Teacher identity building rather than learning teaching in terms of skills and subsystems has recently been acknowledged as a priority in future teacher preparation. Several teacher identity models have been offered, including the 3A Language Teacher Identity Framework (3ALTIF) (Werbińska, 2017a) in which teacher identity comprises affiliation (teachers’ willingness to teach), attachment (teachers’ beliefs related to their teaching) and autonomy (teachers’ agentive, reflective, and resilient powers). With hindsight, it seems that the 3ALTIF, which
drew on other identity models available at the time of its conception, does not address the affective side of language teacher identity explicitly enough and therefore can hardly embrace the uniqueness of this profession. That is why we decided to explore the issue of emotions more deeply and conduct a lengthy duoethnographic narrative to consider the 3ALTIF’s ‘missing’ component for the future ‘improvement’ of the 3ALTIF. Duoethnography was chosen as a qualitative research method thanks to its novelty, its suitability for investigating identity issues and the opportunity it provides for us to explain and express ourselves. In our
duoethnographic dialogues we focused on our own emotions from three perspectives: former school language teachers, language teachers as parents, and language teacher educators, all of which are the roles we have played. The findings reveal our experience of emotions that once affected us and also suggest that emotions are not only psychological constructs but have social dimensions as well.

The importance of understanding language teacher identity is well-established in the existent literature. It has been shown to impact upon many aspects of teachers’ lives both inside and outside the classroom, such as wellbeing (Day & Kington, 2008) and self-efficacy (Canrinus, Helms-Lorenz, Beijaard, Buitink, & Hofman, 2012). The nature of language teacher identity is broadly categorised from a socio-cultural perspective, as dynamic rather than static, as negotiated in social interaction and (potentially) a source of struggle (Barkhuizen, 2017)
or friction (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). As this struggle with identity comes to the fore during periods of transition, when identity is seen to be challenged, the focus of research has largely been trained on pre-service or early-service teachers (Mercer & Kostoulas, 2018). The research in this paper addresses a teaching population who have thus far escaped the research gaze, but aspects of whose identity could be problematic and possible sites of struggle. Drawing upon a narrative approach, in case-study form, I examine how two established teachers (with four years or more service) who have been trained to work in the state-school
context and who, for a variety of reasons are now working outside it, construct their language teacher identities. The findings point to the importance of the teachers’ own experiences as learners in their identity formation, and how emotion accompanies and acts as a driver of identity change as they seek stability and status on an uncertain professional path.

Language teacher wellbeing in the private education sector has almost been completely neglected in research. This study examines a well-functioning institution in the private sector and analyzes the systemic and contextual factors that contribute to the flourishing of its teachers. The case study explores the wellbeing of English language instructors by means of open questionnaires, in-depth semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. The findings reveal a number of facets contributing to positive teacher wellbeing at the systemic, institutional level, such as corporate culture, policies, organization, management, opportunities for professional growth, and social life, as well as adequate resources, and good physical working conditions. Most good practice emerging from the research is universal and can be implemented by language institutions in all contexts. However, some variables that affect language teacher wellbeing at this workplace are specific to the nature of the institution and, therefore, could not be put into practice elsewhere.

This paper discusses diagnostic abilities of novice teachers of English as a foreign language in Poland as demonstrated through analyzing critical incidents (CIs). A case study, designed to explore patterns and regularities in cognitive processes that practitioners activate to examine disorienting situations in their educational context, provided evidence of effective mental work of beginner teachers at the verbal and conceptual levels. Specifically-structured written reports on what the instructors considered critical moments in their teaching practice served as a tool to verbalize how they represent, interpret, and value phenomena in the FL classroom by activating and integrating various sources of professional knowledge. The data analysis, which included both identification of the character of mental representations the subjects stimulated during the recall as well as higher order thinking operations on these representations, led to the conclusion that the inexperienced teachers show a degree of efficacy to register relations and variation in classroom realities, to problematize the unproblematic, to take position on matters, and to formulate relevant feedback for their future didactic moves. This encourages a hypothesis that teachers’ diagnostic abilities are not necessarily determined by the current state of their professional expertise and that limited classroom experience does
not suppress adequate cognitive and affective responses to problems in beginner practitioners.

This paper reports on two ways in which success and failure can be operationalized and quantified in a non-institutional L2 learning context such as language tandem setting. We draw on the SITAF database, where we gathered 25 hours of video-recorded conversations held by 21 pairs, each consisting of a native speaker of English and a native speaker of French. The tandems performed collaborative tasks in both languages, thus giving each participant ample opportunity to be both the ‘expert’ and the ‘novice’ (learner) part of the dialogue. The tandem partners met regularly and autonomously outside of the recording sessions, and making progress in their L2 was one of their declared goals. Two possible measures of success in achieving this goal are: (1) the quality and quantity of learner uptake which followed the expert’s corrective feedback (CF) during the recorded conversations. Significant differences between the two L1 groups were observed: while 52% of the CF given by the native French speakers met with total uptake, over 52% of the English CF generated no uptake at all; (2) the participants’ own narratives of progress, as both the experts and the learners, obtained through questionnaires they filled out at the end of the program. Our study aims to contribute to the discussion on the stakes of successful L2 informal learning (with a focus on the acquisition of L2 pronunciation) by adopting a perspective which combines learners’ spoken output data and learners’ perceptions of their own language learning activity.

