The Lab was established in 2016 by the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (FEK 1771/17-6-2016).

Who is it addressed to?

The lab is addressed to all members of the academic community, including undergraduate students, and mainly postgraduate students (MA, PhD and postdocs), researchers and academics interested in the study of instructed foreign language learning, teaching and assessment.

Our Mission

The aim of our laboratory is to promote research in the fields of foreign language learning, teaching and assessment within the school context of both preschool, primary and secondary education, thereby deepening understanding of the linguistic and cognitive processes underlying foreign language learning. Our ultimate objective is to improve the status of foreign language education in Greece and to explore the possibility of research proposals aiming to contribute to the improvement of foreign language education in Greece at policy but also at teaching practice level.

The lab is specifically concerned with:

  • the design of teaching and testing materials for children with typical language development
  • the design of teaching and testing materials for children with specific learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia)
  • the creation of databases, such as Learner Corpora in preschool, primary, secondary and tertiary education
  • the development of curricula and syllabi for EFL education
  • the organization of teacher training seminars, workshops, and teacher education events
Fields of Research

The lab seeks to link the latest research with the teaching practice of the Greek state classroom.

The aim of the lab is to promote research in the fields of:

  • Second or foreign language learning
  • Educational Linguistics
  • Second or foreign language formal and informal assessment
  • Methodology of teaching a second or foreign language
  • Bilingualism/multilingualism/immersion programmes
  • Alternative models of education (e.g. CLIL)
  • Corpora
  • Development of educational materials
  • Good practices for refugees and immigrants
Research Methods

The collection of data from research into foreign language learning, teaching and assessment in school practice takes place primarily in the school context after obtaining permission from the Institute of Educational Policy. The data may also include learners’ oral and written productions that are digitized as Learner Corpora. Data processing takes place in the lab with the use of appropriate software (concordancers) through which language use and skills (e.g. vocabulary, grammar, syntactic structures) can be studied by level and age. This research and its results are expected to contribute to our understanding of how Greek learners acquire the English language thus enabling us to draw appropriate implications regarding syllabus design and teaching material development. The design of teaching and testing materials informed by learner corpus data is a pioneering proposal with important ramifications for foreign language education.

The lab is affiliated with the 3rd Experimental Primary School of Evosmos, which is supervised by the School of English and has been the context of a large number of research projects by students and staff members of the School of English, other university departments in Greece and abroad; in fact, the particular school is  the main research site where research in instructed foreign language learning, teaching and assessment is conducted. The fact that the school is supervised by the School of English has given us the opportunity to introduce many innovative projects, the results of which are processed and analysed within the lab.

A further area in which the research of the laboratory is active is the development of teaching and testing techniques and materials for children with specific learning difficulties (e.g. dyslexia).