Preface The purpose of the Preface to this new issue of Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition is twofold. First, it offers a short introduction for new readers to familiarize them with the origins and development of the journal (a permanent element of the Preface). Second, it provides a concise comment on the contents of the present issue. Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition was founded as a forum of discussion for both Polish and foreign scholars and seems to have fulfilled its mission as a journal on the rise. The present volume marks the ninth year of its presence in the scholarly world. The journal has become quite popular and we receive more and more qualified submissions from Polish and foreign researchers. Indeed, since its foundation, every consecutive issue of the journal has welcomed contributions from renowned researchers, including Peter MacIntyre, David Singleton, Larissa Aronin, Sarah Mercer, Tammy Gregersen and Jean-Marc Dewaele, among others. Also, the fast growing number of OA uploads testifies to the journal’s increasing popularity, as does the queue of articles already accepted and awaiting their turn to be included in the next vol- umes to be published. This is why we have already made a couple of decisions to increase the number of research papers published in a single volume over the last few years: in the first years of the journal’s existence there were six, later seven, last year eight and, starting with issue 9(1), TAPSLA will include as many as nine research contributions, followed by one book review this time. It is the journal’s ambition to demonstrate new trends and hitherto unknown venues for research in SLA, focusing both on theoretical discussions and the practical solutions to problems that are based upon them. We aim not only to publish and share with our readers contributions from well-known and re- spected scholars but also to promote young researchers from all over the world, who often present fresh and innovative ideas or open up new perspectives on issues already under discussion. In other words, the journal hopes to become Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition vol. 9 (1), 2023, pp. 1/5 https://doi.org/10.31261/TAPSLA.14558 https://doi.org/10.31261/TAPSLA.14558 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed a venue for the exchange of ideas between well-established academics and those inspired by them. In terms of its content, the journal presents contributions on issues ranging from purely linguistic and cognitively-oriented research on language acquisition processes to psycho- and sociolinguistic studies, always trying to feature the most recent developments in terms both of topic choice and of the methodology of research. We publish our journal through an open access system, where the entire production process is executed online and the final product is available to everyone, thus offering an opportunity to share ideas through a broad, effective and economical mode of dissemination. We maintain high standards and quality, which are guaranteed by the international Editorial Board of TAPSLA, whose members are well-known Polish and foreign experts on a wide range of second language acquisition issues. The journal is indexed in numerous databases, including Scopus. The journal is published by the prestigious Polish academic publisher, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego (University of Silesia Press), which provides an experienced team of editors to oversee the copyediting and technical side of the production. Updated information and all the issues published so far are available on the journal webpage at www.tapsla.us.edu.pl. The present volume 9(1) offers a wide variety of interesting topics well- grounded in theoretical considerations and literature overviews, but importantly, also reporting on empirical projects carried out by researchers, some of whom are well-known scholars, others aspiring young academics. The articles selected offer a balanced range of teachers’ and learners’ perspectives on various aspects of the process of language teaching and learning, in a variety of contexts, with the clearly visible motif of the recent COVID-19 pandemic as an important factor which has shaped both teachers’ and learners’ experience and attitudes. The opening text by Magdalena Szyszka, entitled “Context-related Beliefs about L2 Language Learning and Teaching of the Millennial Pre-service EFL Teachers as a Prognosis for Future Classroom Actions,” offers an outlook into the fu- ture of EFL teaching, as it delves upon young trainee teachers’ beliefs and predictions related to their future profession. Because the questionnaire used as a data collection tool was administered during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the respondents’ responses drew upon their own experience of the changes brought about by isolation and the implementation of various forms of distance learning. They were witnesses of arguably the biggest change in the forms of teaching of our times, so the author considered it important to make a record of their fresh and dynamically changing opinions, attitudes, and predictions. In the next text, “Chinese University Students’ Beliefs about English Language Learning and Self-efficacy,” Meihua Liu takes us to Beijing to report on a study of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language: their beliefs related to language learning itself and their perceived self-efficacy in the process. Self-efficacy is treated here as one of the most important factors TAPSLA.14558 p. 2/5 Preface http://www.tapsla.us.edu.pl that lead to ultimate success or failure, so we can say that like the previous text, this one also takes us on a journey into the future, here seen from the learners’ perspective. Apart from offering us a comprehensive picture of the factors that potentially influence success in language learning, the author dem- onstrates that learners’ perception of these factors is largely dependent on their proficiency level and individual experience. The third text in the volume returns to the teachers’ point of view and focuses on their wellbeing in the difficult times of the pandemic. Astrid Mairitsch, Sonja Babic, Sarah Mercer, Giulia Sulis, and Sun Shin, in their contribution entitled “The Role of Compassion during the Shift to Online Teaching for Language Teacher Wellbeing,” look at the rarely investigated issue of compassion for teachers, as people who are particularly burdened with the hardships and complications brought upon us by the pandemic. The study gives us a truly global perspective, as teachers from all around the world participated in the interviews. Thanks to the quali- tative nature of the investigation, we receive very rich analytic material from which emerges