Santiago-Centred International Milieu for Interactional, Typological and Acquisitional Research
SCIMITAR is a forum for international cooperation among researchers oriented to the study of the interface between grammar and discourse in present-day English.
The methods used are strongly contrastive. We work on the intralinguistic comparison of different varieties of English, and cross-linguistic comparison of English with other languages, notably Spanish.
The tools are primarily those of corpus and computational linguistics, linguistic technology, digital / learning analytics, and big data, among others. The approaches taken include (systemic) functional and/or (critical) discourse (analysis) / cognitive models, quantitative and qualitative investigations, multimodality, contrastive pragmatics / linguistics, as well as those involved in the production of technology-enhanced educational materials for e-learning and m-learning (including serious games).
There are regular opportunities for research positions in SCIMITAR as Research Assistant, for graduate or undergraduate students; and for graduate students to do their theses. If you are considering this possibility, or if you are interested in any of the research areas covered by the team, please get in touch with us.
Events
- 24/11/2026: We invite students to participate in MIND Your Data: A Seminar on Excel, Critical Thinking and the Final-Year Dissertation, an activity organised within the framework of the MIND research project, focusing on the use of Excel as a tool to support academic research and the preparation of the Final-Year Dissertation. The seminar will take place on 24 November 2026, from 17:30 to 19:00, in Room 303 of the Faculty of Philology (USC).
- 31/10/2025: Book presentation event «Os sons do inglés no Camiño de Santiago (e-SoundWay). Un xogo serio para aprender a pronunciación inglesa. Manual de uso». Faculty of Philology (USC).
- 9-10/05/2025: The Scimitar and Stellae teams, with the support of the Discourse and Identity research group and IHUs, among other partners, have organized the VII edition of Santiago de Compostela International Workshop of Discourse Analysis: Digital Language Learning (IWoDA’25)
- 14/06/2024, Invited talk at ‘Primeras jornadas metodológicas sobre adquisición y fonética de la L2. Vitoria-Gasteiz. University of the Basque Country. https://laslab.org/primeras-jornadas-metodologicas-sobre-adquisicion-y-fonetica-de-la-l2/
- 29/04/2024 Lecture on Stops and taps, lads and chavs: The social life of /t/ in the South of England by Dr. Roy Alderton (City, University of London).
- 29-30/04/2024. Lecture on The functions of intonation in English and workshop on English speech production and perception—an interactive workshop by Dr. Roy Alderton (City, University of London).
- 07-08/07/2022. Organization of the Sixth Edition of Santiago de Compostela International Workshop on Discourse Analysis (IWoDA’22). Online & ‘Salón de Actos’ Faculty of Philology (USC). For more information visit: https://iwoda.es/
- 17/02/2022.Organization of webinar «Texts as logico-semantic complexes, varying in organization according to fields of activity within context», by Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (School of Foreign Languages, Hunan University).
- 20-21/05/2021. Organization of Ninth International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC9), in collaboration with the Department of Modern Languages of the University of Genoa (Italy). Villa Durazzo (https://villadurazzo.it/?lang=en), in Santa Margherita-Portofino (Italy). For more information visit: https://sites.google.com/view/iclc9
- 10/02/2021. Organization of audio lecture on Intercultural Rhetoric and Academic Writing. Guest speakers: Ulla Connor & Matthew Hume (Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)). Faculty of Philology (USC).
- 03-04/02/2021, Organization of postgraduate and undergraduate seminars on Researching political discourse: populism and new media. Guest speaker: Ruth Breeze (University of Navarra). Faculty of Philology (USC).
https://www.usc.gal/gl/xornal/eventos/researching-political-discourse-populism-and-new-media-impartido-ruth-breeze
Newest Publications
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Gómez González, M. Á., & Sánchez Roura, M. T. (Forthcoming). English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish: From Theory to Practice. Mouton-Brill. Revised Second Edition. (Book)
- Jarazo Álvarez, R. (et al.) (Forthcoming). Education in the Digital Age: Innovations in Language Learning. Language in the Digital Age Series. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang Verlag. (Book)
- Gómez González, M. Á., & Jarazo Álvarez, R. (Fortcoming). Exploring e-ProFun: Linguistic-Pedagogical Foundations and Content Evaluation of a Digital English Pronunciation Tool for Primary Education. In R. Jarazo Álvarez et al., Education in the Digital Age: Innovations in Language Learning. Peter Lang.
