This study examined the motivational impact of affect/interaction in emergency remote teaching (ERT) Portuguese L2 classes. Participants were two groups of students from 13 countries living in Portugal (N = 16). A mixed-method paradigm was adopted, consisting of a closed questionnaire, class observations, and semi-structured interviews. Results showed a generally positive impact of the practices adopted by both teachers. Comparatively, the group whose teacher evidenced a stronger affect-based strategy presented better results in measures related to motivation to learn Portuguese (MLP), perception of the teacher/classes (PTC), perception of individual capacities (PIC) and test anxiety, regardless of learners being more critical of the lack of socialization and reticent about sharing personal information. However, the group whose teacher favored interactive tasks showed greater engagement and enjoyment/flow. Statistical tests revealed a significant positive correlation between PTC and MLP, and a negative correlation between these two and test anxiety. It is proposed that the combination of affect and interaction can compensate for the demotivating effect of lack of face-to-face contact in ERT L2 classes.

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) can have a detrimental impact on language production, which can have dire consequences for students completing a degree in a language other than their mother tongue. Studies have shown speakers to cope with FLA by using time-gaining mechanisms, manifesting in utterance disfluencies. Research exploring the mechanisms in which FLA impacts oral fluency measures is limited particularly among learners completing a degree abroad immersed in the target language, where FLA can impact life both inside and outside of the classroom. The current study investigated the impact of FLA on the English utterance fluency of international students undertaking a degree in the UK and examined how the presence of native-speaker listeners affected this relationship. After the completion of questionnaires regarding FLA, the participants took part in an online Zoom call and completed a monologue-style speaking task. They were randomly allocated to either a control condition or an experimental condition, which had four native-speaker listeners in the audience. Speech samples for the speaking task were then analyzed for utterance fluency variables. The results showed that the participants scoring higher on FLA produced a significantly higher percentage of utterance disfluencies while speaking. Contrary to expectations, the participants allocated to the control condition were no less anxious than participants in the experimental condition, indicating possibly high FLA merely due to the requirement of speaking. The findings of this study provide important implications for educators in understanding how FLA may impact students’ utterance fluency when required to speak in class.

Identity has a prominent place in language education. It can be manifested by the imagined L2 self, understood as a realization of how L2 learners imagine, perceive and talk about their experience of being an L2 user. It might be argued that undergraduate students of foreign languages should exhibit more complex language identities, as their imagined L2 selves are shaped by their rich language repertoires. The major aim of the study was to examine undergraduate students’ imagined L1 and L2 selves, by investigating two dimensions of their complex language identity, namely: how they view these languages and how they feel using these languages. A total of 200 students (88 English major, 67 German major and 45 Swedish major students) completed a questionnaire designed to explore their specific perception of the languages they speak and the way they feel using them. The results offer an interesting insight into the complex language identity profiles of the participants and their imagined selves. Overall, the students seem to show high language awareness; they are sensitive to the differences in language systems, including the sounds and the pragmatics of a given language. The students also exhibit very positive attitudes towards their imagined L2 selves. It is, thus, suggested that language teachers provide a platform for the students to express their complex identities by incorporating language journals, or language biographies, in order to allow the students to explore their identities in more depth. It can also be argued that the teachers could capitalize on the affective dimension of the students’ L2 identity, by fostering the students’ intrinsic motivation and supporting their investment in learning.

Teaching and research are central aspects of university scholars’ work. To provide a high quality of teaching and research, scholars are required to continually learn and develop professionally. Only recently have some empirical studies that focused on academics’ motivations and emotions attempted to explain key outcomes related to their research, teaching, and professional development. This study adopted a self-determination lens to explore academics’ motivation to learn foreign languages, an area that has hardly been scrutinized due to an assumption that academics are highly motivated. The sample consisted of 593 academics (330 women) from nine public and one non-public higher education institutions in Krakow, Poland. The participants also self-rated their level of proficiency in English, French, German, Spanish, and Russian. The results from the Polish version of the Language Learning Orientations Scale—intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, amotivation (LLOS-IEA) (Noels et al., 2000) showed that these university academics were characterized by both intrinsic motivation and the most internalized form of extrinsic motivation (identified regulation). These have been considered to be optimal forms of motivation with positive outcomes. Statistically significant differences were found between scholars’ motivation to learn languages and age, gender, and job seniority. The analysis performed for English indicated that scholars rated themselves as having a proficient level (C1) in reading and an independent level (B2) in writing skills.