the vital role of compassion as a factor which helped teachers survive the most challenging and difficult time of the crisis. The paper voices yet another argument for the need to recognize the entire psychological envi- ronment of the teaching profession as a vital factor in teachers’ performance. Another text that focuses on pandemic-induced complications and challenges, authored by Ahmed Al Shlowiy and Khaled Layali and entitled “EFL Teachers’ Perceptions of a Long Shift to Online Learning in a Saudi University during the Coronavirus Pandemic,” presents the opinions of EFL teachers working in Saudi Arabia on the drawbacks, but also the benefits, of online learning which was enforced by the crisis. It turned out that the benefits are more numerous than the drawbacks, and that many teachers saw the forced introduction of on- line learning as an ultimately beneficial side-effect of the pandemic. The fifth text of the present volume marks a shift to the investigation of the learning process and focus on the learners. Monika Kusiak-Pisowacka, in her contribu- tion “Exploring FL Readers’ Metacognitive Beliefs: Narrations from Learner Diaries,” portrays a diary from two different perspectives: as a valuable data collection tool, but also as an excellent form of developing learners’ writing skills and self-reflection abilities. The author decided to focus on metacogni- tion as a predictor of FL reading skills, highly recommendable in the process of language development. Since the learners were asked to keep diaries for a period of at least one month, the author was also able to follow the dynamics of her respondents’ attitudes and beliefs. The next article, authored by Babak Mahdavy and Masoomeh Mousavi Namavar and entitled “Listening Strategies and L2 Listening Comprehension: Does the Test Method Matter?,” looks at the receptive skill of listening, but more basically comprises a comparative investigation of research methodology application. The authors successfully demonstrate that scores and research results differ when different types of Preface TAPSLA.14558 p. 3/5 data collection tools are used. Additionally, they also managed to establish which type of listening strategy turned out to be the strongest predictor of learners’ overall performance. The following text, by Eva Maria Luef and Pia Resnik, “Phonotactic Probabilities and Sub-syllabic Segmentation in Language Learning,” touches upon selected aspects of acquisition of L2 English phonol- ogy by Austrian German and Korean learners. The study supports claims of the influence of learners’ L1 pronunciation habits on the acquisition of their L2 language phonemes. In their investigation of the acquisition of L2 segments, the authors took into consideration phonotactic probabilities and typical syllable structure characteristic for the learners’ first languages. The article represents a typical hypothesis-testing, quantitative research design, based on previous research findings related to the phonetic description of Austrian German, Korean, and English. The eighth research article in the present volume is a text by Zuzana Nováková, entitled “Making Students Responsible for Grammar Learning: A Report on a Learner-centered Technique Aimed at Accuracy.” The paper focuses on the acquisition of learners’ grammatical competence in L2, narrowed down to their ability to self-correct noun and verb phrase construc- tions. The study design follows a learner-centered approach, in which the learners are invited to self-reflect upon their own speaking performance. In this way the authors also show an interesting application of a speaking task, conducive also to the development of learners’ metalinguistic awareness. In the last of the research papers published in the present volume, Silvie Válková and Jana Kořínková look at the development of politeness strategies in L2 English and the ways in which they are practiced in selected course-books. Their text “Approaches to Teaching Agreement and Disagreement in Selected Coursebook Series” examines pragmatic aspects of L2 acquisition that are vital for learners’ unproblematic performance in encounters with users of English. The investiga- tion shows similarities between the coursebook series at the level of speech act realization patterns, but, at the same time, it reveals differences pertaining to how supportive the books are for teachers and learners in providing explanatory instructions for proper usage and background information. The present issue offers, atypically, only one book review. This is of the third edition (2019) of the well-known and widely acclaimed volume An Introduction to Applied Linguistics by Schmitt and Rodgers, which is reviewed by Muhammad Fahruddin Aziz and Herlandri Eka Jayaputri. The review- ers comprehensively present and comment on all the chapters of the volume, pointing out that the contents have been updated and expanded, reflecting the development of the field. At the same time, however, they indicate a few other topics that are yet absent from the volume, but which in their opinion should be included in subsequent editions. TAPSLA.14558 p. 4/5 Preface The articles contained in the present volume examine issues related to the process of foreign language learning and teaching in a broad context, presented from the perspectives of both teachers and learners. All of them represent reports on empirical research, but they are grounded in solid theoretical bases and offer comprehensive reviews of literature in a given area. The theme of the COVID-19 pandemic appears for the first time in TAPSLA, but it seems that it will continue to constitute the background for a considerable number of investigations in the years to come. A clear trend to present a wide array of topics based on research carried out in different parts of the world is continued in the present volume and remains a valuable asset of the journal. Importantly for the contributors, the open access online format of TAPSLA helps them to attract world-wide readership and in this way to become active members of international scientific debates. We believe that researchers, teachers, and students can all benefit from this issue of TAPSLA and will find the articles published here not only useful but inspirational. In this place we would like to thank all the authors of the articles in this issue and, as is our usual practice, extend our invitation to all Polish and foreign researchers and academics to share their work with us by submitting it to the journal. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-0703 Danuta Gabryś-Barker https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0308-4337 Adam Wojtaszek Preface TAPSLA.14558 p. 5/5 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-0703 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0308-4337