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Despite recently going through a sort of a crisis brought about by critical remarks made by eminent scholars (e.g., Dörnyei, 2005) about the raison d’être of the whole research area, the field of language learning/learner strategies (LLSs) is still very much alive and kicking. This is manifested by constant publication of meta-analyses (e.g., Plonsky, 2011), numerous journal articles, including state-of-the-art pieces (e.g., Pawlak, 2019), special issues of journals (e.g., Pawlak & Oxford, 2018) and books (e.g., Oxford, 2017), and the organization of a conference series (Situating Strategy Use [SSU]), all devoted exclusively to LLSs. The book under review here, Situating Language Learning Strategy Use: Present Issues and Future Trends, edited by Zoe Gavriilidou and Lydia Mitits, includes chapters originating in the talks delivered at the Second International Conference on SSU (Komotini, Greece, September 2017).

The regulation of language learners’ emotions by affective, or emotion-regulation strategies has received limited research attention. This gap is being filled among others by researchers who have developed and are applying a new research tool called Managing Your Emotions for Language Learning (MYE). It is based on the vignette methodology to investigate both positive and negative language learner emotions, emotion-regulation strategies that language learners employ, and language teachers’ interpersonal learner-directed emotion-regulation strategies used in a range of familiar language learning situations. In this study teachers’ interpersonal emotion-regulation strategies and their learner- and teacher-perceived effectiveness were investigated by means of MYE ( n = 64: English-major learners) and semi-structured interviews with learners ( n = 16) and teachers ( n = 9). The results revealed a rich context- and participant-dependent list of language teachers’ interpersonal emotion-regulation strategies, the frequency of which was perceived differently by language learners and teachers, who, however, agreed on their good effectiveness. The strategies belonging to the categories of ‘cognitive change’, ‘situation modification’ and ‘competence enhancement’ were used the most often, but some gaps in teachers’ strategic repertoires were also identified. Pedagogy-wise, MYE seemed to be suitable for closing the gap between learners’ and teachers’ perspectives on teachers’ learner-directed emotion-regulation strategy use. Teachers and their pedagogical practice would benefit from training in the area of emotion-regulation strategies and support of educational authorities.

As some language tests may be more anxiety-provoking than others, anxiety, other affective reactions, and related perceptions evoked by the English oral elicited imitation test (EI), a sentence repetition task measuring the implicit knowledge of grammar in a way not resembling natural communication, were investigated during first-time administration by means of a 10-point rating scale and a thought-listing tool. Because anxiety and other emotions cannot be interpreted in absolute terms, the same reactions induced by a special type of an English oral narrative test (ON) were investigated for comparison. A quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed EI to be more anxiety-provoking than ON as it created considerably higher levels of tension and worry. The possible causes include the perception of EI as very difficult, the uncertainty and confusion generated by the oral nature of its instruction and stimuli, and lack of an openly declared focus. Careful administration of EI is recommended to reduce anxiety and unfavorable perceptions. Other, much less frequent affective reactions to the tests and perceptions included satisfaction, curiosity, excitement, hope, confusion, interest, boredom, uncertainty, and concentration.

Hyperinsulinaemic hypoglycaemia (HH) is the most common cause of persistent hypoglycaemia in infants and children with incidence estimated at 1 per 50,000 live births. Congenital hyperinsulinism (CHI) is symptomatic mostly in early infancy and the neonatal period. Symptoms range from ones that are unspecific, such as poor feeding, lethargy, irritability, apnoea and hypothermia, to more serious symptoms, such as seizures and coma. During clinical examination, newborns present cardiomyopathy and hepatomegaly. The diagnosis of CHI is based on plasma glucose levels

Learners’ beliefs concerning the process of learning and teaching a foreign language without doubt play a very important role since they can determine the effectiveness of the instructional techniques and procedures that are employed by teachers, thereby considerably influencing the outcomes of that process. This applies in equal measure to teaching all the language skills and subsystems, including grammar instruction, or, more generally, form-focused instruction. In view of such considerations, the aim of the present paper is to report the findings of a study which sought to tap the beliefs of 106 Polish students of English philology with respect to such issues as the choice of the syllabus, the degree of integration of focus on form with meaning and message conveyance, the ways in which grammar structures are introduced and practiced as well as the provision of corrective feedback on grammar errors. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire specifically designed for this purpose (Pawlak, 2012, 2013b), which contained both Likert-scale and openended questions related to all of these areas. The analysis of the data demonstrates that the participants manifest clear preferences with respect to the process of learning and teaching grammar, which, on the one hand, may provide a basis for introducing modifications into grammar classes taught to English majors, and, on the other, makes it possible to identify areas that should be given more emphasis in the course of educating future teachers of English.

