The present volume deals with some of the challenges that modern foreign language teaching will face in the near future. These challenges are presented with regard to various domains of language teaching, e.g. mobile learning, the overall organisation of learning environments, innovative language teaching methods, internationalisation and language mediation. Techno­logical development and the rapid spread of computers, smartphones and social media are described and analysed as well as instrumental scaffolding, the multilingual classroom, the multilingual learner, pronunciation, and learner motivation.

Editor

Dr. Thomas Tinnefeld is a full professor of Applied Languages at Saarland University of Applied Sciences in Saarbrücken (Germany). His research interests are languages for specific purposes, grammar and grammaticography, writing research and interculturality. He is the editor of the Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching.

With the Collaboration of:

Dr. Ronald Kresta is an associate professor of English for specific purposes and director of the language centre at THM University of Applied Sciences in Gießen (Germany). His major research interests include error analysis, pronunciation research and pronunciation teaching as well as the application of these areas to EFL teaching.

Dr. Jozsef Szakos is an associate professor currently teaching in the Department of German in Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei, Taiwan. He also works as a professor in the Department of Asian Studies of Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. Previously, he worked as an associate professor at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Preface

The present volume deals with some of the challenges that modern foreign language teaching will face in the near future. These challenges are presented in regard to various domains of language teaching, e.g. the overall organisation of learning environments, innovative language teaching methods as well as internationalisation and language mediation, just to mention some of the areas covered here. In the following, some key ideas will be described so as to present a short and precise overview of the content of this book.

Technological development and the rapid spread of computers, smartphones and social media represent the overall background against which language learning – institutionalised or not – has changed over the past ten years (John Traxler – Wolverhampton, UK). This development has, among other things, led to the emergence of concepts to facilitate learning in an integrative way for learners to have an easier access to materials (inclusive of languages) to be learnt – a concept that has recently been called orchestration of technology-enhanced learning environments (Armin Weinberger & Allison Kolling – Saarbrücken, Germany).

Another innovative teaching strategy is the so-called instrumental scaffolding, which consists in providing (instructional) support for learners and gradually removing this support as students become more and more independent in acquiring a certain skill (Bernd Klewitz – Jena, Germany). Scaffolding has traditionally been used with regard to language learners, but it can also be employed in the context of teacher training and then becomes scaffolded coaching – a totally new application of the scaffold approach to a new group of learners (Norman Gómez Hernández, Don Kiraly, Alexandra Martín Gómez – Mainz, Germany).

A true challenge of our present time is internationalisation and, in the context of language teaching, the multilingual classroom (Katja Lochtman – Brussels, Belgium), in which specific obstacles need to be overcome. One of these obstacles is students’ necessity to ensure communication among each other and with the teacher, a process in which language mediation may become necessary – be it in school contexts or academic contexts (Ulrike Arras – Bolzano, Italy & Bochum, Germany). When learners perfect such mediation skills, they will turn into hybrid transcommunicators, who are highly versatile in terms of switching between different languages and cultures (Marlena Iwona Bielak – (Piła, Poland).

A factor which is often neglected in language teaching but which is of utmost importance nowadays is pronunciation. It has never been as easy as today to learn the correct pronunciation of the words and even the suprasegmental units of a foreign language because, unlike former times when students had to be able to read the International Phonetic Alphabet to learn how to pronounce unknown words correctly, students can nowadays listen to the pronunciation of any new word, using online dictionaries. Thus, the computer and the Internet have facilitated students’ access to good pronunciation enormously. One of the platforms that offers phonetic and prosodic assistance to students is the Readylingua Method, which provides learners with audio recordings in five European languages and the corresponding transcripts, and which allows learners to stop a particular recording after each tone unit and, thus, to focus on selected audio-visual chunks. This method is applicable to autonomous learners as well as to classroom contexts (Jozsef Szakos – Taipei, Taiwan (R. O. C.)), Ulrike Glavitsch & Josef Eggler (both Baden, Switzerland). Another important point that is relevant in this context is the evaluation of pronunciation (and other linguistic) errors made by students while giving English language presentations in EFL / ESP classes. Here both the traditional notions of language accuracy as well as more modern intelligibility approaches to learner language are discussed (Ronald Kresta – Giessen, Germany).

Motivation appears to be an ever-lasting challenge as far as learning is concerned, and a lack of it may represent one of the major psychological reasons for students’ suboptimal performance or even failure. In the present book, a promising motivation model – Keller’s (2010) ARCS Model – is presented in the framework of an empirical study of Tunisian middle-school students (Bochra Kouraichi – Kebili, Tunisia).

Language awareness is not only a prerequisite for efficient language learning, but also of high importance for translators, whose lack of morphological awareness represents a challenge in their everyday work. The last contribution of this book offers insight into this field (Katrin Menzel – Saarbrücken, Germany).

The articles published in this volume have all been peer-reviewed and therefore respond to the requirements set by international journals. The vast majority of them have also been closely proofread by Ronald Kresta. We do thank him very much indeed for the tremendous job he did.

Even if only a relatively limited number of challenges which are of relevance in today’s teaching and learning of foreign languages are presented here, the articles published in this volume hint at some aspects of the state of the art in foreign language teaching in Europe and beyond. We present them to the scientific community, hoping that they will trigger further research in the respective fields and open up new discussions that will contribute to making the teaching and learning of foreign languages – be it individual, in institutional or classroom contexts, privately or professionally oriented or just performed for the fun of it – even more attractive, efficient, and fascinating in the future.

Thomas Tinnefeld ( Saarbrücken, Germany)

Ronald Kresta  (Giessen, Germany)

Jozsef Szakos (Taipei, Taiwan)