The paper focuses on the communication of three bilingual couples, each speaking a different lingua franca (LF). Positioning theory offers a methodological framework to explain language choice in interactive positioning within personal contacts. A comparative view of the couples' storylines benefits from the differences between them. The analysis…

The beginnings of Polish emigration to the British Isles date back to the 16th century, but a particularly large Polish diaspora was established after World War II when many soldiers stayed in Great Britain because they could not return to communist Poland for fear of persecution. The largest wave of emigration, however, occurred after Poland…

This regional dossier aims to provide concise descriptions and basic statistics about minority language education in a specific region of Europe. Lithuanian is a Baltic language that belongs to the Indo-European family. Most of the Lithuanian-speaking minority in Poland is confined to three municipalities near the Polish-Lithuanian border.…

During the activity of the Interim Treasury Committee for Polish Questions from 7 July 1945 to 31 March 1947, several thousand Polish citizens were given the opportunity to study abroad. Despite their difficult financial situation, they strove to continue studying, where this had been disrupted before the war, or started studying anew. Such an…

The XXVth Anniversary of CercleS brings back memories not only of the CercleS Association and its development, but also of the role of Language Centres in European universities. This article presents the Centre of Languages and Communication (CLC) at Poznan University of Technology (PUT) in Poland. It focuses on the main challenges the CLC has…

One of the possible ways of assessing students' collaborative work in Virtual Exchange (VE) is by the use of Peer Assessment (PA) -- a formative assessment technique in which students review each other's work to provide descriptive feedback on the basis of a set of criteria. This article describes a VE procedure, in which students from three…

The aim of this paper is to problematize the concept of foreign language (FL) teacher self-reported preparedness to respond to the special educational needs of FL learners with dyslexia by employing appropriate inclusive teaching practices. The paper shortly characterises dyslexia and then elaborates on the components of preparedness, namely,…

Teaching English as a foreign language in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) context requires certain particular skills from teachers. The usual group comprises students with different proficiency levels, learning experiences, and diverse course expectations. Thus, ESP teachers need to achieve broad goals because they need to both develop…

According to Kasper (1992), L2 pragmatic knowledge affects all communicative acts. It can be described as the speaker's ability both to adapt linguistic formulae to social contextual constraints and to understand the implications of indirect utterances. The Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) describes pragmatic competence…

The author explores the interdisciplinary use of music in teaching English as a foreign language to children in the context of function, genre, character and expression, trying to decipher the role and influence of music on various contexts of language learning, such as memory and concentration span, and takes under consideration a wide variety of…

In this article Brazilian teacher, Hugo Dart, describes how he partnered with Polish teacher, Karolina Isio-Kurpinska, to set up an online community where students from different places could interact and make discoveries about each other's culture while practicing their English. The article discusses the ten-week project that was developed for…

One of the best ways to understand what it is like to be an English-language learner in a U.S. classroom is to hear the stories of immigrant students. In this article, the authors use these stories to determine what steps teachers can take to help their students triumph over their struggles with a new culture and a new language. This article…

The weakness of English and other language instruction in Poland is due largely to the political system after World War II. Political and economic change and gradual recognition of the importance of English have recently increased rapidly. Expanded contact with the West calls for immediate qualitative and quantitative changes in English language…

The instructional settings and teacher-learner relationships observed in English-as-a-second-language classes at the secondary and university levels in Poland by an American senior Fulbright lecturer are characterized by very formal instruction with heavy emphasis on pronunciation and grammar exercises, large classes with little opportunity for…

Procedures used in foreign language teaching are discussed from the point of view of developing communicative strategies in students. Literature on communicative competence is reviewed and the implications for foreign language instruction are discussed. It is shown that: (1) from the very beginning of language instruction, the classroom setting,…