Seize the day: new perspectives on foreign language learning and teaching

In Seize the Day: New Perspectives on Foreign Language Learning and Teaching, educators from several European countries consider new conditions and expectations in foreign-language (FL) teaching, and how teachers may best serve their learners in a changed and changing world. The volume begins with several articles on the role and attributes of the FL teacher. With a focus on learners that permeates the volume, Marek Krawiec and Agnieszka Miklasz report their surveyed students’ expectations of FL instructors. Gabriel Sánchez-Sánchez presents the teacher as a “prototype educator”, while Teresa Siek-Piskozub stresses the FL teacher’s role in facilitating inter-cultural communication (ICC), helping learners hold their own in a world that is increasingly interconnected and complex. Others point to changing learning environments. Astrid Ebenberger describes efforts at providing inclusive FL classrooms in Austria, while Grazyna Strzelecka shows where the workplace is conducive to the development of Logistics students’ German skills. Marlena Bielak demonstrates that English Philology students’ final papers, traditionally a mostly academic effort, may be the outcome of a more practical exercise: a project based on work placements in international firms, where they hone their language and ICC skills. Two contributors provide different perspectives on the influence of learning materials. Examining several English FL textbooks, Dinçay Köksal and Ömer Gökhan Ulum discern their “hegemonic practice” of portraying people and situations mainly the core countries of the anglosphere. They urge textbook producers to reflect the growing use of English in areas where non-native speakers live. With a similar concern for materials that emphasize the environments where FL learners apply their skills, Renata Suszczynska reviews a German-FL textbook for Logistics students. Other articles suggest learner-friendly ideas for traditional classrooms and courses. Katarzyna Trojan demonstrates the value of creative writing by describing her students’ experience of writing poems in German. Robert Pritchard proposes that in some courses, particular content may be geared to what students report to find most meaningful. Likewise, Ferit Kiliçkaya turns to his students to discover which types of cloze procedures are most useful to them in recycling vocabulary. These diverse contributions will interest FL educators, not least classroom instructors and trainee teachers. They will find not only useful perspectives on language learning in changing times, but ways to help learners get their bearings in a new world. Readers will appreciate not only the volume’s sensible academic tone, but also its optimism. This is a bright, better day; let us seize it.