Learning to speak, speaking to learn: A corpus-driven study of Italian university students’ representations of English language learning

This study investigates how Italian university students linguistically represent their experience of learning English as a foreign language, with the aim of uncovering the emotional, cognitive and sociocultural dimensions that underpin their language learning trajectories. Motivated by the need to better understand learners’ voices in shaping inclusive and effective pedagogical practices as well as a desire to centre students’ voices in discussions about language education, the research combines corpus linguistics (Baker, 2023) with corpus-driven sociolinguistics (Baker, 2010), language psychology (Dörnyei, 2009), and Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) studies (Horwitz et al., 1986; Horwitz, 2017). Specifically, the study seeks to explore how variables such as age, gender, motivation, academic progression and exposure to English shape learners’ perceptions, affective responses and discursive representations of English language learning. To address these aims, the study draws on the Your Voice in English Language Learning (YVELL) corpus, which consists of open-ended responses to eight prompts collected from 146 students enrolled at the University of Naples Federico II. The respondents represent a wide range of academic disciplines and demographic backgrounds. The corpus was compiled and annotated using Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff, 2014), a leading platform for corpus analysis, and is enriched with metadata including age, gender, degree cycle, motivation, self-assessed proficiency, exposure to English, employment status, and academic progression. Preliminary analyses reveal that demographic and psychological factors, such as age, gender and motivation, shape distinct patterns in learners’ language use, reflecting varying emotional and strategic orientations toward English language learning. In line with recent research in applied linguistics and language education (Pavesi, 2024), the study highlights the importance of informal learning environments, including media, digital tools and everyday interactions, in complementing formal instruction. These findings, which contribute to ongoing debates around learnercentred and inclusive language education, point to the need for more emotionally responsive and differentiated pedagogical strategies, capable of engaging diverse student profiles and creating more equitable and empowering language learning environments.