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Gómez González, M. Á., López Ardao, J. C., Lago Ferreiro, A. & Fraga Varela, F. (2026). English Pronunciation is Fun (e-ProFun). Un juego serio para enseñar y aprender la pronunciación del inglés en la educación primaria y secundaria. Universidade de Vigo. ISBN 978-84-1188-108-1. https://doi.org/10.35869/1188.1081
- Gómez González, M. Á., Lago Ferreiro, A., Torrado Cespón, M., Díaz Lage, J. M. & Fragueiro Agrelo, Á. (2025). Los sonidos del inglés en el Camino de Santiago (e-SoundWay). Un juego serio para aprender la pronunciación inglesa. Universidade de Vigo University Press. Trilingual Edition: Spanish–Galician–English. Features two integrated QR codes providing access to the games e-SounWay: The Route and e-SoundWay: Free-Roaming. (Book)
To purchase the book with access codes, visit the UVigo Publication Service website: https://www.uvigo.gal/es/i-d-i/difusion-investigacion/servicio-publicaciones.
- Lago Ferreiro, A., Gómez González, M. Á., López Ardao, C. (2025). A New Serious Game (e-SoundWay) for Learning English Phonetics Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, Vol. 9, Núm. 6, pp. 54
- Gómez González, M. Á., & García Murias, R. (2025). EFL Pronunciation Instruction in Spanish Primary Schools: From Prescribed Curriculum to Classroom Practice. Education Sciences 2025, 15(4), 427; https://doi.org/10.3390/
educsci15040427
Read more
- Gómez González, M. Á. (2024). What Apps? Evaluating Current Applications for Learning English Pronunciation. In J. Belda, C. Holgado-Sáez, J. Gutiérrez-Artacho (Eds.), Digital Language Learning. New Approaches and Methods (pp. 127-152). Peter Lang.
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Gómez González, M. Á. & Lago Ferreiro, A. (2024b). Web-assisted instruction for teaching and learning EFL phonetics to Spanish learners: Effectiveness, perceptions and challenges. Computers and Education Open (CAEO). 7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
caeo.2024.100214. - Gómez González, M. Á. & Lago Ferreiro, A. (2024a). Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT): An empirical evaluation of EPSS Multimedia Lab. Language Learning & Techonology. 28(1), 1-44. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/
73565 - Gómez González, M. Á., Lago Ferreiro, A., Torrado Cespón, M., Díaz Lage, J. M. & Fragueiro Agrelo, A. Forthcoming. Los sonidos del inglés en el Camino de Santiago (e-SoundWay). Un juego serio para aprender la pronunciación inglesa. Universidade de Vigo University Press. Trilingual Edition: Spanish–Galician–English. Features two integrated QR codes providing access to the games e-SoundWay The Root and e-SoundWay Free-Roaming.
- Gómez González, M. Á. & Silvano, Purificación. (2024). Developing a comparative model of predicted associations for invariable question tag types in British English and European Portuguese. In A. Baicchi & C. Broccias Cristiano (Eds.) 2023, Constructional and Cognitive Explorations of Contrastive Linguistics. Berlin, Springer. 173-214.
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Santos Díaz, I.C., Gómez González, M.A. & Díaz Lage, J.M. (2024). Do you speak English? Teachers and students’ perceptions and pronunciation practices. Logos: Revista de Linguistica, Filosofia y Literatura 34 (1), 72-102. https://revistas.userena.cl/
index.php/logos/article/view/ 2240 - Torrado Cespón, M. & Díaz Lage, J. M. (2024). English phonetics and grammar for speakers of Spanish. EPSS Multimedia Lab and CleverCookie as tools to improve written skills online.
