Author: Laura Portoles Falomir Maria Pilar Safont Jorda

Maria Pilar Safont Jordà is an Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics and Multilingualism and Director of the Multilingual Education Unit at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló, Spain. Her research interests revolve around the development of pragmatic competence by third language learners of English, and factors influencing third language use and early multilingualism. Her most recent publications include, among others, “Pragmatic Competence in Multilingual Contexts” in The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (2011); “Early pragmatic development in consecutive third language learning” in the International Journal of Multilingualism (2012); and “Early stages of trilingual pragmatic development” in the Journal of Pragmatics (2013).Laura Portolés Falomir is an Assistant Professor, a Member of the LAELA research group (gruplaela.uji.es/) and Secretary of the Multilingual Education Unit at Universitat Jaume I, Spain. Dr Portolés received her PhD in Applied Linguistics, and her research interests include third language acquisition, affective factors, early pragmatic development and multilingual education. Her most recent publication is Multilingualism and Very Young Learners: An Analysis of Pragmatic Awareness and Language Attitudes (De Gruyter, forthcoming).