Becoming more and more a multidisciplinary domain of study, the development of research in second language acquisition, and even more visibly in multilingualism, has moved away from its sole focus on cognitive aspects to social-affective dimensions. Consequently, research in these areas makes more extensive use of research methodology characteristic of social sciences. The focus on identity brings together issues of social context and the construction of one’s identity through negotiation of who we are, how we relate to the outside world and how we position ourselves in relation to others (Pavlenko 2001). Language is the main tool in this construction/ negotiation through the acquisition/learning and use of multiple languages. In relation to the development of one’s multilingual identity, the major distinction has to be made between acquiring a language in its natural context (the case of one’s mother tongue or immigration) and learning it in formal contexts. Block (2014) believes that the issue of identity can only be studied in a natural environment of language acquisition, and not in a formal instruction context. This article aims to confi rm or reject the above belief, based on evidence from various studies of bi- and multiple language users and how they perceive their identities and their relation to the languages in their possession. It includes a pilot study of trilingual language learners and their understanding of how the individual languages they know (L1, L2, L3) build their identities and the way they enrich, impoverish or challenge who they see themselves to have been by birth (Gabryś-Barker 2018). The issues discussed relate to external (other people, situations, contexts) and internal identity-building factors (individual affectivity, personality features).

The paper introduces the concept of a critical incident (CI) in the context of foreign language teaching and discusses its importance for teachers` professional development as a factor leading to a teacher ́s awareness of his/her classroom. The ability to diagnose critical incidents is seen as an inseparable part of a teacher ́s ability to control the teaching context and thus create critical events (CE).

This paper also introduces the concept of an appraisal system (Smith and Lazarus 1993 ), understood as one ́s evaluation of the relationship between one ́s success and failure in respect of past experience and the ability to adapt to an immediate context. In my analysis I will follow Scherer ́s (1984) taxonomy of components of appraisal systems such as novelty, the pleasantness of a task and coping potential, among others. This appraisal system is seen as emotionally-driven but it also emphasizes the cognitive dimension and the interaction between affective and cognitive processing.

In the empirical part of the paper, the study on CI in teaching EFL is reported on. The main objective of the study was to make in-service teachers of EFL reflect upon their most memorable critical incident (CI) and evaluate it from the affective point of view. The study was also to make the subjects more aware of themselves and their classroom presence. The research instrument used in the project was the Geneva Appraisal Questionnaire -GAQ (Scherer 2001), based on Scherer ́s taxonomy.

Any language learning process is a complex phenomenon as it occurs on the cog-nitive, affective and socio-cultural levels. The interrelatedness of them all and the contextually-determined way in which they interact make language learning expe-riences unique to individuals. The context in which more than two languages are learnt adds to its complexity. This article examines what multilingual language users perceive as meaningful in two different contexts of language learning: L2 versusL3. Although unique, these two processes exhibit a fair degree of homogeneity, for example in terms of one`s coping potential as the major appraisal value both in L2 and L3 learning and growing negativity about language learning in later stages of life in L3 learning.