Ewa Komorowska

Despite multilingualism being more frequent than monolingualism (Grosjean, 2021), there are still myths about multilingualism in European societies, such as the belief that people who speak more th...

The development of self-regulation is a foundational milestone of early childhood, predicting outcomes from future academic success to mental health throughout the lifespan. Accumulating behavioral research suggests that self-regulation is not innate but socially constructed, originating in "co-regulatory" interactions where caregivers modulate a child's arousal and attention. However, the neural mechanisms supporting the transition from external regulation to internal capacity remain poorly understood. This opinion piece proposes that interpersonal neural synchrony (INS), the temporal alignment of brain activity between interacting partners, serves as a critical biomarker of this transition. We synthesize evidence linking INS to both co-regulation and to self-regulation strategies, arguing that INS may serve as the neural bridge that facilitates the transmission of regulatory competence from dyadic to independent regulation. We identify critical research gaps and propose a framework in which INS is no longer understood solely as a marker of interpersonal dependency, but as a dynamic mechanism supporting the development of autonomy.

Vocabulary assessment is an important part of measuring language proficiency in both monolingual and bilingual children. The LITMUS Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLT) provides a framework for assessing the vocabulary of monolingual and bilingual children using a standardized procedure and comparable stimuli across languages. All language versions of CLT include picture naming and picture recognition tasks, using both nouns and verbs as target words. The present study demonstrates high reliability (internal consistency) and convergent validity of the Polish CLT (CLT-PL) in a monolingual sample of children between 3 and 6 years of age. We present data collected from 479 participants. Based on the analysis of the impact of children’s demographic characteristics on CLT scores, we developed a set of monolingual norms for children aged 3;0 to 5;11. We conclude that the CLT-PL is a reliable and valid tool for assessing vocabulary in monolingual children that could be applied in research and has the potential to serve as a diagnostic tool in the future. With this, we are one step further in designing tools for assessing the vocabularies of multilingual children learning Polish.

The article presents partial results from an online survey conducted with a group of expatriates living and working in Poland. The main aim of the study was to examine the attitude of the target group towards learning Polish, and to find the most important motivations for learning it or the reasons for not doing so. This problem has not been thoroughly researched before because expatriates previously were not treated as a separate research group. The results show, however, that they are an interesting object of study; they differ from other types of learners (e.g. academic learners) mostly because of their different motivations and attitudes towards learning Polish. The language profile of the expatriates is particularly noteworthy, especially their multilingualism, although not all are learning Polish. Their motivations to start learning the language, and the reasons for stopping to do so or for not even starting at all despite living in Poland for long time, are also worth exploring.

W artykule zostały przedstawione doświadczenia nauczycieli języka polskiego jako obcego (dalej: jpjo) ze zdalnym nauczaniem oraz ich autorefleksje na temat umiejętności zdobytych w trakcie pandemii. Problem ten, ze względu na swoją aktualność, nie został jeszcze dostatecznie zbadany. Zaprezentowane dane pozyskano w ankiecie internetowej (70 uczestników) oraz dwóch wywiadach z doświadczonymi nauczycielkami jpjo. Badani dydaktycy wskazali na skok kompetencyjny, który musieli wykonać w zakresie posługiwania się technologiami teleinformatycznymi w procesie edukacyjnym po rozpoczęciu pandemii COVID-19. Choć wskazali na początkowe trudności związane z przestawieniem się na pracę zdalną, po roku funkcjonowania w takim trybie większość z nich pozytywnie ocenia swoje doświadczenia we wspomnianym zakresie. Wskazują przede wszystkim na zdobycie wielu umiejętności technologicznych, poznanie interaktywnych narzędzi oraz technik nauczania. Dodatkowo przewidują, że nauczanie jpjo pozostaniew znacznej mierze w trybie zdalnym, a nowe podręczniki będą przygotowywane w sposób umożliwiający edukację w przestrzeni internetowej.Artykuł sytuuje się w zakresie glottodydaktyki polonistycznej, szczególnie pedeutologii. Porusza również kwestie związane z nauczaniem jpjo z wykorzystaniem technologii teleinformatycznych.

Teaching business Polish to foreign businessmen in Poland has its specificity: lessons often take place in learners’ offices on a one-to-one basis or in very small groups. Learners are usually very demanding and autonomous. They want to have control over their language learning process but are unwilling to take any tests. Therefore, process of evaluation has to be organized in a less conventional manner. The article reflects on the needs of such learners and describes the most effective ways which, according to its author, measure their skills: formative assessment and task-based assessment.