The relationship between foreign language anxiety (FLA) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE) experienced during a creative collaborative oral English-as-a-foreign-language task, and the relationships between FLE/FLA and task speech fluency were investigated. The task was performed by mid-intermediate/high-intermediate English learners ( N = 43) in groups and culminated in 2-minute monologues by every participant, the breakdown (the ratio and length of mid- and end-AS unit pauses) and speed (mean length of run, articulation rate, and phonation time ratio) utterance fluency of which was measured. The relationship between FLA and FLE fluctuated between task parts, form negligible to medium-strong negative. There were numerous negative links between FLA and fluency, and less numerous positive links between FLE and fluency of various strength. These lend support to earlier claims that FLA is associated with impaired second language (L2) outcomes and positive emotions may facilitate L2 learning/performance. The links between fluency and FLA and FLE experienced during collaborative L2 processing/practice preceding the monologue the fluency of which was examined were more frequent and stronger than links with the emotions during the monologue, pointing to the possible depletion and improvement of L2 processing caused respectively by FLA and FLE especially during this stage. The emotions were linked especially with fluency indices associated with speech formulation/encoding. In regression analyses, proficiency was the strongest predictor of fluency, followed by much weaker predictive power FLA and then FLE, which may be related to participants’ relatively high L2 advancement. The results imply that L2 teachers exploit the emotional impact of learning tasks and attend to the emotional atmosphere of L2 classes, especially their enjoyability.

Recent years have witnessed a shift in empirical investigations of language learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) from quantitative studies examining the ways in which WTC antecedents co-act and contribute to communication, treating the concept as a stable characteristic, to a mixed-methods approach that allows the examination of stable behavioral tendencies and dynamic changes brought about by contextual variables. The rationale behind this study comes from the assumption that more profound understanding of motives underlying learners’ readiness or reluctance to speak may help create classroom conditions that facilitate communication, thus contributing to linguistic attainment. More specifically, the study represents an attempt to tap factors that shape advanced learners’ WTC during conversation classes in four different groups of students. Each time, the data were collected by means of self-ratings (i.e. indications of the level of WTC on a scale from −10 to +10) and immediate reports (i.e. questionnaires including closed and open-ended items). A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that the extent to which WTC fluctuated was impacted by a range of contextual and individual factors. It was enhanced in particular when students were given the opportunity to communicate with familiar receivers in small groups or pairs on topics related to personal experiences.

The chapter reports a mixed-methods quasi-experimental study extending over one year which investigated the effects of strategy instruction (SI) aimed at anxiety reduction on affective strategy use, and language and test anxiety levels. Strategy use and anxiety levels were investigated not only in general terms (self-reported anxiety levels in a given type of situation, self-reported frequency of strategy use) but also in relation to two implementations of an actual oral English exam (self-reported anxiety and use of strategies before, during and after an oral English exam). The participants were English majors in a small Polish university (N = 23). The tools used were language learning strategy use surveys including Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (Oxford, 1990), Reactions to Tests (Sarason, 1984; a test anxiety survey), Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986), and anxometers (1-item 1–10 scales for measuring state anxiety). The results indicate that affective SI results in greater affective strategy use as well as the use of a larger range of strategies in general and in relation to the actual language exam when it is properly contextualized. An unequivocal reduction in anxiety levels as a result of SI was not detected possibly due to an insufficient amount of treatment and a small number of highly-anxious learners in the sample, with only some indications of an anxiety-reducing effect.

It has long been recognized that learners’ beliefs about different aspects of foreign language learning and teaching are bound to impinge on the effectiveness of these processes, and pronunciation is by no means an exception. The present paper reports the results of a study which aimed to offer insights into such beliefs and determine the relationship between perceptions of different aspects of pronunciation instruction and attainment, both with reference to speaking skills in general and this target language subsystem. The data were collected from 110 second- and third-year students of English philology enrolled in a 3-year BA program. The participants’ beliefs were tapped by means of a specifically designed questionnaire containing Likert-scale items, intended to provide information about the overall importance of pronunciation instruction, the type of syllabus, the design of classes devoted to pronunciation, the introduction of pronunciation features, the ways of practicing these features, and the role of error correction in this area. Open-ended questions were also included to determine the reasons why the participants liked or disliked learning pronunciation as well as the instructional practices towards which they held positive and negative attitudes. The information about attainment came from the spoken component of the end-of-the-year practical English examination.