Songs have been used in the context of additional language teaching with different purposes, such as cultural knowledge, motivation, vocabulary development, and pronunciation teaching. A Model for Using Music in Pronunciation Teaching (MOMUP), proposed in 2018, provides guidelines to help teachers to create or adjust song-based learning materials to teach pronunciation in a more efficient way, but it needs further validation. Consequently, this paper aims at (i) presenting and discussing new validation data on the MOMUP, and (ii) revising the model in accordance with that discussion. The paper includes: a literature review on creation and validation of guiding models for teachers; the MOMUP’s presentation; the description of new validation data on the model, collected through an online questionnaire to 30 teachers of additional languages; the model’s revision in accordance with the validation data, as well as further literature review. The output of this process, the revised version of MOMUP, is simpler than the previous one and is composed of thirteen principles/criteria associated to each one of the topics what for?, which song?, and how? (3, 5 and 5 principles, respectively).

Form-Focused Instruction (FFI) has been extensively studied, yet past research often yields contradictory results. Overly simplistic examination of grammatical features, along with inadequate exploration of EFL learners at different English proficiency levels, has limited understanding of how and when to use different forms of FFI. Due to a need for further research, the present study was designed to holistically examine input and output-based forms of FFI with various grammatical features, along with Korean EFL learners at different proficiency levels. Eighteen experimental studies with Korean EFL learners were selected for metanalysis and research synthesis. The effects of type of instruction (input vs. output) were analyzed along with complexity of a target feature and learner proficiency in English. Results suggested that input-based instruction is more effective with grammatical features that involve a single phrase (e.g., basic morphology and vocabulary), while output-based instruction is more effective with more complex phrases and clauses with a syntactic component (e.g., relative clauses and conditionals). Input may activate form-meaning mapping, which is more useful for the acquisition of basic morphology or vocabulary, whereas output may help learners order constituents, thereby aiding in the acquisition of syntactic phrases and clauses. Proficiency also appears to influence the efficacy of FFI. When proficiency of participants was low and complexity of a grammatical feature was high, the influence of input tended to be stronger. When proficiency was intermediate and complexity of a grammatical feature was low, output-based instruction tended to result in larger effect sizes.

The paper presents the results of mixed-methods research into the English language learning styles of a sample group of students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication (FEEC) of the Brno University of Technology (BUT). In the quantitative phase of the research, students were questioned using an adapted Ehrman and Leaver Questionnaire (2003) with a bipolar scale of ten learning styles to identify commonly shared dimensions of learning styles of English among the sample group. The questionnaire also determined how flexible or rigid students were in their preferences and identified students with strong preferences for particular dimensions. The research then moved to a qualitative phase in which selected students who had stated a preference for commonly shared learning styles in the questionnaire were asked to participate in a semi-structured interview in which they discussed how their learning styles are reflected in their experiences of learning English and evaluated the success of their chosen approaches. Students were also asked about their willingness to change their learning styles if they had failed to make progress. The interviews offered valuable insight into students’ learning preferences, with most students showing rigidity in their learning styles.

This study investigates the relationship between several quantitative measures of L2 speech complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) by comparing the oral productions of English L2 learners at different proficiency levels. Forty English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners of varied proficiency levels performed a simple oral task. The performance of the L2 learners was analyzed regarding linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency to investigate the interplay of the CAF dimensions and how language proficiency levels (A2, B1, and B2) relate to these dimensions in the speech of EFL learners. This study confirms the prevailing view that the three CAF dimensions are interconnected and that the CAF triad is a useful and valid way to investigate and describe L2 performance development. The results indicate that all three dimensions of CAF significantly predict L2 learnersʼ oral proficiency, that is, from the developmental perspective, L2 learnersʼ output is produced with higher complexity, accuracy, and fluency as they progress to a higher proficiency level. Moreover, the current paper discusses ways to measure CAF. Specific measures of complexity (index of developmental levels), accuracy (syntactic error rate), and fluency (articulation rate, and dysfluency rate) were identified as effective discriminators between proficiency levels.

