Research

Sharing my research

I study how how additional languages are learnt and taught.

Research themes

Vocabulary acquisition

How learners pick up new words and formulaic language incidentally from reading, listening, songs, comics and other authentic, multimodal input.

Critical and applied sociolinguistics

Language ideologies, language policy and multilingualism, including how people live their languages when they move between countries.

Language technologies

Critical and educational perspectives on language technologies, including large language models and multimodal AI.

Published journal articles

2026 · The Modern Language Journal

Reading versus listening: Which one is more effective for incidental vocabulary learning?

Aliyar, M., Siyanova-Chanturia, A., & Skalicky, S. · 110(1), 6–30

Eighty-eight university learners of Italian read half of an authentic novel, listened to an audiobook of the same segment, or were in a control group. Both reading and listening led to vocabulary gains for single words and multi-word expressions, and the gains lasted three weeks. Listening produced significantly larger gains than reading, which supports using authentic audio in language teaching materials.

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2025 · Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

Lived language and mobility: A case of young Iranians in Italy

Aliyar, M. · 47(8), 5094–5114

Interviews with young Iranians living in Italy show how beliefs about Iran’s language policies, shaped by monolingual and assimilative agendas at home, are reworked through life abroad. Their views range from unity- and identity-centred monolingual positions to more inclusive multilingual stances, suggesting that exposure to other language regimes can broaden understanding of language diversity.

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2025 · Research Syntheses in Applied Linguistics

Thirty-five years of research on idioms in second language acquisition: A methodological review

Heidari, K., & Aliyar, M. · 1(1), 161–183

A systematic review, following PRISMA, of the methods used in research on learning and teaching idioms between 1990 and 2024. It maps the methodological features of the field and offers a foundation for more rigorous future studies.

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2022 · Reading in a Foreign Language

Incidental acquisition of Italian words from comic books

Aliyar, M., & Peters, E. · 34(2), 349–377

In a four-week pretest–posttest study, 35 Iranian learners of Italian (25 of whom read and then read while listening to four comic books) showed gains in incidental vocabulary. Comics appear to be a valuable and effective source of input, including for novice learners.

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2020 · Journal of Second Language Teaching & Research

A corpus-based analysis of linguistic interference of Italian native speakers in English and Spanish written production as a foreign language

Aliyar, M. · 8(1), 103–137

Using corpora of essays written by Italian university students in English and Spanish, the study classifies learner errors by source. It finds that first-language influence is very strong, outweighing intralingual factors such as overgeneralisation, and that it remains substantial however similar the first language is to the target language.

Article page

Forthcoming

Vocabulary (with A. Siyanova-Chanturia), in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning, 3rd ed.Book chapter, in press
Text types and grading (with A. Siyanova-Chanturia), in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning, 3rd ed.Book chapter, in press
Lessico dell’italiano di uso quotidiano in 60 giorni, Nasl-e-Novin Press, TehranA multimodal Italian vocabulary textbook for Persian-speaking learners, in press

Work under review

Does reading comics enhance incidental vocabulary acquisition? On the effects of imagery, glossing, and repetitionwith H. Yan and A. Siyanova-Chanturia
Music and lexical growth: On the role of listening to songs in incidental learning of L2 vocabularywith A. Siyanova-Chanturia
Pictures or glosses? An exploratory study comparing their relative effectiveness in incidental vocabulary acquisitionwith A. Siyanova-Chanturia and H. Yan
How does generative AI reshape government consultation communication?with J. Manning · special issue of English for Specific Purposes on digital transformation of specialised institutional communication

Current projects

Postdoctoral research investigating "Language, Cognition, & AI"

Together with my supervisor, Dr Stephen Skalicky, we investigate how people process and interpret linguistic and contextual information, while also examining how multimodal AI models represent ironic contrast using multimodal text and image AI models to build a computational representation of ironic contrast.

Corpus of Trade Agreements

Compiling the Corpus of Text of Trade Agreements with Dr Matthew Castle, as part of an inter-faculty project at Victoria University of Wellington.

Invited talks

2026

Language policies and ideologiesGuest lecture, University of Canterbury
Novel, audiobook, and songs: Input modality and the incidental learning of L2 vocabularySeminar, University of Canterbury
Incidental acquisition of novel L2 vocabulary from authentic materialsSeminar, Victoria University of Wellington

2025

Researching teaching and learning of formulaic languageGuest lecture, Victoria University of Wellington
Incidental vocabulary acquisition and factors that affect learningGuest lecture, Victoria University of Wellington

2023

Incidental acquisition of L2 vocabulary from authentic inputCollaborative keynote, 7th National Conference, National University of Comahue, Argentina

A complete list of conference presentations is on my CV.