487 Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching Department of English Studies, Faculty of Pedagogy and Fine Arts, Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz SSLLT 11 (4). 2021. 487-489 http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2021.11.4.1 http://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/ssllt Editorial The present issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching is the last in the 2021 volume and concludes the eleventh year of the existence of the jour- nal. Looking back, it has been an exceptionally good year for SSLLT. First, we have been receiving a constantly increasing number of submissions and, what is of par- amount importance for any journal, most of these submissions have been of very high quality. Second, we are very happy with the scope and quality of the papers that have been published, including those comprising the special issue on teach- ing English reading and writing to young learners, which was guest-edited by Barry Lee Reynolds and Mark Feng Teng. Third, and perhaps most importantly, not only has SSLLT been finally indexed in the Web od Science, but it is also listed among the 20 best journals in linguistics (18/193), with the impact factor of 3.036 (Q1) (JCR). Achieving this status has been a long and arduous process but at the same time an extremely rewarding journey. Obviously, this undeniable success would not have been possible without all of those who have lent their support to the development of SSLLT from the get-go. My sincere thanks go to Associate Editors, all the guest editors of special issues, members of the Editorial Board, the many hundreds of reviewers and, first and foremost, to all the amazing authors who have chosen SSLLT as a venue for their work. I can assure all of you that we will not be resting on our laurels and will do everything in our power to keep up the good work to further enhance the position of SSLLT in the field. We are also hop- ing to be able to celebrate its success with a face-to-face conference to be held in Kalisz, Poland in October 2022. We are currently working on the call for papers and we are planning to send it out in the next month or so. The current issue brings together five original research papers and two book reviews. It opens with the contribution by Lanxi Wang and Peter D. Mac- Intyre, who investigated the relationships among listening anxiety, listening en- joyment, listening comprehension performance and listening metacognitive awareness in the case of 410 international students in a Canadian university. 488 Mirroring the findings of previous research (e.g., Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014), they found, among other things, that although listening anxiety and enjoyment were negatively correlated, they in fact constituted independent emotions, and that both of them were positively, if only weakly, related to the use of listening strategies. In the second paper, Safoura Jahedizadeh and Ali H. Al-Hoorie report the outcomes of a systematic review of 21 empirical studies focusing on directed motivational currents (DMCs), or brief motivational surges directed at the at- tainment of a specific goal (Dörnyei et al., 2015; Muir & Dörnyei, 2013). They make the point that existing empirical evidence concerning the key characteris- tics of the construct is inconclusive and emphasize the need for further research that should take the form of comparative studies, be longitudinal in nature, and take into account potentially negative effects of DMCs. They also present the rationale for renaming the construct as sustained flow as a concept that is more reflective of the nature of this phenomenon (Ibrahim & Al-Hoorie, 2019). The role of motivation is also the focus of the study by Jelena Bobkina, María-José Gómez-Ortiz, María Cristina Núñez del Río, and Susana Sastre-Merino, who ex- plored motivational orientations through the lens of the motivational L2 self system (Dörnyei, 2005) with the help of questionnaire data collected from 196 Spanish learners of English as a foreign language studying sports science at the university. Using various statistical procedures (e.g., exploratory factor analysis, ANOVA, multiple linear regression), the researchers provided evidence for the dominant role of the ideal L2 self in driving students’ motivation and predicting target language (TL) proficiency. They also found that the ought-to L2 self mainly characterized students with medium proficiency whereas the rebellious L2 self was the most pronounced for most advanced participants. In another empirical study, Raees Calafato investigated the extent to which 21 foreign language teachers in Norwegian and Russian upper-secondary schools fell back upon mul- tilingual teaching practices (MTPs) as well as factors which underpinned their decisions in this respect. Qualitative analysis of unstructured interview data showed that the implementation of such practices hinged upon the mastery of the TL, particularly with respect to metalinguistic knowledge, teachers’ position- ing as language learners and the amount of external support they received. While, on the whole, reliance on MPTs was not a function of the language taught, differences were uncovered between the two groups in relation to teaching English. In the last contribution, Erdem Akbaş and Zeynep Ölçü Dinçer report a study which was aimed to determine whether the natural order of ac- quisition of grammatical morphemes in L2 English proposed by Krashen (1977) held for Turkish university students. The analysis of 136 exam scripts totaling 20,000 words demonstrated the existence of differences between the two ac- curacy orders, which the researchers accounted for in terms of the influence of 489 the mother tongue as well as overall mastery of TL grammar. The present issue also includes reviews of two books which were contributed by Mengyao Ma and Xuesong (Andy) Gao, and Breno Silva. The first publication deals with individual differences in L2 learning and the other is devoted to incidental vocabulary ac- quisition from reading. I am quite confident that all the contributions in this is- sue will be a source of inspiration to scholars in our field and will pave the way for innovative research that will expand our understanding of the processes of second and foreign language learning and teaching and serve as a basis for ped- agogical recommendations. Mirosław Pawlak Adam Mickiewicz University, Kalisz, Poland State University of Applied Sciences, Konin, Poland pawlakmi@amu.edu.pl References Dewaele, J.-M., & MacIntyre, P. D. (2014). The two faces of Janus? Anxiety and enjoy- ment in the foreign language classroom. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 4(2), 237-274. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2014.4.2.5 Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differ- ences in second language acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum. Dörnyei, Z., Ibrahim, Z., & Muir, C. (2015). “Directed motivational currents”: Reg- ulating complex dynamic systems through motivational surges. In Z. Dö- rnyei, P. MacIntyre, & A. Henry (Eds.), Motivational dynamics in language learning (pp. 95-105). Multilingual Matters. Ibrahim, Z., & Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2019). Shared, sustained flow: Triggering motiva- tion with collaborative projects. ELT Journal, 73(1), 51-60. https://doi.org/ 10.1093/elt/ccy025 Krashen, S. (1977). Some issues relating to the Monitor Model. H. D. Brown, C. A. Yorio, & R. H. Crymes (Eds.), On TESOL’77 – Teaching and learning English as a second language: Trends in research and practice (pp. 144-158). TESOL. Muir, C., & Dörnyei, Z. (2013). Directed motivational currents: Using vision to create effective motivational pathways. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 357-375. https://doi.org/10.14746/ssllt.2013.3.3.3