According to Dornyei (2005), research into second language learning motivation has entered what could be labeled as the process-oriented period, in which the emphasis has been shifted from the investigation of learners’ motives and the magnitude of their efforts to the study of how these change in the course of time. There are still few studies, however, that have attempted to look at motivational change, particularly such that would tap into fluctuations in learners’ interest, engagement and effort over the course of a language lesson or a sequence of successive lessons. The present chapter aims to extend our scant knowledge in these areas by reporting the findings of a study which sought to explore motivational evolution in 38 vocational senior high school learners of English, looking both at their reasons for learning, longer-term involvement and engagement in four lessons, and, as such, it can be viewed as a follow-up on the research project undertaken by Pawlak (2012). The data were collected by means of multiple tools, namely: (1) detailed lesson plans, (2) interviews with selected participants conducted twice over the period of the study, (3) motivation grids filled out at five-minute intervals during a specific class, and (4) teachers’ and learners’ evaluations of the lessons involved. The data were subjected to quantitative and qualitative analyses which revealed that motivation is indeed in a state of flux and identified some factors potentially responsible for such temporal variation.

Attempts to redefine the concept of motivation in language learning with its major principle of integrativeness (e.g., Dornyei 2005, 2009; Yashima 2009) have brought into attention the fact that, in the case of the English language, identification of a specific target group with which to integrate has become problematic. Doubts concerning the explanatory power behind integrative motives has inspired researchers to look for a more reliable account of what drives people to engage in the lengthy and painstaking task of learning a foreign tongue, which resulted in the emergence of concepts such as the L2 Ideal Self (e.g., Dornyei 2009) or International Posture (Yashima 2009), understood as favourable disposition towards the international community and not any specific ethnic group. It appears that many learners of English as a foreign language have ceased to perceive the language as belonging to any particular national group, but rather view it as a universal code for international communication, very much linked to technology and popular culture. Considering the fact that nowadays approximately only one out of four people communicating in English is a native speaker of the language (NS) (Crystal 2003), it needs to be recognized that, in most cases, English is a means of communication for its non-native users (NNS). Undoubtedly, this cannot leave the system unaffected, neither does it leave NNSs’ views and attitudes unchanged. As observed by Singleton and Aronin (2007, p. 13), “English has (…) permeated the sense of identity of a large number of non-native speakers to the extent that it is now ‘owned’ by them.” Thus, it can be assumed that we are witnessing the emergence of a multiethnic community with which learners of English can identify. The study whose results are reported in the present chapter was undertaken with a view to exploring the opinions and perceptions held by students of English philology, the sample whose unique character needs to be recognized, concerning their awareness of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The data accumulated in the course of the present research imply that becoming native-like is still the objective that many learners strive after. However, the position of a native speaker as a paragon or a role model for language learners seems to have been taken over by a successful bilingual. Moreover, it transpires that philology students’ attention is rarely captivated by social and political issues concerning British or American society more than any other nationalities, which may necessitate changes in the way such issues are tackled in the language classroom.

The purpose of the present chapter is twofold. First, it provides both the traditional and CG descriptions of the grammatical units of English mentioned in the title of the chapter. The descriptions are offered because the teaching of these grammatical elements was the main focus of the empirical study reported in Chap. 5. Both kinds of descriptions are presented since the quasi-experiment described in that chapter compared the effects of teaching based on traditional descriptions of the grammatical phenomena in question with teaching outcomes based on CG descriptions. The second objective follows naturally from the first, and from the focus of the whole book, which is the exploration of the effectiveness of CG-inspired grammar teaching in comparison with instruction based on traditional grammars. The second aim is to compare and contrast the two kinds of grammatical description, i.e. traditional descriptions and descriptions offered by CG. This is done in the second part of the chapter, mostly on the basis of the descriptions provided in the first. The grammatical elements to be described are specifically the English present tense, the progressive aspect, and the distinction between stative and dynamic verbs. The contrast between stative and dynamic verbs is discussed, because it impinges on how English verbs are used in the present tense and the progressive aspect.