- Castillo Rodríguez, C. & Navas Romero, C. (2023). Digital storytelling in Primary Education: A comparison of already-made resources and story-creation tools to improve English as a foreign language. In M. Becerra Quero (coord.). La educación lectora: ciencia para la sociedad (pp. 387-400). Octaedro.
- Castillo Rodríguez, C., Torrado Cespón, M. & Lago Ferreiro, A. (2023). The ideal English pronunciation resource: non-native teachers’ beliefs. Opción 39: 131-154. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7637478
- Díaz Lage, J. M., Gómez González, M. Á. & Santos Díaz, I. C. (2023). Teaching and learning English phonetics / pronunciation in digital and other learning environments: Challenges and perceptions of Spanish instructors and students. In I. C. Santos Díaz, M. T. Cespón, J. M. Díaz Lage & S. López Pérez (Eds.). Current Trends on Digital Technologies and Gaming for Teaching and Linguistics (pp. 87-109). Berlin: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b20963
- Kolhatkar, V., Thain, N., Sorensen, J., Dixon, L., & Taboada, M. (2023). Classifying constructive comments. First Monday, 28(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v28i4.13163
- Gómez González, M. Á., Lago Ferreiro, A. & Fragueiro Agrelo, Á. (2023). Teaching & Learning English Pronunciation through Serious Games. In I. C. Santos Díaz, M. T. Cespón, J. M. Díaz Lage & S. López Pérez (Eds.). Current Trends on Digital Technologies and Gaming for Teaching and Linguistics (pp. 109-130). Berlin: Peter Lang. https://doi.org/10.3726/b20963
- Torrado Cespón, M. & López Pérez, S. (2023). Are you aware of your errors when writing online? Pre-service EFL primary school teachers’ English proficiency tested. In Ó. Ferreiro-Vázquez, A.T. Varajão Moutinho Pereira Correia & S. Lima Gonçalves Araújo (Eds.) Technological innovation put to the service of language learning. Peter Lang.
- Torrado Cespón, M. & Santos Díaz, I. C. (2023). CleverCookie. English Language Resources for Speakers of Spanish. In I. C. Santos Díaz et al. (Eds.).
- Castillo Rodríguez, C. & Rubio Gragera, M. (2022). Classdojo for gamifying the classroom: a systematic review. En M.M. Molero Jurado, A.B. Barragán Martín, M.M. Simón Márquez & A. Martos Martínez, (eds.). Innovación Docente e Investigación en Educación: Experiencias de Cambio en la Metodología Docente (pp. 471-484). Dykinson.
- Gómez González, M. Á., Lago Ferreiro, A. & Fragueiro Agrelo, Á. (2022). Design and implementation of serious games to teach and learn English Phonetics. The 10th European Conference on Education. IAFOR Journal of Education.
- Gómez González, M. Á. & Silvano, P. (2022). A functional model for the tag question paradigm: The case of invariable tag questions in English and Portuguese. Lingua: An International Review of General Linguistics 272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2022.103255 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002438412200016X
- Lago Ferreiro, A., Gómez González, M. Á., Llamas Nistal, M. & Fragueiro Agrelo, A. (2022). Aplicación multiplataforma para el aprendizaje de la fonética inglesa: Serious Game. In I. Plaza García, R. Igual Catalán, M. Oma Carmona, A. L. Esteban Sánchez, D. Antolín Cañada & J. D. Aguilar Peña (Eds.), Libro de actas TAEE 2022 XV Congreso de Tecnología, Aprendizaje y Enseñanza de la Electrónica. ISBN: 978-84-09-42360-6
- Torrado Cespón, M. & Díaz Lage, J.M. (2022). Gamification, online learning and motivation. A quantitative and qualitative analysis in higher education. Contemporary Educational Technology, 14(4), ep381. https://doi.org/10.30935/cedtech/12297
- Asr, F.T., Mazraeh, M., Lopes, A., Gautam, V., Gonzales, J., Rao, P. & Taboada, M. (2021). The Gender Gap Tracker: Using Natural Language Processing to measure gender bias in media. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0245533. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245533
- Castillo Rodríguez, C. & Navas, C. (2021). Team breakout in higher education: communication tools and experience of undergraduate students. In S. Liberal Ormaechea & J. Sierra Sánchez (Eds.). Retos y desafíos de la innovación educativa en la era post COVID-19 (pp.641-652). McGraw Hill. ISBN 978-84-486-3223-6.
