the official English Language course, in order to assess their extramural knowledge of specialised and semi-specialised vocabulary related to socio-political themes. Grounded in a broad conception of informal language learning as incidental, self-directed contact with the L2 in non-institutional contexts, the research hypothesises that regular engagement with authentic English-language media may contribute to the development of domain-specific lexical knowledge, even in the absence of an explicit learning intention. Data collection instruments included a placement test, a questionnaire on students’ online media habits, a general vocabulary test, and a purpose-built specialised vocabulary test. Preliminary results indicate that performance on the specialised vocabulary test is more strongly associated with learners’ overall English proficiency level than with the reported quantity of online media exposure. These findings offer initial insights into the role of informal media exposure in the acquisition of disciplinary lexis at university level.

English for Sports: Assessing Knowledge Among Italian University Students

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 04:12:27 +0000

This study examines Italian university students’ knowledge of English for Sports as a specialised subset of ESP, exploring how general proficiency, personal engagement with sport and exposure to English-language sports media shape both general and domain-specific lexical competence. 87 students (MA Languages; BA Economics) completed a questionnaire on media habits, a General Vocabulary Size Test, and a 60-item Sports VST. Moreover, a longitudinal sub-study tracked 12 MA students over one year through written production tasks and targeted retrieval tests. Results show that general vocabulary breadth is strongly associated with CEFR proficiency, whereas sports-specific vocabulary is largely predicted by exposure to English sports media and, to a lesser extent, by engagement in sport. BA Economics students, despite lower overall proficiency, outperform MA Language students on the Sports VST due to higher media-based exposure. A longitudinal analysis of language students’ performance reveals improvements in grammatical accuracy but minimal growth in specialised vocabulary, indicating that English for Sports does not develop incidentally in the absence of sustained, domain-rich input. These findings highlight the need for ESP pedagogies that integrate learners’ informal media practices to foster specialised lexical development.

Learning English Specialised Vocabulary through Informal Exposure to Special-Interest Content

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:19:25 +0000

This study investigates whether informal engagement with special-interest content can foster the acquisition of specialised English vocabulary and how such learning is shaped by individual and experiential factors. One hundred and forty-six Italian university students, who had received only general-purpose English instruction, completed a background questionnaire, a general Vocabulary Size Test (VST), a specialised VST targeting cooking terminology (with accuracy and reaction times), and a figurative-language interpretation task. The specialised test contained 120 cooking-related items (verbs, nouns and adjectives) sampled from B1–C2 levels and presented in a four-option multiple-choice format. Results show substantial knowledge of specialised culinary vocabulary despite the absence of formal instruction, with a clear proficiency gradient and a verb advantage across levels. At lower proficiency levels, specialised scores were strongly associated with general vocabulary size and with self-reported intensity of exposure to English-language videos. Regression analyses indicated that specialised knowledge was best predicted by proficiency, reading in English and domain-specific habits (e.g., language of recipes), whereas the same variables explained little variance in general vocabulary. Reaction-time data suggested partial “automatisation” of specialised items, particularly for intermediate learners. Figurative-language performance revealed that, for many participants, specialised lexical representations were sufficiently deep to support interpretation in novel, non-literal contexts, especially when learners frequently followed recipes or watched cooking videos in English. The findings highlight both the potential and the limits of learning specialised vocabulary through informal digital practices and point to ways in which formal instruction can systematically build on learners’ extramural experiences.

Learning English-Italian False Friends in the Digital Age: Does Informal Online Exposure to English Help?

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:20:55 +0000

Research in EFL has long highlighted the problematic nature of false friends (FF), which are words in different languages that are formally similar but semantically divergent and often lead to misunderstandings. However, studies on how such items are effectively learned remain limited, particularly in the context of English as learned by Italians. Although pedagogical translation and an explicit focus on form are commonly considered effective in addressing lexical areas prone to cross-linguistic interference, recent evidence suggests that variables related to formal instruction alone do not fully account for the acquisition of English–Italian FF, which are also largely absent from curricular materials. This raises the question of how learners encounter and master such items, and whether informal digital exposure plays a role. This study investigates the relationship between the level of knowledge of FF among a sample of young Italian university students, as assessed through a vocabulary test specifically designed for this purpose, and the students’ informal contact with English, as revealed by a questionnaire on their digital media use habits. Results show that media exposure – measured in terms of quantitative variables such as frequency and duration, and also including platform diversity, film viewing and subtitle use – does not emerge as a primary predictor of performance, while competence in this lexical set tends to correlate more significantly with overall English proficiency and general lexical competence. The disaggregation of results by grammatical category of target items also highlights uneven sensitivity across word classes, with adjectives (as opposed to nouns and verbs) showing the only statistically significant correlation. These findings point to the need for further research into qualitative dimensions of learning this hybrid and elusive lexical set, with a refined methodology and greater attention to individual differences and word-class effects.

Extramural Language Learning: An Investigation of English Slang among Italian University Students

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:22:36 +0000

The global spread of English and its role as a lingua franca coincide with its dominance in the media, creating new opportunities for informal exposure. While extramural English learning has been studied in Northern and Central Europe, Italy remains relatively underexplored. This study examines the informal acquisition of English slang among 148 Italian undergraduate students. Participants completed a questionnaire on media habits, a Vocabulary Size Test, a Slang Test assessing general and social-media-influenced slang, and an Oxford Placement Test to measure proficiency. Analyses in SPSS (v. 31) show that students are more familiar with social-media slang than general slang, and that slang knowledge correlates positively with both proficiency and vocabulary size. Findings underscore the role of digital media exposure and personal interest in supporting variety-specific L2 vocabulary acquisition, highlighting the potential of informal, media-driven learning in the Italian context.

Vagueness in Learner English: Exploring General Extenders and Informal Learning among Italian EFL Students

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:23:58 +0000

This study investigates the phenomenon of vague language within the framework of informal English language learning among Italian EFL learners. While recent societal and technological developments have been affecting the boundaries between formal and informal learning, little attention has been paid to how Italian learners, through informal exposure, first acquire and subsequently use pragmatic features (e.g., vague expressions). The research adopts a mixed-methods approach and combines corpus-based analysis from a learner corpus (the Trinity Lancaster Corpus) with data from a student questionnaire to investigate how learners employ general extenders (e.g., and so on, or something like that) and to what extent their usage reflects informal acquisition rather than explicit classroom instruction. Findings indicate that Italian EFL learners are generally aware of vague language but tend to use it in limited ways, overlooking its broader interpersonal and relational functions. Such limitations seem to be connected to the absence of explicit instruction on vague language in institutional educational settings, despite learners’ frequent exposure to such expressions through English-language media and social platforms.