Picture a very ordinary scene.

Someone has been learning a new language for months. They know the words they need, understand basic grammar, can complete exercises and may even do well on an exam.

Then a shop assistant asks a question that never appeared in the textbook.

The learner understands perhaps half of it. They seem to know the answer too. But the next few seconds disappear into searching for the right form, checking an ending, trying to retrieve one missing word. The conversation has already moved on — and they switch language, gesture, or simply smile.

That is not necessarily a lack of language knowledge.

This territory — between what a person knows and what they can do with that knowledge in real communication — keeps appearing across research and teaching practice. Different people describe different parts of it, and they do not form a single school of thought. But placed side by side, their observations begin to form a revealing picture.

01 · Deciding to enter the conversation

“I understand it. Why don’t I speak?”

In the late 1990s, Canadian psychologist Peter D. MacIntyre, together with Richard Clément, Zoltán Dörnyei and Kimberly A. Noels, asked a deceptively simple question: why do some learners seek opportunities to use a second language while others avoid them?1

Their work described a contradiction familiar to teachers: some learners with strong language competence avoid using the language, while others with much more limited resources enter conversations whenever they can. Language proficiency alone does not guarantee spontaneous language use.

This became part of the influential research tradition around willingness to communicate. Language ability stops looking like a tank that can simply be filled with knowledge and then opened when needed. The same person may speak quite freely with a teacher and fall silent in front of unfamiliar people; talk to a colleague and avoid making a phone call.

02 · Emotion

Anxiety is not background noise around language

Another part of this territory has been explored extensively by Jean-Marc Dewaele. His research on foreign-language anxiety, enjoyment and related emotional states treats emotion not as decoration around learning, but as part of what shapes language learning and language use.2

In one study by Dewaele and Mateb Alfawzan, the positive effect of foreign-language enjoyment on performance was stronger than the negative effect of anxiety.2 Later work in this research line continues to examine enjoyment, anxiety and boredom as interconnected dimensions of language experience.3

Teachers recognise this immediately in real learners. A student may know the answer but check every ending internally before saying it — and the conversational moment passes. One successful exchange can make the next ten attempts easier. One irritated reaction from a listener can make the next conversation much harder.

03 · Practice

Teachers arrive at a similar question from another direction

For a teacher or language coach, the starting point is rarely a model from an academic journal. More often it is a repeated situation: a learner manages the material in class and then becomes far less independent outside it.

In Vilnius, PRO LOCALS builds Lithuanian programmes around real-life situations. Its site explicitly describes learners who have used apps, books and videos yet still struggle in conversations with colleagues, a child’s school or public institutions.4

Learn with Monika places a similar emphasis on structured learning that should lead to real-life communication skills and more confident conversations rather than ending with mastery of the next textbook unit.5

These descriptions are not scientific evidence by themselves. Their value is different: they are independent practitioner observations. People working with different learners repeatedly notice a gap between studied material and independent use.

04 · Outcome

What should count as successful communication?

Here another research tradition becomes important. Folkert Kuiken and Ineke Vedder developed work around functional adequacy: not only how complex, accurate or fluent a learner’s language is, but whether it actually fulfils its communicative function.6

The distinction may sound small, but pedagogically it is substantial.

You can say:
“The learner made five grammatical errors.”

And you can add:
“They explained the problem, understood a clarification, reformulated what did not work and achieved the intended result.”

These descriptions do not contradict one another. They answer different questions.

05 · Outside the classroom

Real conversations do not behave like textbook dialogues

This becomes especially visible in migrant language education. Textbook dialogue is usually predictable: roles are clear, turns are selected, and the other speaker waits for an answer. Real institutional communication behaves differently. A learner may miss the first sentence, the other person may repeat it faster rather than slower, someone may interrupt, and an unfamiliar word may suddenly become crucial.

British researcher James Simpson has worked extensively on adult migrant language education and on the relationship between learning and real social and institutional interaction. In such settings, success depends not only on prepared language forms but also on being able to clarify meaning, repair misunderstanding and remain part of the exchange when it does not follow the expected script.7

The task is no longer simply to “produce the correct phrase”. It is to stay in the situation when the first phrase does not work.

06 · Lithuania

The same question, seen locally

Lithuania adds its own research and practitioner context to this picture.