- Ehret, K. & Taboada, M. (2021). Characterising online news comments: A multi-dimensional cruise through online registers. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence – Language and Computation 4(79). doi: 10.3389/frai.2021.643770
- Ehret, K. & Taboada, M. (2021). The interplay of complexity and subjectivity in opinionated discourse. Discourse Studies 23(2): 141-165.
- Gómez González, M. Á. & Taboada, M. (2021). Concession strategies in online newspapers comments. Journal of Pragmatics 174: 96-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.12.018
- Jiménez-Zafra, S., Cruz-Díaz, N., Taboada, M. & Martín-Valdivia, M. (2021). Negation detection for sentiment analysis: A case study in Spanish. Natural Language Engineering. 27: 225-248.
- Rao, P. & Taboada, M. (2021). Gender bias in the news: A scalable topic modelling and visualization framework. Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence – Language and Computation 4(82). doi: 10.3389/frai.2021.664737.
- Santos Díaz, I. C. & Ávila Muñoz, A. M. (2021). Creencias y actitudes lingüísticas de los universitarios malagueños hacia la variedad andaluza. Philologia Hispalensis, 35(1), 127-147. ISSN 1132-0265 / eISSN 2253-8321, Facultad de Filología de la Universidad de Sevilla. https://doi.org/10.12795/PH.2021.v35.i01.08
- Santos Díaz I. C., Trigo Ibáñez, E. & Romero Oliva, M. F. (2021). Contribución de la prensa a la adquisición del vocabulario. Studia Romanica Posnaniensia, 48(2), 97-108. https://doi.org/10.14746/strop.2021.482.009
- Santos Díaz, I. C., Trigo-Ibáñez, E. & Romero-Oliva, M. (2021). Predictores de la competencia léxica del futuro profesorado. Estudios Filológicos, 67, 223-245. doi:10.4067/s0071-17132021000100223
- Torrado Cespón, M. (2021) El uso de los emoticonos como fuerza ilocutiva en hablantes de inglés como lengua extranjera. Estudio de corpus. In C. J., Santos Martínez, S. Martínez y N. Martínez León (coords.) Alfabetizando digitalmente para la nueva docencia (pp. 411-422). Madrid: Pirámide. ISBN: 978-84-368-4262-3
- Torrado Cespón, M. (2021). TIC/TAC y COVID-19: uso y necesidades del profesorado de secundaria en Galicia. Digital Education Review, 39, 356-373. https://doi.org/10.1344/der.2021.39.%25p
- Torrado Cespón, M. & Gómez Domingo, M. (2021) Emotion in online gamification. A case study with pre-service primary school teachers. XI International Conference on Virtual Campus (JICV), 2021, pp. 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1109/JICV53222.2021.9600351.
- Torrado Cespón, M. & López Pérez, S. (2021) Frequent grammatical issues and how to solve them. A case study with pre-service EFL primary school teachers. In S. Millor Costas, J. Yuste Frías & O. Ferreiro Vázquez (Eds.), VI Congreso Internacional de lengua, lingüística y tecnología (techLING 21) (p. 98 ). Vigo: Grupo de investigación Tradución & Paratradución (T&P) da Universidade de Vigo.
