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This study investigates the relationships between foreign language anxiety (FLA), motivation and achievement in EFL-learners in secondary and tertiary education. Research previous to 2009 generally reaches the conclusion that learners with more motivation have less FLA and higher achievement, and learners with more FLA have lower motivation and achievement. The present study synthesises eight studies from late 2009 to 2020, and it was found that although six studies are generally in accordance with the earlier research, they disagreed with one another concerning what motivational and FLA subscales were most related. Some differences in the conclusions of the studies are theorised to be due to the different motivational constructs the studies focused on. All studies also failed to show a cause-and-effect relationship between any of the variables or agree on the extent to which they were related. This suggested the advantage of looking at the variables as part of a dynamic system, in which all the variables affect one another, and the relationships are constantly changing. Further research was suggested in the area of FLA to identify its factors and which learners suffer from it.

The onset of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 gave way to a precipitous transition to online learning in colleges and universities across the globe. Learners and teachers alike were forced to adapt to new procedures and norms within a matter of days. Among the many questions regarding the development of rigorous courses that can adequately replace face-to-face learning, there was a need to examine and understand the complex ties between identity and second language (L2) classroom discourse in the ever-expanding sphere of online learning. Thorne et al.’s (2015) study demonstrates that there is a considerable body of work that sheds light on the role of L2 identity in online contexts, with some studies focusing on platforms that are not entirely synchronous but that contain synchronous capabilities (Thorne et al., 2015). Despite this, few studies have focused on the manifestation of learner identity using exclusively synchronous video communication for L2 instructional purposes in educational contexts.The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature on L2 identity in synchronous online courses that utilize video web conferencing platforms using qualitative methodological approaches. This study relied on data from one-on-one interviews with five focal participants, classroom transcripts, and weekly written reflections to demonstrate relationships between recurring themes in their data to theoretical constructs that were relevant to the research questions being examined. The theoretical constructs that were used to interpret the data were activity theory (Engeström, 1987, 2001), Lave and Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), and Norton’s theories of identity and imagined communities (Norton-Peirce, 1995; Norton, 2000, 2001, 2013; Norton & Toohey, 2011). Activity Theory was used to understand how learners made use of the affordances of the online classroom to accomplish their individual goals of learning about Spanish linguistics. The communities of practice (CoP) framework was used to examine how learners negotiated their identities within this community and how their identity or role within the online classroom community impacted their participation. Regarding investment and imagined communities, this research focused on how learners were able to draw connections between class activities and their personal and professional goals. Theoretical and practical implications for this study outline how instructors can constructively negotiate the use of technological affordances for communication in the online classroom to meet the learning goals of their courses. / Spanish

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Digital media has a huge impact on today‟s society. Technologies give opportunities for teachers to access different tasks, exercises, games and videos for teaching students a new language. This also means that teachers have opportunity to conduct more varied lessons to motivate students‟ learning. However, digital media comes with advantages as well as disadvantages. This project will therefore discuss the use of digital media for learning English as a foreign language and discover what teachers thinks about using digital media for teaching. To examine the use of digital media in today‟s school and teachers‟ views of using digital media for learning. This project will carry out interviews and observations on teachers from a selected school. Participants from the selected school are teachers who use digital media regularly to teach Swedish students the English language. Moreover, the participants also discussed the advantages and disadvantages with using of digital media in teaching.

Despite a rise in the use of “learning by doing” pedagogical methods in praxis, little is known as to how the brain benefits from these methods. Learning by doing strategies that utilize complementary information (“enrichment”) such as gestures have been shown to optimize learning outcomes in several domains including foreign language (L2) training. Here we tested the hypothesis that behavioral benefits of gesture-based enrichment are critically supported by integrity of the biological motion visual cortices (bmSTS). Prior functional neuroimaging work has implicated the visual motion cortices in L2 translation following sensorimotor-enriched training; the current study is the first to investigate the causal relevance of these structures in learning by doing contexts. Using neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation and a gesture-enriched L2 vocabulary learning paradigm, we found that the bmSTS causally contributed to behavioral benefits of gesture-enriched learning. Visual motion cortex integrity benefitted both short- and long-term learning outcomes, as well as the learning of concrete and abstract words. These results adjudicate between opposing predictions of two neuroscientific learning theories: While reactivation-based theories predict no functional role of specialized sensory cortices in vocabulary learning outcomes, the current study supports the predictive coding theory view that these cortices precipitate sensorimotor-based learning benefits.:I. Abkürzungsverzeichnis II. Abbildungsverzeichnis III. Einleitung 1. Fremdsprachenlernen 1.1 Sensorische Modalitätsvergleiche 1.2 Sensomotorisches Lernen 2. Lerntheorien 2.1 Theorie des prädiktiven Kodierens 2.2 Theorie des prädiktiven Kodierens für multisensorisches Lernen 3. Sulcus temporalis superior für biologische Bewegung 4. Transkranielle Magnetstimulation 4.1 Passagere Funktionsinhibition mittels transkranieller Magnetstimulation IV. Ableitung der Rationale V. Publikationsmanuskript VI. Zusammenfassung VII. Literaturverzeichnis VIII. Appendix A. Abbildungen B. Ergänzendes Material der Publikation C. Darstellung des eigenen Beitrags D. Erklärung über die eigenständige Abfassung der Arbeit E. Lebenslauf F. Publikationen G. Danksagung

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