This paper presents a pilot study conducted within the framework of the PRIN 2022 COPLUS project, focused on specialised multilingual communication. The research is based on the hypothesis that learning academic communication in a foreign language can benefit from a multilingual metalinguistic approach grounded in authentic corpus data. After outlining the theoretical framework, drawn from De Mauro and Ferreri’s (2005) educational linguistics, the paper describes the methodology adopted and the results of a contrastive analysis carried out on comparable English and German corpora. This study examines three English phrasal verbs and their partial German equivalents within academic discourse. The results highlight specialised usages that are unclear to non-native learners. The paper concludes with reflections on the pedagogical effectiveness of this approach in teaching English as an L2 and German as an L3.