- Viera, C. & Taboada, M. (2021). Aplicación de la lingüística sistémico-funcional al análisis de conferencias académicas. Revista Signos 54(105): 277-301
News
- 11/11/2026: New PhD Researchers at USC, SCIMITAR’s Institutional Hub. SCIMITAR welcomes two doctoral researchers at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), its main institutional hub.Celia Bermúdez Besteiro is pursuing her doctoral thesis, AI-Mediated Revision of L2 Academic Writing: A Discourse-Analytic Study of Textual Reconfiguration and Prompting Practices. She has also been awarded a predoctoral research contract funded by the Xunta de Galicia under its 2026 programme (ED481A-2026-044).Paula Vega Gómez, admitted to the PhD programme on 6 October 2026, is undertaking part-time doctoral research provisionally entitled From Standardised Phrases to Situated Interaction: Pragmatic and Intercultural Competence in Maritime English.Both doctoral projects are supervised by Prof. Dr. María de los Ángeles Gómez González and contribute to SCIMITAR’s research interests in discourse analysis, applied linguistics and language-related technologies.
- 10/11/2026: Alexandre Cantorna Torreira Joins SCIMITAR with a Research Project on Queer Pragmatics and Gender Identity. SCIMITAR welcomes Alexandre Cantorna Torreira, who will undertake the research project Queer Pragmatics and Gender Identity: Discursive Construction and Negotiation of Queer Identities in the Digital Space at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. María de los Ángeles Gómez González. The project explores the role of language and discourse in the construction, expression and negotiation of queer identities within digital environments, contributing to SCIMITAR’s research interests in queer linguistics, pragmatics, gender identity and digital communication. The research is supported by a Departmental Collaboration Grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports for the 2026–2027 academic year, awarded under the call issued by the State Secretariat for Education on 15 July 2026 (BOE No. 173, 17 July 2026; reference BOE-B-2026-24454). This project further strengthens SCIMITAR’s commitment to research into the intersections of language, identity and contemporary digital practices.
- 24/09/2026: New undergraduate researchers join SCIMITAR at USC. SCIMITAR is pleased to welcome a new cohort of fourth-year undergraduate students at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), the network’s main institutional hub, for the 2026–2027 academic year. The students include Alexandre Cantorna Torreira, Sofía Fernández Pintos, Ana Nieto Rego, Paula Piñeiro Lage, Pedro Valero López, and Iara Vázquez Manteiga. They will be preparing their BA dissertations under the supervision of Prof. Dr. María de los Ángeles Gómez González and Dr. Rubén Jarazo Álvarez, exploring topics aligned with SCIMITAR’s research interests.
- 1/11/2025: article published in the digital newspaper of La Voz de Galicia «Camino y tecnología se unen para mejorar la pronunciación en la lengua de Shakespeare«.
- 31/10/2025: Presentation of the book «Os sons do inglés no Camiño de Santiago (e-SoundWay). Un xogo serio para aprender a pronunciación inglesa. Manual de uso» on Galician regional television news (TVG) https://www.g24.gal/-/e-soundway-a-nova-app-galega-para-aprender-a-pronunciar-o-ingles
- 13/10/2025: article published in the digital newspaper of the University of Santiago de Compostela «Nace e-SoundWay, unha ferramenta educativa innovadora para a aprendizaxe da pronuncia do inglés a través da Ruta Xacobea«
- 24/07/2025: Mª del Carmen Echevarría Figueroa publishes an article about eSoundWay and eProFun in the digital newspaper of the University of Vigo under the title Innovación tecnolóxica galega para que o alumnado de primaria á universidade mellore a aprendizaxe da fonética inglesa a través do xogo.
- 5/10/2024: The Scimitar team together with the research group it belongs to, Discourse and Identity, have become members of the Institute for Research in the Humanities (‘Instituto de Investigación de Humanidades’) of the USC
- 18/02/2025: The project entitled «e-SoundWay: English sounds on the way. A serious game for learning English phonetics and pronunciation», submitted by María de los Ángeles Gómez González and Teresa Sánchez Roura with the collaboration of Ánxel Fragueiro Agrelo, was awarded the Teaching Innovation Prize by the Faculty of Philology at USC.
