The Institute of English at the University of Silesia is pleased to announce the 29th International Conference on Foreign and Second Language Acquisition (ICFSLA). Traditionally, this conference focuses on research in second language acquisition and foreign language learning, concentrating each year on different aspects of the research field.

The choice of the topic was determined by the significance of learning environment(s) in relation to language acquisition/learning processes. We aim to raise our awareness as teachers, mentors and learners of the complexity of this issue. We would like to look at the conditions necessary to build environments that would support both the learning and growth of language users/learners in the context of instructed as well as uninstructed language development. Proposals for presentations can embrace both cognitive and affective aspects of building such an environment - at school but also beyond – in the community and within a family. We are also anticipating papers researching barriers in the learning environment(s) that impede the process of language development such as expectations, resources, assessment or culture, to name just a few. It would also be interesting to open up a discussion on educational policies responsible for creating schools which respond well to their learners by offering both a friendly and propitious environment for learner growth.

As many of our regular Szczyrk conference participants research multilingualism and work within multilingual educational settings, as usual we welcome proposals related with multilingualism research in a separate session(s).

We also welcome and accept selected proposals in other areas of SLA research in addition to the main conference theme.

All those wishing to contribute papers, or just wanting to attend presentations and workshops, are invited to participate in the conference.
This year, instead of our regular Ph.D. workshop, we would like to introduce a new form of presentation for Ph.D. students. Interested prospective candidates are asked to prepare a poster of their projects and share them with the other conference participants and, more importantly, with academic supervisors in order to receive a response and some constructive feedback.

Another innovation for our conference session will be a session with academic publishers, from whom inexperienced young scholars can get information, advice and guidance on how to prepare texts for publication in an academic journal.