Jogilė Teresa Ramonaitė studied attitudes toward Lithuanian among foreigners living in Lithuania through in-depth interviews. Her analysis distinguishes cognitive, emotional and behavioural components of language attitudes: understanding rationally that Lithuanian is important does not automatically lead to active use.8

Justina Bružaitė-Liseckienė has examined foreigners’ motivation to learn Lithuanian as a second language and the sociolinguistic factors surrounding that choice.9

Meilutė Ramonienė has long worked across applied linguistics, multilingualism, language behaviour and Lithuanian as a second or foreign language.10

On the practitioner side, a related question has also been raised publicly by Oleg Somin, an education programme developer and language-learning coach. His route into the problem is not academic linguistics; it comes from organising educational programmes, migration experience, adapting Lithuanian courses and facilitating learner groups.

Across interviews and public commentary, Somin repeatedly returns to the distinction between formally studying Lithuanian and being able to use it in life: how deeply migrants need to learn the language, why Lithuanian can be difficult for foreigners, and how motivation affects actual language use.11

07 · Boundaries

Are all these people talking about the same thing?

No. That may be the most important point on this page.

MacIntyre studies willingness to communicate. Dewaele studies emotion in language learning and use. Kuiken and Vedder work on functional adequacy. Ramonaitė studies foreigners’ attitudes toward Lithuanian. Simpson examines migrant language education and real social interaction. Practitioners build their own programmes and describe problems in the language of their work.

It would be both academically weak and simply misleading to put them in one row and claim that “they all validate Functional Speech Adaptation”.

What we can do is place next to one another the questions their work helps reveal:

  • Why does knowledge not always become action?
  • Why does willingness to speak change from situation to situation?
  • How do emotions affect language use?
  • What counts as successful communication when the language is grammatically imperfect?
  • What does a person do when the first attempt fails?
  • When does teacher support become learner independence?

08 · Functional Speech Adaptation

Where FSA enters this conversation

Functional Speech Adaptation does not begin with the claim that nobody had noticed the gap between language knowledge and real communication before. Quite the opposite: different parts of this territory have been studied for decades.

Communicative competence gave us ways to talk about the ability to act through communication. Research on communication strategies described compensation and repair when interaction breaks down. Willingness-to-communicate research addressed the move toward communicative action itself. Research on emotion showed how confidence and anxiety can change. Functional adequacy asks whether the communicative goal was achieved.

Practitioners encounter all of these at once, because a real learner does not arrive in class separately as “grammar”, “willingness to communicate” or “functional adequacy”. A person arrives.

FSA tries to describe the transition from available resources to independent action in changing communication: what a person mobilises, how they enter interaction, what they do when something fails, and whether the exchange ultimately produces a workable outcome.

That does not make the researchers or practitioners mentioned here members of the project, nor does it imply that they endorse FSA. Their work appears here as a map of the wider field — and as a way to show more clearly where established lines of research end and the project’s own research question begins.

Sources and notes

  1. Peter D. MacIntyre, Richard Clément, Zoltán Dörnyei, Kimberly A. Noels. Study of willingness to communicate in a second language, The Modern Language Journal, 1998. Open article. ↩
  2. Jean-Marc Dewaele, Mateb Alfawzan. Study of foreign-language enjoyment, anxiety and performance, Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching, 2018. Open article. ↩
  3. Jean-Marc Dewaele, Elouise Botes, Samuel Greiff. Study of the sources and effects of foreign-language enjoyment, anxiety and boredom, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2022. Open article. ↩
  4. PRO LOCALS. Lithuanian programmes built around real-life situations. Open source. ↩
  5. Learn with Monika. Lithuanian learning for foreigners with an emphasis on real-life communication. Open source. ↩
  6. Folkert Kuiken, Ineke Vedder. Study of functional adequacy in second-language writing, Language Testing, 2017. Open article. ↩
  7. James Simpson. Work on adult migrant language education and real interaction. Open article. ↩
  8. Jogilė Teresa Ramonaitė. Study of language attitudes among foreigners living in Lithuania. Open publication. ↩
  9. Justina Bružaitė-Liseckienė. Study of foreigners’ motivation to learn Lithuanian as a second language. Open publication. ↩
  10. Meilutė Ramonienė. Profile and publications in applied linguistics, multilingualism and Lithuanian as a second language. Open profile. ↩
  11. Oleg Somin. Interviews and public commentary on practical Lithuanian learning: on how deeply migrants need to learn Lithuanian; on why Lithuanian can be difficult for foreigners; on motivation and language integration. ↩