- Academic year 2024-2025 María Paz Varela has been awarded a Collaboration Grant with the Department of English and German Philology of the USC to carry out the project e-SoundWay FR (English Sounds on the Way: Free Roaming): Una herramienta aprender (Supervisor: María de los Ángeles Gómez González)
- 01/09/2024-07/10/2024. Professor María de los Ángeles Gómez González has been appointed Acting Head of the English & German Philology Department of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
- 06/2023. New Release. Santos Díaz, I. C., Torrado Cespón, M., Díaz Lage, J. M. & López Pérez, S. (Eds.) (2023). Current Trends on Digital Technologies and Gaming for Teaching and Linguistics. Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang Verlag.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b20963
- 01/12/2021. New Release. Gómez-González, M. Á., M. T. Sánchez Roura, and M. Torrado Cespón. 2021. English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish. A Practical Course Toolkit. Santiago de Compostela: Santiago de Compostela University Press – ISBN 978-84-18445-47-7. For further details visit: https://libros.usc.gal/en/categories/1040-english-pronunciation-for-speakers-of-spanish-english-pronunciation-for-speakers-of-spanish.html
- 07/06/2021. Professor J. Lachlan Mackenzie was invested Honorary PhD at the Spanish Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED). For more information visit:
Canal UNED – Investidura Doctores Honoris Causa UNED 2021: Bernard Vandermeersch y John Lachlan Mackenzie
- 07/10/2020. Prof. Dr. Luis Iglesias Rábade (English Philology) obtained another PhD in Law (“cum laude mention”) with his PhD dissertation entitled Los delitos de falsedad y su punición en los Derechos español e inglés. Estudio histórico comparado. Faculty of Law. USC.
- 28/03/2019. María de los Ángeles Gómez González was awarded the prestigious national XXII Rafael Monroy Research Prize for Experienced Researchers from the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics (AESLA) for the book The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction (co-edited with J. Lachlan Mackenzie).
https://www.usc.gal/es/node/753
El Correo Gallego
https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.296
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- 30/06/2018. María de los Ángeles Gómez González was awarded (in national competition) the Spanish Ministry of Education Salvador de Madariaga research grant to investigate discourse relations in the Discourse Processing Lab of Simon Fraser University.
- 25/02/2017. Gómez González, M. Á., M. T. Sánchez Roura, M. Torrado Cespón, A. Rollings and M. D. Gómez Penas 2017. English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish (EPSS): DVD Toolkit. Interactive multimediaDVD. Santiago de Compostela: Santiago de Compostela University Press – ISBN 978-84-16954-20-9. Link to (EPSS): DVD Toolkit presentation
- 15/4/2016. We are pleased to announce that Christopher Butler and Francisco Gonzálvez García have received the AESLA 2016 Prize for experienced researchers for their book Exploring Functional-Cognitive Space at the annual meeting of the Spanish Society for Applied Linguistics in Alicante.
- 01/01/2016. We are pleased to announce the release of the USC English Phonetics toolkit (book and companion website) developed by SCIMITAR members in the English and German Department of the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC):
- Gómez González, M.Á. and M.T. Sánchez Roura. 2016. English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish. From Theory to Practice (EPSS). Boston/Berlin/Beijing: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Gómez Gómez González, M. Á., M. T. Sánchez Roura, M. Torrado Cespón, A. Rollings and M. D. Gómez Penas. 2016. EPSS (English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish) Multimedia Lab. © Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 2016(First Edition), 2019 (Second Revised Edition), http://www.usc.es/multilab/
- Gómez González, M.Á. and M.T. Sánchez Roura. 2016. English Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish. From Theory to Practice (EPSS). Boston/Berlin/Beijing: Mouton de Gruyter.