This study investigates how task complexity shapes motivation and performance in second language (L2) pragmatics, a domain that remains underexplored within task-based learning research. To address this gap, 37 secondary school learners of English completed both simple and complex decision-making tasks at three intervals over an eight-week period.…

Although motivation is an extensively discussed topic, minor languages deserve more research attention. This qualitative multiple case study explores motivation to learn Czech as a second language in Beginners' Czech language courses for Erasmus students in the Czech Republic through the lens of the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS), searching…

We examined the naturalistic pronunciation development of two groups of L2 speakers over 10 years. Initially, 50 beginner ESL students participated in production tasks; despite attrition, the tasks were administered eight more times. Here we report listener judgements of accentedness, comprehensibility and fluency for the remaining six Mandarin…

Background and Aims: The aim of the current study is to assess the validity of the Cross-linguistic lexical task (CLT) against direct and indirect measures of lexical skills across 2-6 years of age, for a crucial period of lexical development. In addition to evaluating relationships between measures at the level of total score, we also explored…

While study-abroad students generally prefer destinations where the local language relates to their personal, academic, or professional pursuits, the Czech Republic ranks as the 25th most popular destination for U.S. study abroad, signalling an interest in exploring beyond traditional language choices. This study addresses the gap in the…

This study investigates the use of overt and null subjects in Bulgarian in child heritage speakers with L2 German. The alternation of overt and null pronominal subjects in null-subject languages like Bulgarian depends on grammatical and discourse conditions and contrasts with German. Oral narratives were elicited in Bulgarian, comparing the…

The main aim of the article is to identify Slovenian children's attitudes towards foreign languages (FL), their motivation for learning languages, the influence of different significant others (teachers, parents, peers) on their language attitudes, and the ways they perceive languages which they are exposed to. The focus is on FLs in general…

The involvement load hypothesis (ILH), which predicts the lexical learning potential of tasks, assumes that writing sentences (SW) and compositions (CW) using novel target words (TWs) lead to similar lexical gains. However, research on the issue is scarce and contradictory. One possibility is that the higher cognitive load of CW hinders learning…

A cohort of American students came to Prague for their Study Abroad in spring 2020. They signed up for a Czech language course but had to leave the country in the middle of the term and continue learning from homes. At the end of the term, they were asked to write a short reflective essay on how their motivation to learn Czech transformed…

This case study examined Czech electrical engineering and informatics students' English academic writing, addressing challenges in producing understandable and coherent texts for international audiences. Using a mixed-methods approach, which included textual analysis of essays, student writing profiles, and pre/post-course questionnaires, we…

Although study abroad is an established research context for second language acquisition, the emotional experiences of U.S. students learning less commonly taught languages, such as Czech, require further research, particularly in settings where these languages lie outside students' primary academic pursuits. This study explores U.S. students'…

Linguistic diversity at Czech schools has increased in the last decade, and it has become a new everyday reality. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of studies investigating lived experiences with managing multilingualism at schools. Our study examines schools as multilingual social spaces in which the visible language choice on signs reveals the…

This study investigated the L2 motivation of five Chinese undergraduates learning Bulgarian as their major and studying in Bulgaria in a one-academic-year exchange programme. The focus of the study concerned a rarely explored L2 learning situation, namely when the L2 is associated with a host community of limited ethnolinguistic vitality. Based on…

This paper is based within the framework of step-by-step approach to teaching legal translation. The underlying philosophy behind this approach is that when specific aspects of legal translations are tackled in isolation and trainees become aware of the pitfalls involved and the possible solutions, this helps them in further training as well as in…

The paper applies language management theory to study the interactions of international with local workers (simple management) and language policies (organised management) in 10 Czech video game studios. By longitudinally interviewing foreign game developers from Central-Eastern and Western Europe, as well as North and South America, I identified…