Bøger i Second Language Learning and Teaching serien

This book highlights the importance of English academic vocabulary for success at university and explores written tasks as effective pedagogical tools to promote the acquisition of academic words. The book reviews germane and recent SLA, psycholinguistic, corpus linguistics, and L2 writing research to underscore the challenges associated with the learning of academic words. Then, it reports on three empirical studies conducted in the Polish context. The first study develops a reliable tool to assess the knowledge of academic vocabulary of undergraduate learners. The second and third studies investigate the learning of academic words after the writing of sentences and argumentative essays, and discuss the role of cognition as a mediator of such learning. The book also provides an accessible introduction to linear mixed-effect models, a powerful, reliable, and flexible statistical technique that has been gaining popularity among SLA and psycholinguistics researchers.

This book provides an overview of affective individual variables that are considered relevant for second language learning and outlines a novel approach to researching them. In the first part of the book, the most prominent concepts and theories in connection with affective individual variables and tasks are discussed, followed by a literature review of the most significant empirical studies conducted on the reviewed individual variables with the help of tasks. The second part of the monograph reports the findings of a research project which investigated the relationships of motivation, emotions, flow experiences, and self-efficacy beliefs of secondary school students studying English in Hungary. These constructs are examined at two levels: in connection with learners' English classes in general and in connection with a particular language task, thus linking task performance measures to specific affective states experienced while performing a task and their general trait versions reported in connection with the language classes. Teacher interviews provide further insights into the language tasks used by the teachers of the students taking part in the study and their affective correlates. The book offers multi-level interpretations of the results, puts forward pedagogical implications, and delineates further research directions. 

The book explores the relationships between the personality traits of Polish university students learning English as a foreign language and their use of language learning strategies (LLS). It provides a solid theoretical background for the investigation of the interface between the two constructs, describes the applied analytical procedures in detail, and reports the results and implications of a large-scale study. Chapter 1 presents multiple perspectives on the investigation of human personality and presents insights from a selection of studies into the role of personality in foreign language learning. Chapter 2 addresses the construct of LLS, while Chapter 3 links strategy use to other individual learner characteristics, with a focus on personality. Chapter 4 sets the methodological framework for the empirical investigation, describes the rationale for conducting the study, and includes a thorough description of analytical procedures. Chapter 5 presents the results of the study and highlights their pedagogical implications. Finally, limitations of the study are presented and some directions for future research are suggested. The monograph will be of interest to scholars investigating the role of personality in SLA as well as graduate and postgraduate students in applied linguistics.

Pragmatic instruction has received momentous attention in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) over the last decades. In order to scrutinize the effectiveness of L2 instruction, meta-analyses are warranted; nonetheless, meta-analyses have been largely neglected, despite the fact that they provide a systematic explanation of the findings from the previous studies. Since meta-analysis is flourishing by leaps and bounds in each and every field, pragmatic studies are not the exception, and among miscellaneous constructs and units of analysis in pragmatics, the speech acts of request, apology, and refusal are investigated in this book. To bridge this gap, this book mainly presents the variables which can moderate the effectiveness of L2 instruction such as age, gender, proficiency, outcome measures, psycholinguistic features, research design, and treatment types. The first chapter of the book outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the study, accentuating the importance of conducting meta-analysis in this field of study. The second chapter elaborates on the empirical studies and a thorough review of the relevant research. The third chapter deals with the design of the study in which the inclusion and exclusion criteria, effect size calculation, coding of the variables, and reliability have been outlined while chapter four presents the obtained outcomes and results of the study. The last chapter describes the final remarks of the study, the limitations, implications, and the directions for future research in the field of pragmatics instruction.

This edited volume presents eleven empirical papers reporting the existing literature and the results of an original study focusing on EMI (English as a medium of instruction) in a particular area (Central and Eastern Europe, Western and Southern Europe, Nordic/Baltic countries, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Asia, South-East Asia, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America). Each of these different areas tends to have its own ways of dealing with the EMI issue, and these are brought together in a meta-analysis in the final chapter. Implications for the conduct of English as a medium of instruction are drawn, both on a chapter-by-chapter basis and also in the meta-analysis. The examination of EMI on a contextual basis is a unique feature of this book, setting it apart from others in the field, which almost all deal with a single or limited context. The volume will be of interest to policymakers, institutional heads, graduate students and their teachers, and to thesis writers and researchers.

This book highlights the importance of individual learner differences in learning English as a foreign language and reports the findings of a study which investigated the impact of two personality traits, which are, openness to experience and ambiguity tolerance, on target language attainment among Polish secondary school students. The book provides an exhaustive overview of the theoretical issues and existing research related to personality, emphasizing the two traits under investigation, openness, and ambiguity tolerance, which are the focus of the empirical study reported later in the book. The empirical investigation explored relationships between openness to experience and ambiguity tolerance, as well as their impact on attainment in learning English as a foreign language. Moreover, it also aimed to shed light on the link between these traits and students¿ assessments (i.e., self-assessment and school grades). The findings of the study provide a basis for proposing specific profiles of foreign language learners with different levels of openness and ambiguity tolerance.