The ultimate focus of the present volume are the effects of teaching selected elements of the English tense/aspect system described at length in the previous chapter. Being morphological and, to a certain degree, syntactic in nature, the targeted linguistic features thus belong unequivocally to the area of grammar. Therefore, the present chapter focuses on the theoretical positions concerning grammar teaching that have originated in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and on instructional options which are at the disposal of foreign language teachers, including both methodological options and some choices in terms of pedagogical rules to be employed in instruction. At the outset, a brief clarification of the term grammar as employed here seems to be in order, given the plethora of possible perspectives from which it may be approached and a great number of conceptualizations of this notion related to these perspectives (cf. the relevant remarks and discussion by Pawlak 2006: Chap. 1; and Larsen-Freeman 2009). One of the many views of the grammatical component of language was in fact considered in detail in Chap. 2, which presented and discussed the CG conception of grammar as encompassing not only morphology and syntax, traditionally understood to constitute the core of grammar, but also the phonological level. What is more, it should be recalled that in CG grammar also comprises at least certain parts of the lexicon and the discourse/pragmatic component, because grammar is said to shade into them in a non-discrete fashion. Despite the adoption in CG of this almost all-encompassing view of grammar, in the present chapter, whose function is to consider the pedagogical options in grammar teaching and to review important theoretical issues surrounding this field, the notion of grammar is understood in a relatively narrow sense, which is close to its traditional view. Specifically, grammar is taken to refer to the formal elements of the morphological and syntactic language subsystems, together with their semantic interpretations and use. Sometimes the semantics and, especially, the use of grammatical elements might require reference to certain pragmatic factors, so pragmatics may also be included in some limited sense in this understanding of grammar. Such a restricted view of grammar is dictated by the focus of the quasi-experiment reported in Chap. 5, which investigated the teaching of primarily morphological, and, to a lesser extent, also syntactic units of English. It is also warranted by considerations of space, as the inclusion in our understanding of grammar of a wider range of linguistic units would certainly inflate the present chapter to an unfeasible size. Therefore, while for many purposes it is not unjustified to subsume a much broader array of entities under the heading of grammar, in the subsequent discussion of grammar teaching only instruction directed at morphological and syntactic features and their meanings/use is considered. Thus, since the term form is often taken in SLA and language teaching literature to be a synonym of grammar, the term form-focused instruction is used here as an equivalent of grammar teaching.

The purpose of this chapter is the introduction of the framework of Cognitive Grammar, a theoretical development within the field of cognitive linguistics, whose pedagogical application is the focus of the present work. As a first step, Sect. 2.2 introduces, in a general fashion, the overall area of cognitive linguistics, as well as Cognitive Grammar, one of its major subcurrents, together with its definition of grammar/language. All the subsequent sections present the theoretical and descriptive apparatus of Cognitive Grammar, introducing along the way its most relevant notions, definitions, distinctions, terms, etc. First, in Sect. 2.3, the Cognitive Grammar view of language as essentially meaningful, or, in other words, the theory’s symbolic thesis, is introduced and discussed. The introduction to the theory is further effected by explaining in a detailed manner, in Sects. 2.4 and 2.5, the above-mentioned definition of grammar/language espoused by Cognitive Grammar. This theory is further introduced through a discussion, in Sect. 2.6, of its view of the role of cognitive abilities in natural language. Finally, Sect. 2.7 summarizes the diverse array of issues treated in the whole chapter, spells out how Cognitive Grammar conforms to the principles of cognitive linguistics and briefly compares this theory with other cognitive approaches to grammar, evaluating, in a preliminary fashion, its pedagogical potential.

The study reported in the present chapter explores the effects of teaching, on the basis of their Cognitive Grammar (CG) descriptions, the meanings, use as well as form of the tense/aspect pairings known from traditional pedagogical grammar as the present simple and the present continuous and compares them with the effects of teaching based on traditional pedagogical descriptions. The account of the study includes a full-blown description of the treatment based on CG, which is a pioneering example of pedagogical practice exploiting CG descriptions of grammatical phenomena. As a result of applying mainly quantitative and complementing it with some qualitative analysis of the data obtained in the course of a quasi-experimental study, it is concluded that explicit form-focused instruction based on CG descriptions, which brought about gains comparable to those secured by traditional instruction, may be at least moderately effective with respect to fostering learners’ explicit grammatical knowledge. This may be explained by CG’s emphasis on the meaningfulness of grammar and its use of pictorial representations of the meanings of grammatical features.

This paper attempts to provide a state-of-the-art overview of research concerning the application of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) to foreign language pedagogy. The quantitative and qualitative growth of research on such applications has been so extensive as to give rise to the emergence of a subfield of Applied Cognitive Linguistics (ACL). This has been possible perhaps due to the existence of large areas of common ground between CL on the one hand and Applied Linguistics (AL) and Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) on the other, which are duly reviewed. Also surveyed are the numerous claims that CL is able to provide solutions to certain problems and dilemmas encountered in AL and FLT. This gives an idea of what CL might contribute to language teaching. Further contributions of this sort emerge from the review of the manifold recent theoretical proposals and empirical studies concerning the application in FLT of such central notions of CL as radial categories, prototype effects, metaphor, metonymy, embodiment, constructions and encyclopedic semantics. These applications have to do with teaching such essential L2 features as vocabulary, including phraseology and figurative language, grammar, phonology, reading, writing and speech acts. The advantages and problems of the applications are considered. Also, numerous samples of teaching practice inspired by CL are presented. Rather than being a totally new methodology, ACL seems to support and stimulate certain established aspects of FLT, lending them its own idiosyncratic turn. Previous ACL research needs to be complemented by further efforts according to an emerging research agenda.

Phonetics and Phonology.-Grammar: Morphology and Syntax.- Historical Linguistics.- Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis and Sociolinguistics.- Translation.