In accordance with the assumptions of the sociologically grounded labelling theory, an individual’s self-perception and, consequently, their actions, might be influenced by words used to describe them. Also, in the context of education, including the field of foreign language learning, such a process of defining learners in a simplified way, has been proven to have profound consequences of psychological nature. The main purpose of the article is to outline the results of a study in which 37 teachers of English shared the stories of their most
“difficult” students. The qualitative analysis of the gathered descriptions allowed the identification of some common features characteristic of, so-called, hopeless cases, among which motivation-related problems are the most often enumerated ones. Additionally, many teachers wrote about their struggles while teaching students with special educational needs. The views expressed by the participants of the study might help understand the way in which opinions about students are formulated as well as point to the need for significant changes to be made in the area of foreign language teacher education and training.

Participating in oral L2 communication may be challenging for English-medium higher education students. While literature suggests that scaffolding facilitates the development of L2 speaking, research has not addressed the notion of tools for scaffolding its development. The aim of this study is twofold: (1) to investigate how scaffolding can be embodied in tool design to support L2 speaking and (2) to obtain and analyse student perceptions of the tools. We draw on questionnaire data gathered in two iterations of a larger design-based research study conducted in two contexts: English Studies students in Poland (N = 26) and culturally and linguistically diverse L2 learners in Australia (N = 12). This study illustrates how features of scaffolding were applied to map instructor, peer- and technology-based tools in terms of learning activities, resources, technology and feedback. The results suggest that these tools may cater to the multiple levels of student understanding and skill with regard to the development of L2 speaking found in modern L2 classrooms.

The study investigates the relationship between English Philology students’ motivation for studying Business English and their actual knowledge of business terminology, some underlying economic concepts and basic rules of business correspondence. It is hypothesized that students who have higher motivation also possess more extensive knowledge of Business English, yet motivation alone is not enough but must be accompanied by a real effort put in studying the language. The study consisted of a test focusing on business terminology, the correction of errors in a business letter, and a test of selected economic concepts, followed by a questionnaire. As the results show, both the students’ motivation and knowledge of Business English are varied. In particular, their knowledge varies between years of studies and areas of terminology or skills. In fact, some of the terms proved difficult even for relatively advanced students. Thus, even though motivation does play a role, its role does not seem to be decisive, as Business English is a complex field whose mastery requires extensive study and a lot of sustained effort. However, their awareness of their language needs is quite high, so they are likely to remain motivated and to attain a high level of competence in Business English.

The present study explores the acceptability of postverbal subjects by intermediate and advanced L2 English learners with L1 Macedonian, a pro-drop Slavic language with rich verbal morphology. The two languages differ regarding the distribution of subject-verb inversion (SVI): in Macedonian, it is a default pattern in thetic sentences, but English severely restricts SVI to specific contexts. To test the hypothesis that Macedonian learners encounter difficulties in acquisition of English SVI because of crosslinguistic influence, a grammaticality judgement and correction task was administered to two groups of Macedonian learners of
English and a control group of English native speakers. The results revealed that L2 learners find English VS sentences and VS + it-insertion examples more acceptable than the native speakers, but the performance of the advanced group is closer to the native speakers than to the intermediate learners. Both non-native groups accept more readily inappropriate English sentences that conform to typical L1 structures.

With the intent of adding to the literature leading toward a more complete theory of second language vocabulary acquisition, this study elicited accuracy data from 110 ESL learners ranging from novice high to advanced low on 64 words randomly selected in the 2K–3K range of Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (32 verbs, 24 nouns, 8 adjectives) covering eight aspects of word knowledge. These included spelling based on hearing the spoken form, selecting collocations based on the written form, pronunciation based on the written form, selecting inflections based on the written context, selecting the definition based on hearing the spoken form, selecting the written definition based on the written form, selecting appropriate derivations based on the written form, and selecting the written form based on the written definition. ANOVA results show accuracy levels varied across word knowledge aspects and that implicational scaling was possible with some but not all aspects of word knowledge examined simultaneously. In aggregation with other current and future studies, this has important implication for developing L2 vocabulary acquisition theory.

While there is substantial research on literacy in the L1, factors impacting literacy in the L2 remain understudied. Preliminary research indicates that orthographic accuracy and typology influence literacy acquisition, indicating these aspects of linguistic representation need further exploration within the context of second-language acquisition (SLA). Additionally, SLA research on individual learner differences highlights emotional factors such as attitude and motivation, which are widely considered critical indicators of L2 success. Motivation is closely linked to perceptions towards the L2, which indicates learner perceptions of L2 literacy could impact success in learning to read and write. As such, this paper presents a cross-lingual, mixed-methods study that compares the orthographic transparency and typologies of 26 languages against learners’ (n = 217) perceptions of L2 literacy acquisition, such as perceived difficulty of the orthography and a self-assessment of literacy skills. Results indicated that orthographic transparency has a greater impact on learners’ perceptions compared to typology alone.

This is a book review of Zoltán Dörnyei and Katerina Mentzelopoulos. Lessons From Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency: Motivation, Cognition and Identity. Multilingual Matters. 2022.