Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition 
vol. 5 (1), 2019, pp. 133–136

10.31261/TAPSLA.2019.05.08

Hadrian Lankiewicz, Teacher Language Awareness:
A Collaborative Inquiry Based on Languaging. Gdańsk: 

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2015, 
ISBN 978-7865-624-1, 368 pages

The book by Hadrian Lankiewicz entitled Teacher Language Awareness: 
A Collaborative Inquiry Based on Languaging is a very ambitious and pas-
sionate publication, not only demonstrating the Author’s excellent orientation in 
literature on the subject, but also the ability to apply it to his main concern as 
an academic teacher, which is the teacher-training of prospective EFL teachers. 
The monograph consists of 368 pages, embracing four chapters, a very exten-
sive bibliography of over 650 sources and a set of appendices, which consists 
of research instruments, tasks, and materials used in the empirical study itself. 
The Author decided—for a good reason—to offer an extensive theoretical back-
ground to his study (179 pages), compared to a much smaller empirical part 
(116 pages). It shows the Author’s concern for a strong theoretical grounding 
of his study, as well as a useful promotion of ideas not very well known or 
popular in glottodidactic research.

The work presents precise definitions of the basis for the study, constructs 
used and their evolution, advocating the most recent approaches. It refers for 
example to the concept of language awareness (Andrews, 2007) emphasis-
ing the relationship between language and ideology, in which appropriacy of 
discourse in a given context should be of major concern to the language user, 
but also to any language educator (teacher). The Author rightly assumes the 
need to develop critical teacher language awareness, which should already have 
been initiated at the pre-service stage, that is, during teacher training at the 
university or college. The most substantial part of the theory (chapters 1–3) is 
a presentation of the ecological perspective, not only in glottodidactic research 
but also in its evolution in linguistics up to the postmodernist era. This thor-

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Danuta Gabryś-Barker134

ough overview of the main assumptions of the ecological approach constitutes 
a good resource text for researchers in multilingualism (see van Lier, 2004). 
The text is not very easy to read, as the reader needs to dig through a dense 
set of references to names, unfortunately, not always connected directly to the 
field, for example, Gramsci, Bakhtin, Bourdieu or even to Marx, but whom 
the Author considers the fathers of the ecological thinking. It seems a bit too 
far-fetched to me and an unnecessarily ideologized position. Fortunately, these 
references are balanced by numerous recourse to language context, and works 
by T. van Lier, D. Larsen-Freeman, or C. Kramsch. At the same time, however, 
Lankiewicz does not seem to be aware of works by L. Aronin, M. O’Laoire, 
D. Singleton or P. Herdina and U. Jessner on language awareness from an eco-
logical perspective. Especially, he should include Herdina and Jessner, who are 
known for their Dynamic Model of Multilingualism, which presents generally 
accepted theory in studying multilingualism, as well as Aronin and O’Laoire, 
with their ecological approach. The former authors have not been commented 
on here in much depth and the latter are not mentioned at all. 

In chapter 2 the Author presents the ecological perspective in eco-pedagogy, 
which stands against the normative approach and introduces a holistic approach 
to language understood here as a mediator in communication, which promotes 
a variable norm. Lankiewicz believes, correctly in my view, that discourse 
analysis should take the form of critical discourse analysis, in which language 
awareness and learner/teacher autonomy become the basic concepts. It would 
be hard to disagree with such a point of view, as all the evidence demonstrates 
that the normative approach did not succeed in developing teacher/learner au-
tonomy, as was initially expected.

Chapter 3 of the book is devoted to the discussion of language awareness 
as a concept and teacher language awareness in particular, focusing on the 
need for developing teacher critical awareness. The Author’s strong belief in 
the above led him to coin a new term, TCELA—teacher critical ecological 
awareness, which of course draws upon an ecological perspective. Despite an 
extensive discussion, Lankiewicz seems to totally ignore previous conceptual 
work on teacher reflectivity, which is paramount to language awareness devel-
opment, for example the research of Loughran (1996), Farrell (2007) or also 
that of Gabryś-Barker (2012), just to mention of few of a large bulk of studies 
on reflectivity. Also, the Author’s position seems too radical in relation to the 
need for creating a post-modern/post-national approach to language, which 
eliminates awareness of one’s mother tongue as a factor in foreign language 
acquisition/learning.

Once the reader manages to get through the reference-dense text of the 
first three chapters of the theoretical discussion, the most interesting part is 
awaiting in chapter 4. It presents in detail the empirical study carried out by 
the Author which, as he himself states, derives from his own personal need 



Hadrian Lankiewicz, Teacher Language Awareness: A Collaborative Inquiry… 135

and reflection when working with trainee EFL teachers, who are university 
students, in respect of autonomous teacher/learner development and its virtual 
impossibility in the present-day conditions teachers work in. The ecological 
approach seems to be a possible remedy. A triangulated mixed-method longi-
tudinal study has been carried out and aimed to demonstrate the development 
of trainees’ reflectivity in the period of writing their B.A. thesis in TEFL. 
This research has to be treated as a case study in its main qualitative part, 
as the sample consisted of eight students (members of a B.A seminar). In its 
quantitative part, Lankiewicz extended the number of subjects, as he used three 
samples of pilot, control, and target groups. The most interesting fragment of 
the study is its qualitative section. It demonstrates in its well-designed stages 
of data collection, trainees’ development of reflection and thus of TCELA 
(teacher critical ecological awareness). It is a typical example of fairly rigor-
ous action research, in which the teacher (the Author) is the researcher and the 
motivation is contextually-grounded and, as a consequence, used pragmatically 
in the teacher’s own didactic practice and his/her professional development. 
The Author assumes that this form of research is not very popular among 
Polish educational centres, which unfortunately, demonstrates little knowledge 
of other teacher training institutions and (published) research carried out there, 
precisely in a form of action research projects (arguably this leads us to the 
sad conclusion that there is little cooperation between academic centres training 
future FL teachers). Action research is being incorporated in various academic 
institutions, just to mention two significant ones, the University of Adam 
Mickiewicz in Poznań (e.g., Wiśniowska, 2013) and the University of Silesia 
in Katowice (e.g., Gabryś-Barker, 2012). One of interesting, inspiring, and at-
tractive features is the introduction of think aloud technique by the Author, 
a form of introspection, diaries and oral narration (presentations of the subjects). 
This fairly innovative methodology made participation in the study motivating 
for the student-subjects and allowed the researcher to elicit rich data for his 
analysis. This data is supplemented by self-constructed questionnaires, verified 
by means of statistical measures as to their reliability, which is not always the 
case in proposed research projects. Apart from being thorough, the analysis 
of the collected data is also interesting, leading the Author to conclusions that 
can constitute valuable guidelines for teacher trainers to be implemented in 
the course of professional development of future teachers of EFL, or any other 
foreign language. The intervention proposed by Lankiewicz in his project is 
an excellent illustration of how to sensitize trainees to the issues of reflectiv-
ity in general and in critical reflection on language awareness in particular. It 
has been tested and successfully carried out and completed by the Author in 
his own teaching context. I see its value mostly in demonstrating that such an 
intervention not only develops the critical awareness of teachers in its ecological 
dimension, but it also becomes a motivating factor and a challenge, compared 



Danuta Gabryś-Barker136

by the Author to “a responsible adventure” for both the trainer and trainee. To 
sum up, in its empirical part, the book is an excellent example of constructivist 
thinking in education, whereas in its theoretical part it seems a little overloaded 
with ideology.

The book is written in coherent and cohesive academic language, though its 
references to numerous scholars and their research overwhelms, making it not 
very reader-friendly on the one hand. On the other, it can be used as a valuable 
reference source. One minor drawback which could be mentioned is the lack 
of index of names and index of subjects in his book.

I believe that this interesting and innovative publication should be of interest 
to, first of all, FL teacher trainers in various educational centres concerned with 
the professional development of teachers at different levels: both at pre-service 
and at the in-service stage.

References

Farrell, S. C. (2007). Reflective language teaching. London & New York: Continuum.
Gabryś-Barker, D. (2012). Reflectivity in pre-service teacher development: A survey of theory 

and practice. Katowice: University of Silesia Press.
Loughran, J. (1996). Developing reflective practice. Learning about teaching and learning 

through modelling. London–Washington D.C.: The Falmer Press.
Van Lier, L. (2004). The ecology and semiotics of language learning. A sociocultural perspec-

tive. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
Wiśniowska, D. (2013). Action research in EF pedagogy. Theory and analysis of practice. 

Poznań: UAM.

Danuta Gabryś-Barker
University of Silesia in Katowice, 
Poland

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-0703

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-0703