The past decade has seen a blossoming of emotion research in applied linguistics, which led to a deeper understanding of the crucial role both positive and negative emotions play in the context of foreign language (FL) learning. In this paper, we will outline a research agenda arising from the rich knowledge gained so far, which we hope inspires researchers to pursue future directions which we consider highly relevant for both researchers and practitioners alike. Firstly, we review the development of foreign language learner emotion research and identify research gaps. This will be followed by a discussion of four broad areas in which we perceive the pressing need for future research to advance our understanding of the role of emotions in foreign language learning. These include 1) the diversification of emotions studied, 2) a better understanding of emotion dynamics, 3) the need to diversify research contexts, and 4) bridging the research-practice gap. For each of these areas, we will outline tasks, taking into account the latest developments in theory and methodology, which we hope will advance our knowledge gained from this dynamic, thriving field of study.

Recent research has shown that music interventions involving body movements are beneficial for reinforcing music learning. Given the reported positive transfer between music training and phonological skills, we investigated, for the first time, the value of an embodied music training program for improving pronunciation skills. In a classroom experiment, 48 Chinese adolescent learners of English participated in three 40-minute sessions of either Dalcroze-inspired embodied music training or treatment-as-usual non-embodied music training. Participants in the embodied music group were involved in a series of activities designed to develop their rhythmic and melodic skills through bodily experiences. Participants in the non-embodied music group followed music lessons designed by their music teacher, appreciating music pieces and receiving music knowledge. Before and after training, participants were tested with a language imitation task using six unfamiliar languages and an oral reading task in second language English. Results show that the embodied music group significantly outperformed the non-embodied music group in both tasks. Overall, our findings suggest that an embodied music training program has beneficial effects on pronunciation skills, supporting an embodied-based language teaching approach.

Previous research has investigated the effect of planning time (PT) on L2 learners’ production regarding fluency, complexity, and accuracy, but its influence at the discourse level has been overlooked. Thus, this study explores the influence of PT on learners’ written performance regarding anaphora resolution (AR) and their pragmatically (in)felicitous choices of referring expressions (REs) in discourse since PT may reduce learners’ cognitive load and facilitate the production of pragmatically felicitous REs.

Two film-retelling tasks were completed by intermediate L1 Spanish–L2 English learners and English natives, further divided into a planning and a non-planning subgroup. Their compositions were analysed focusing on the REs produced, taking into consideration the pragmatic context. Results showed a PT effect on learners’ RE choices, although not all pragmatic contexts were equally affected. Planning time exerted a positive influence on topic continuity contexts, where learners produced more economical forms, but no effect was observed in topic shift scenarios.

Studies investigating the acquisition of multiword items (MWIs) from reading have furnished evidence that the likelihood of acquisition improves considerably if such items are typographically enhanced (e.g., bolded or underlined) in the texts. In the case of captioned audio-visual materials, however, an earlier study by the authors did not find such compelling evidence. In that study, indications of an effect emerged only when the same video was watched twice. Arguably, for learners to benefit more immediately from typographic enhancement in captions, they may need to be made aware of its purpose beforehand. The present article therefore reports an approximate replication of Majuddin et al. (2021), but this time the students were informed about the MWI-learning purpose of watching the video. As in the original study, the learners watched a video once or twice with standard captions, with captions in which MWIs were enhanced, or without captions. The positive effect of enhancement for MWI learning was clearer than in the original study, and it already emerged after a single viewing. On the downside, enhancement was found to have a negative effect on lower-proficiency learners' comprehension of the content of the video.

John Flowerdew is a Visiting Chair at the University of Lancaster and a Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He was previously a Professor at City University of Hong Kong and at the University of Leeds, UK. His research is in the fields of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. His books include Academic listening: Research perspectives (CUP); Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (with M. Peacock) (CUP); Second language listening: Theory and practice (with L. Miller) (CUP); Academic discourse (Longman); Discourse in English language education (Routledge); Signalling nouns in discourse: A corpus-based discourse approach (with R. W. Forest) (CUP); Discourse in context (Bloomsbury); The Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies (with J. Richardson); Discipline-specific writing: Theory into practice (with T. Costley) (Routledge), and Introducing English for research publication purposes (with P. Habibie (Routledge).

Based on the rigorous systematicity assumed in systematic review methodology, it is no surprise that a prominent review such as Macaro et al.'s (2018) on English medium instruction (EMI) has been used as a basis for subsequent EMI research. However, in this article, we explore the ways in which the focus of systematic reviews can be necessarily narrowed and how this poses a risk to research when readers perceive them as offering definitive conclusions on all aspects of a subject. This article addresses two significant trends in applied linguistics. First, systematic review – that is, the use of formalised systems when reviewing literature – has become far more prominent and therefore more impactful than traditional reviews as a methodology (Chong & Plonsky, 2023). Second, there has been an explosive growth in interest in EMI research (Curle et al., 2024). There are further parallels between the two trends, given that both systematic review and EMI are umbrella terms that cover a wide range of research types. As we will see, there is perhaps more disagreement over how to conduct a systematic review than lay readers would suspect. Similarly, EMI is a broader field of research than appears in its most prominent systematic review article. Studies into EMI have explored policy, language learning, the effect on subject knowledge, attitudes towards EMI, ownership of English, and so on. Thus, while EMI is a growingly recognised field of study, it is not always clear what it means to ‘study EMI’.

This study investigated the interaction between oral task enjoyment and task repetition and the effect of this interaction on second language learners’ speech complexity, accuracy, and fluency. In the context of task-based language teaching, task enjoyment is a context-specific, situational emotion that arises during task performance and is hypothesised to enhance engagement, motivation, and overall task performance, whereas task repetition is a classroom procedure shown to improve fluency, and possibly also complexity and accuracy. Fifty-two Polish young adult learners of L2 English completed the Oral Task Enjoyment Scale before exact task repetition. Their oral task performances were analysed before and after immediate exact task repetition. Results from Generalized Linear Model analysis reveal that 1) task repetition enhances lexical diversity and marginally improves fluency, 2) higher levels of oral task enjoyment positively influence learners’ lexical diversity, correct verb forms, and speech rate, yet 3) its interaction with task repetition is not significant, suggesting that task repetition benefits are consistent across different levels of enjoyment. These findings imply that task repetition is an effective strategy for improving language performance, regardless of learners’ emotional engagement with the task.

As a language teacher, teacher educator, and researcher over the past 40 years, my interests have been centered in classrooms where students are learning something else while also learning language. In the 1980s, as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher, my students were learning ‘English for specific purposes,’ where they brought knowledge from their fields, working as economists, in business or tourism, or as drivers and receptionists, and I saw how language teaching needed to focus on the language and discourse patterns that would be most relevant to the ways they would use English in their professional roles. In the 1990s, as a teacher educator and director of a university English as a Second Language (ESL) writing program, I saw how students' academic writing goals needed to be foregrounded. In the last 20 years, as a researcher in elementary and secondary schools, I engaged with, but also saw, shortcomings in ‘content-based’ language teaching (e.g., Moore & Schleppegrell, 2020; Schleppegrell, 2007, 2016, 2020; Schleppegrell et al., 2004).

The purpose of the seminar was to bring together scholars from within linguistics and disciplines such as psychology to explore what short-form social media is, how we might practically and ethically collect and analyse short-form social media data, and what analytic possibilities are on offer for a linguist interested in examining this type of data. The seminar, held at the University of Nottingham on 11th September 2024, was well-attended, with around twenty people joining in-person or online. It ran for a single day and was split into a morning of plenaries and lightning talks about personal research interests, and an afternoon of interactive sessions which sought synergies between those research interests.