This study explores the foreign language learning emotions of four EFL adolescent students in Romania and the ways in which their emotions emerge in their sociocultural context. Multiple qualitative methods were employed over a school semester, including a written task, semi-structured interviews with the learners and their teachers, lesson observations and English-related events outside the classroom. It was found that, while all four participants reported experiencing positive emotions in language learning, a distinction was identified in the intensity and stability of their emotions. Two participants expressed a strong and stable emotion of love towards English, while the other two participants experienced enjoyment in their English language learning without an intense emotional attachment to English. Unlike enjoyment, love was found to be the driving force in the learning process, creating effective coping mechanisms when there was a lack of enjoyment in certain classroom situations and motivating learners to invest greater effort into language learning in and out of the classroom. The findings thus revealed that, unlike enjoyment, love broadened cognition and maintained engagement in learning. The study emphasizes the role of strong, enduring positive emotions in teenage students' language learning process.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the link between Foreign Language Enjoyment, Foreign Language Anxiety and Willingness to Communicate in Denisa and Anda, two high school learners of English as a Foreign Language in Romania.Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative data were collected during a school semester including lesson observations, a written task and semi-structured interviews with the aim of obtaining retrodictive data (Dörnyei, 2014) in order to gain a better understanding of the nature and amount of fluctuation and change in participants' Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in English over time. The approach is strongly influenced by Dynamic System Theory and is based on the concept of constructed emotions (Feldman Barrett, 2017a, b).Findings and Originality/value: The study revealed that WTC was related to the uniquely constructed emotions of Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and Foreign Language (Classroom) Anxiety (FLCA) (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014) in dynamic, idiosyncratic ways, that took root during the first contact with English, extending into the present and the future.Learners' personality and their experiences inside and outside the English classroom shaped 1 To appear in Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching 2 their emotions which had direct and indirect repercussions on their WTC. The paper concludes that case studies into and WTC offer a crucial complement to quantitative studies as they highlight the fact that emotions cannot be essentialized (Feldman Barrett, 2017a, b) and that their relationship with WTC can fluctuate sharply over the short term and develop over the longer term, depending on a range of interacting learner-internal and contextual variables. FLE and FLCA do remain useful concepts at a super-ordinate level.

The aim of this study was to investigate the language learning motivation of two EFL teenage students in Romania and the link between motivation and the emotional dimensions of these adolescents’ learning experiences. While language learning motivation has been widely researched, its relationship with emotion in the learning experience has not been examined in depth thus far. To gain deep insight into this relationship, the present study used various qualitative methods: a written task, multiple semi-structured interviews with the students and their teachers, and prolonged lesson observation. The findings showed that the learners’ motivation and emotions were closely intertwined in their learning experiences in idiosyncratic ways. Mika (pseudonym) experienced the prevalent emotion of love of English and was a highly motivated learner. In her out-of-class learning experience, her motivation was linked to her emotions towards her favorite singer. In her classroom learning experience, her motivation was shaped by her teacher’s encouragement and support. Kate (pseudonym) did not reportedly experience a dominant emotion towards English and had a rather weak motivation. The absence of an expressed dominant emotion towards English was linked to her classroom learning experience before high school, namely to her teacher’s lack of encouragement, which hindered her motivation. By focusing on two contrasting cases of learners, this study has foregrounded the role of the emotional aspects of the language learning experience in shaping motivation, showing how strong positive emotions enhance and sustain motivation and how the lack of such emotions hinders motivation.

The present multiple case study is situated within the growing wave of research on the role of emotions in second language learning. It focuses more specifically on the relationship between emotion, motivation, willingness to communicate and the second language context. The participants were two adult learners of English as a second or other language (ESOL) in the United Kingdom: Aurora and Emilie (pseudonyms). Semi-structured interviews with the learners and their tutors, conducted face to face, were complemented with lesson observations over an academic term to achieve an in-depth understanding of the relationship between emotion, motivation, willingness to communicate and the learning context. Enjoyment and anxiety were the most salient emotions that emerged; however, the sources of these emotions were slightly different for the learners and were linked to the type of classroom activity and interlocutors. Both participants were highly motivated language learners because of their enjoyable learning experiences rather than by a vision of future English-using selves. While enjoyment appeared to strongly shape willingness to communicate in the classroom for both learners, anxiety hindered out-of-class communication in one of the students. The results suggest that the relationship between language learning emotions, motivation and willingness to communicate is linked to the learning context but that the interaction between different variables is unique to each learner. Implications for research and pedagogy are presented.

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