Innovation in Language Learning

Izabela Olszak is an assistant professor at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin in Poland.
She graduated in Applied Linguistics – Humanities from the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University of Lublin in 2008. In 2018, she received the title of doctor in humanities – specialization linguistics. Since then, for the last 20 years, she has worked as an EFL/EAP/ESP teacher in various educational establishments.

Izabela Olszak specializes in linguistics and foreign language teaching methodology. She is particularly interested in teaching bilingual and trilingual learners, new methods and trends in foreign language teaching as well as psychological factors determining foreign language acquisition. She is an expert on service learning method in the Service Learning Laboratory in the Center for Teaching and Learning at the John Paul II Catholic University. She is involved in scientific projects: LANGSKILL- Learning styles and preferences of deaf and hard of hearing students (international partners: Masark University in Brno (The Check Republic) and Liberal Arts Institute in Siena (Italy); UNISERVITATE Project: Service-learning in Catholic Higher Education (international partners: Eichstätt-Ingolstadt Catholic University in Germany, Catholic University of Bethlehem and Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv); PROJECT "The highest quality of doctoral students at the KUL Doctoral School - the STER NAWA Program - internationalization of doctoral schools at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.

Her most recent publications comprise “AI, will you help?” How learners use Artificial Intelligence when writing (co-authored, 2024, XLinguae Journal), where the authors investigate how successful advanced students are determining whether an essay was written by AI tools or by a human and how much AI assistance advanced students need to summarize, generate text, and write from prompts when trained to use an AI-assisted word processor; On Reading in Trilingual Learners - Conceptual, Educational and Pedagogical Arenas (2023, Peter Lang), in which she elaborates on reading skills of trilingual learners. The monograph presents and discusses in detail a novel multi-stage research study on the acquisition and development of reading comprehension skills in trilingual advanced learners. It examines the use of reading strategies in two experiments involving Polish students of English and German, and the impact of strategic training in one foreign language on its autonomous employment in the next one; Speaking Strategies of Bilingual Learners: Use and Potential Problems (in
Various Facets of Foreign Language Education, 2023, Dr. Kovaĉ Verlag), in which she investigates the speaking skills applied by bilingual learners. The collected results reveal some of the speaking problems that bilinguals encounter in their speaking process.

Area/s of Expertise: Foreign Language Teaching, Teaching Bilingual and Multilingual Learners, Psychological and Sociological Factors determining Foreign Language Teaching, New Methods and Trends in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning