Positive Psychology Perspectives on Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

Danuta Gabrys-Barker is Professor of English at the University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland, where she lectures and supervises M.A. and Ph.D. theses in applied linguistics, psycholinguistics and especially in second language acquisition. She also works as a teacher trainer. Her main areas of interest are multilingualism (especially at the level of mental lexicon and syntax) and applied psycholinguistics (modalities, learner profiles and affectivity). As a teacher trainer she lectures on research methods in second language acquisition and TEFL projects. Her major concern is the role of action research in teacher development. Prof. Gabrys-Barker has published over a hundred articles nationally as well as internationally and a book Aspects of multilingual storage, processing and retrieval, Katowice: University of Silesia Press, 2005 and Reflectivity in pre-service teacher education which came out in 2012. She has edited nine volumes, among others a volume Morphosyntactic Issues in Second Language Acquisition (Multilingual Matters, 2008), Topics in Applied Psycholinguistics (University of Silesia Press, 2015) and co-edited The Affective Dimension in Second Language Acquisition (Multilingual Matters, 2013). She is the Vice-president of the Polish Association for the Study of English (PASE) and a Board member of International Association of Multilingualism. She is the editor-in-chief (together with Eva Vetter) of the International Journal of Multilingualism (Taylor & Francis/Routledge).

So Far So Good: An Overviewof Positive Psychology and Its Contributions to SLA.- Powerfully Positive: Searching for a Model of Language LearnerWell-Being.- Difficulty and Coping Strategies in Language Education: Is  Positive Psychology Misrepresented inSLA/FLT?.- The Positive Broadening Power of a Focuson Well-Being in the Language Classroom.- Activating Character StrengthsThrough Poetic Encounters in a Foreign Language - A Case Study.- PedagogicalImplications of Positive Psychology:  PositiveEmotions and Human Strengths in Vocabulary Strategy Training.