The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical tensions and considerations that arise in the world language classroom from using pedagogies of discomfort. Although pedagogies of discomfort have mostly been seen through a positive lens in the literature for engaging students with difficult issues in the classroom, there are ethical concerns,…

Developing proficiency and intercultural competence are goals promoted by the Modern Language Association and widely shared by postsecondary second language programs across the United States. Although the development of proficiency has been studied extensively in this context, comparatively little is known about how intercultural competence…

Languaging--that is, using language to mediate thinking, orally or in writing--facilitates second language (L2) learning. As languaging requires the deliberate, analytical action of L2 learners, learners with higher language aptitude are likely to benefit more from languaging than those with lower aptitude. Thus, this study investigated the extent…

Second language (L2) learners hold different learning beliefs that influence their interpretation of classroom experiences and their L2 learning process. Developing a thorough understanding of such beliefs is therefore imperative. This article reports the representations of Iranian English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners' beliefs about L2…

This study explores the possibilities of using digitally produced multimodal language learning histories (MLLHs) to understand the experiences of learning a second language (L2) of a group of university students in Japan (N = 21). The study observes that learners' MLLHs are texts in which the visual elements of language, place, person, learning…

This study explores language learners' motivation from the perspective of vision, a concept that has specifically been identified as one of the next challenges for motivation research. Having conceptualized vision as a powerful motivational component of the language learning process, and focusing on the learner's individual perspective, we…

In this article, we present our vision of a transformed second language acquisition and teaching (SLA/T) disciplinary community that approaches second language (L2) education through four pillars. The first pillar is praxeology (i.e., the study of human action) to highlight the sociocontextually emergent nature of L2 competence. It locates the…

Empirical research on the relationship between language learners' (LLs') multilingual and professional development has remained scant in conversations surrounding LLs' sustained engagement with a target language (TL) beyond higher education. To address this gap, this article examines the co-construction of US collegiate LLs'…

Through either morphological or functional approaches, previous research has examined how instructed second language (L2) learners develop control over a challenging area of French: the use of the "imparfait." In order to better understand this challenge, this cross-sectional study utilized both approaches and examined how 94 university…

There is a growing research interest in a variety of emotions in foreign and second language (L2) classrooms, especially since the introduction of positive psychology. However, research on the ubiquitous emotional experience of boredom is scant. Building on its prevalence and documented deleterious effects, I argue that research on the antecedents…

Integrating concepts and techniques from ethnomethodology and sociomaterialism, this article investigates the observable material processes involving human action and place-based contexts of language use enabled by locative media. The focal pedagogical intervention utilized mobile augmented reality (AR) activities, the development of which was…

This study investigated the concept of corrective feedback in second language learning as a learning resource, recasting it as "feedback-seeking behavior." Dweck's (1999) mindsets, Korn and Elliot's (2016) achievement goals, and Ashford's (1986) model of feedback-seeking behavior were re-operationalized in the context of language…

This study examined linguistic development among both intermediate and advanced college-level second language (L2) learners during short-term study abroad summer programs in Spain. Participants completed a measure of overall proficiency, as well as assessments of receptive grammatical (morphosyntactic) and lexical (semantic) abilities at the…

We investigated how learner factors, such as vocabulary proficiency, strategy use, and working memory, are associated with successful corpus-based second language (L2) vocabulary learning, in which learners are encouraged to analyze and explore large, structured collections of authentic language data (i.e., corpora) to resolve their lexical issues…

In cognitivist Second Language Acquisition (SLA), attention and noticing are described as psycholinguistic processes that (may) have a role in language learning. The operationalization of such constructs, however, poses methodological challenges, since neither online nor off-line measures are coextensive with these cognitive processes that occur…