Extensive vocabulary acquisition is a cornerstone of second language (L2) proficiency, directly influencing both receptive and productive language skills. However, research on the productive vocabulary size of L2 learners transitioning to higher education, particularly their mastery of high-frequency words, remains limited. This study investigated the productive Hebrew vocabulary size and frequency distribution of Arabic-speaking learners entering higher education programs where Hebrew is the primary language of instruction. The research employed a corpus-driven approach, analyzing 156 Hebrew-language argumentative essays (18,054 orthographic words) written by native Arabic-speaking students during a college entrance examination. Automated tools were used to add contextual vocalization and disambiguate homographs, followed by manual annotation mapping each word to its corresponding lemma. The identified lemmas were then compared to established written and spoken Hebrew frequency lists. This process aimed to chart the vocabulary profile of the research population. The study determined that learners had a productive vocabulary size of approximately 1,000 lemmas, despite completing over 1,000 hours of formal L2 instruction. A comparison with established written and spoken Hebrew frequency lists indicated that 50% of the identified lemmas fell within the 1,000 most frequent Hebrew lemmas. Additionally, the learners exhibited a typical vocabulary profile, employing more lemmas from the 1k frequency band (the 1,000 most frequent words) than from the 2k frequency band (words ranked 1,001–2,000). Similarly, their use of lemmas from the 2k band exceeded that of the 3k band (words ranked 2,001–3,000), which in turn surpassed their use of lemmas from the 4k band (words ranked 3,001–4,000). These findings highlight the learners’ significant reliance on high-frequency vocabulary in L2 writing, emphasizing the need for targeted academic vocabulary instruction as they transition to higher education.

Research shows that both learning style preference and strategy use are important factors affecting second/foreign language (SL/FL) learning, and that both may vary, as learners are different. Yet, studies on learning style preferences and their interaction with strategy in relation to SL/FL learning outcomes are limited. The present study thus examined Chinese undergraduate EFL (English as a FL) students’ preferences for learning styles, use of learning strategies and their predictive effects on their English achievements. Analyses of 439 questionnaires revealed the following major findings: (1) the whole sample, regardless of gender, displayed no major preference for any learning style and generally preferred the kinesthetic style the most, followed by tactile, auditory, visual, group and individual styles respectively; (2) the whole sample, regardless of gender, demonstrated a medium to high level of use of the six types of learning strategies, and used metacognitive strategies the most frequently, followed by cognitive, social, compensation, memory and affective strategies, respectively; (3) cognitive strategy use significantly positively predicted all samples’ English achievements, additionally, memory strategy use and the tactile style significantly predicted female students’ English achievements, and (4) no significant difference was observed between genders in learning styles or strategy use except for group learning. These findings further pinpoint the importance of learning styles and strategy use in second/foreign language learning, which thus deserve continuous research.

The topic of digital storytelling in the field of EFL instruction has attracted increasing attention. However, its significance, effectiveness, and incorporation within educational settings in Jordan have not been thoroughly studied. In order to address this research gap, the present paper explores the teaching effectiveness, challenges, and practical applications of digital storytelling in Jordanian EFL classrooms, specifically through a qualitative analysis of teacher perspectives, incorporating semi-structured interviews with 26 EFL teachers recruited by purposive sampling. The thematic analysis revealed that EFL teachers in Jordan predominantly view digital storytelling as a valuable enhancement to English language teaching, notably for its ability to engage students and facilitate language learning. This positive perspective, however, is tempered by concerns over resource availability and curriculum integration challenges. The study also observed that digital storytelling positively impacts student engagement and language skills, with teachers reporting notable improvements in student involvement and language competencies. However, this impact varied among students, influenced by individual learning styles and access to technological resources. Lastly, regarding integrating digital storytelling into the curriculum, teachers identified several benefits, including the versatility of digital storytelling in achieving educational objectives and its effectiveness in facilitating interactive learning. Yet, they also faced challenges, particularly regarding inadequate technological infrastructure and difficulties aligning digital storytelling with rigid curricular structures. These findings provide crucial insights into the application of digital storytelling in EFL education in Jordan, reflecting its potential to transform teaching practices amidst practical implementation challenges. The paper concludes with limitations and future research suggestions, intending to encourage deeper scholarly and practical involvement with this novel teaching style.

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