“I feel like it’s giving me a lot as a language teacher to be a learner myself”: Factors affecting the implementation of a multilingual pedagogy as reported by teachers of diverse languages

To boost the foreign language learning process, language teachers need to know how to implement a multilingual pedagogy, that is, they should be able to draw on their and their students’ knowledge of other languages during lessons. This qualitative study explored the extent to which 21 foreign language teachers in Norwegian and Russian upper-secondary schools were willing and able to implement multilingual teaching practices and the factors that they thought affected this implementation. The findings revealed three main factors, namely, their language knowledge, their positioning as language learners, and the level of support they received, which the participants reported as strongly influencing the extent to which they were able and willing to draw on their and their students’ multilingualism as a pedagogical resource. The findings also indicated that participants did not implement multilingual teaching practices differently based on the languages they taught, although there were differences between the participants from Norway and Russia concerning the teaching of English. The study has important implications for research on language teaching and learning in multilingual environments, educational institutions, and teacher development programs.

Why am I learning English? Spanish EFL sports science university students´ motivational orientations through the prism of the L2 motivational self system

The study explores the motivational profiles of Spanish EFL sports science university students from the second language (L2) motivation self system (L2MSS) perspective to ultimately support Spanish higher institutions´ plans committed to improving employability and competitiveness. The study analyzes the relationships between L2 motivation, L2 proficiency, gender, and L2 contextual variables using data from 196 English as a foreign language (EFL) sports science university students. The data reveal that the ideal L2 self construct stands out as the most salient and powerful factor, while the ought-to and rebellious L2 selves are less significant and there are items loading on both of them at the same time. Thus, higher means for the ideal L2 self motivation correspond to higher levels of L2 proficiency and are supported by L2 learning contextual variables. The strongest ought-to L2 self was registered in students with mid-low L2 proficiency and a lack of L2 learning experiences. Meanwhile, the rebellious L2 self is clearly distinguishable only for students with high L2 proficiency. Pedagogical and curricular implications of these findings are that the ideal and the rebellious L2 selves could positively predict students´ L2 proficiency. Thus, new dynamics of education should explore language teaching methodologies that are more likely to enhance students´ ideal and rebellious L2 selves.

Second language listening comprehension: The role of anxiety and enjoyment in listening metacognitive awareness

Emotion in second language acquisition (SLA) has recently received greater attention because it is largely implicated in daily conversations, which may affect second or foreign language (L2) use including listening comprehension. Most research into emotion and L2 listening comprehension is focused exclusively on anxiety, with an attempt to reduce its negative effects on individuals’ listening performance. With the arrival of positive psychology in SLA, researchers began to take a holistic view of a wider range of emotions including enjoyment that language learners experience during their L2 communication. The current study explored the relationships among listening anxiety, enjoyment, listening comprehension performance, and listening metacognitive awareness among a group of 410 international students in a Canadian university. Correlational analyses showed that listening anxiety was negatively correlated with enjoyment. However, these two variables shared only 18% of their variance, indicating that listening anxiety and enjoyment are related but independent emotions. This study suggests that anxiety and enjoyment in L2 listening are not the opposite ends of the same emotional continuum, but each serves a different purpose. L2 learners should work to find intriguing and enjoyable experiences in language learning, rather than focusing merely on reducing anxiety.

Directed motivational currents: A systematic review

Directed motivational currents, unique and intense goal-directed motivational surges lasting over a period of time, have received increasing attention recently. This article reports the first systematic review of this phenomenon. A total of 21 reports appearing between 2013 and 2020 were included in the analysis. The results show that the majority of empirical reports were small-scale qualitative studies (median = 18 participants). The evidence on the three characteristics proposed as necessary and/or distinguishing conditions of directed motivational currents (vision, salient facilitative structure, and positive affect) is inconclusive due to the presence of directed motivational currents cases not exhibiting these features, and the absence of direct comparative analyses with non-directed motivational currents cases. A few intervention studies (N = 4) were conducted, but their results are also inconclusive due to a number of methodological limitations. Contrary to the claim that directed motivational current experiences are the “optimal form” of motivation, the results additionally showed that these experiences could lead to intense stress, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, and panic attacks, thereby raising ethical concerns about deliberately inducing directed motivational currents in learners. We conclude that, although the concept of directed motivational currents is promising, more research is needed to reach a better understanding of its potential. We end this article by suggesting directions for future research into directed motivational currents, including renaming them as sustained flow.

Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.

Editorial

The present issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching is the last in the 2021 volume and concludes the eleventh year of the existence of the journal. Looking back, it has been an exceptionally good year for SSLLT. First, we have been receiving a constantly increasing number of submissions and, what is of paramount importance for any journal, most of these submissions have been of very high quality. Second, we are very happy with the scope and quality of the papers that have been published, including those comprising the special issue on teaching English reading and writing to young learners, which was guest-edited by Barry Lee Reynolds and Mark Feng Teng. Third, and perhaps most importantly, not only has SSLLT been finally indexed in the Web od Science, but it is also listed among the 20 best journals in linguistics (18/193), with the impact factor of 3.036 (Q1) (JCR). Achieving this status has been a long and arduous process but at the same time an extremely rewarding journey. Obviously, this undeniable success would not have been possible without all of those who have lent their support to the development of SSLLT from the get-go. My sincere thanks go to Associate Editors, all the guest editors of special issues, members of the Editorial Board, the many hundreds of reviewers and, first and foremost, to all the amazing authors who have chosen SSLLT as a venue for their work. I can assure all of you that we will not be resting on our laurels and will do everything in our power to keep up the good work to further enhance the position of SSLLT in the field. We are also hoping to be able to celebrate its success with a face-to-face conference to be held in Kalisz, Poland in October 2022. We are currently working on the call for papers and we are planning to send it out in the next month or so.

Review of Learning words from reading: A cognitive model of word-meaning inference; Author: Megumi Hamada; Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021; ISBN: 978-1-3501-5368-4; Pages: 168

Book Review: Learning words from reading: A cognitive model of word-meaning inference. Author: Megumi Hamada. Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. ISBN: 978-1-3501-5368-4. Pages: 168

Review of Individual differences in language learning: A complex systems theory perspective; Authors: Carol Griffiths, Adem Soruç; Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020; ISBN: 978-3-030-52900-0; Pages: 220

Book Review: Individual differences in language learning: A complex systems theory perspective. Authors: Carol Griffiths, Adem Soruç. Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. ISBN: 978-3-030-52900-0. Pages: 220.

Morphological instruction and reading development in young L2 readers: A scoping review of causal relationships

This scoping review explores the causal relationship between morphological instruction and reading development in young L2 learners by synthesizing 12 primary studies published between 2004 and 2019 (N = 1,535). These studies focused on reading English as the target language and involved participants between kindergarten and Grade 12 from four countries (China, Egypt, Singapore, and the USA). Findings suggested that (a) morphological instruction led to consistent and positive gains in L2 children’s morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, and the effect sizes (Cohen’s ds) ranged from small to large; and (b) the relationship between morphological instruction and other outcomes such as phonological awareness, word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension was inconclusive. Notably, transfer effects of L2 English morphological instruction on novel word learning in English or on reading development in an additional language were only examined and observed in four primary studies. Discussion was provided regarding future instructional and research design.