Dear Colleagues

Anxiety and L2 learning strategies embody a complex relationship in the range of strategy use, motivation, interest, peer ecology, cultural background, learning history, current dynamics, self-image, idealisation, affect, silence, reluctance, competitiveness, esteem, among others. How L2 learn cope with anxiety through handling, developing, and modifying learning strategies is an area that need more research and theorisation. Such processes of employing and personalising strategies can be conscious or sub-conscious, guided/informed or spontaneous, noticeable or invisible, efficient or unproductive.

This special issue calls for contributions to recapture the above and beyond from novel angles through research, self-inquiry, conceptualisation, and theorisation of anxiety and L2 strategy as two constantly evolving areas of interest in SLA. The issue welcome contributing articles on, but not limited to, these themes:

·       How anxiety influence skills performance, such as ways of coping with listening, reading, writing, speaking, integrated skills, vocabulary, grammar competence, L2 processing, and so on.
·       The potential of modifying ways of learning in social-psychological and linguistic contexts, including what conditions and supporting factors might facilitate such changes for more productice learning effort; how that happens, what challenges arise, and what recommendations can be offered.
·       Classroom-based and individual scenarios that prompt new insights into the anxiety-strategy relationship from both experiential/emic and a theoretical perspective.
·       Exploration of strategy use among anxious learners in domestic and study-abroad experiences with implications in pedagogy, resources, task instruction, and curriculum design.
·       Rethinking verbal, non-verbal/mental processing strategies in both teaching and learning to either minimise anxiety or turn it into positive synergy. Perspectives on both inhibiting and helpful anxiety are encouraged in discussing L2 learning strategy.
·       Critical perspectives on learner trategy training in consideration of individual needs, diversity, inclusivity, and social equity.
·       Critical state-of-the-art review of the literature that hints at or delves into the relationship between anxiety and L2 learning strategies, including how diverse such relationship is across intercultural contexts. This might include nuances of how learner experience is neglected or misconstrued in the discourse.
·       Opportunities (such as conditions, resources, pedagogies) for individual negotiation to improve learner strategies in teacher, learner, course developer observation and experience.
·       Social, psychological, and affective constructs that influence the shaping and mitigation of unhealthy anxiety in language learning, with pedagogical implications. This include personal approaches among teachers for helping learners deal with difficulties, moods and feelings in L2 development.

Dr. Dat Bao
Guest Editor

Poetry; Teacher Education; Pedagogy; Creativity Dialogue; Literacy; Metaphorical Thinking; Anxiety; Learning