Foreign language enjoyment and anxiety: The effect of teacher and learner variables

Abstract

Positive psychology has boosted interest in the positive as well as the negative emotions that Foreign Language learners experience. The present study examines whether -and to what extent-foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and FL classroom anxiety (FLCA) are linked to a range of learner-internal variables and teacher/classroom-specific variables within one specific educational context. Participants were 189 British high school students learning various FLs. Levels of FLE were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, the FL teacher, FL use in class, proportion of time spent on speaking, relative standing and stage of development. Lower levels FLCA were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, relative standing and stage of development. FLCA thus seems less related to teacher and teacher practices than FLE. The pedagogical implication is that teachers should strive to boost FLE rather than worry too much about students' FLCA. Dörnyei and Ryan (2015) pointed out that despite the fact that emotions play a crucial part in our lives, they have been largely "shunned" by Second Language Acquisition (SLA) scholars (p. 9). The authors attribute this to the cognitivist tradition in the field and argue that it is time to overcome the general "emotional deficit" in SLA research. They wonder how as researchers we can "accommodate positive emotions more effectively into our descriptions of learner psychology? " (p. 205). This statement recognizes that the role of positive emotion, although vaguely recognized in the field, still has a long way to traverse before positive emotion assumes the place it deserves (Dulay & Burt, 1977, Gardner, 1985Krashen, 1982;Schumann, 1978) but it is true that it seems to have remained a little bit in the shadows of the vibrant research into negative emotions, mostly foreign language anxiety. The situation may be changing because of the influence of Positive Psychology, the empirical study of how people thrive and flourish. Positive Psychology wants to broaden the general perspective in 1 Pre-print version of the paper (Article first published online: February 17, 2017) Language Teaching Research https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817692161 2 general psychology with its focus on abnormalities, disorders, and mental illness and the development of ways to reduce pain and learn to cope with negative experiences, in favour of the development of tools to build positive emotions, foster greater engagement, and boost the appreciation of meaning in life and its activities (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). Just as the interlanguage paradigm superseded the error analysis tradition in the 1970s, with a move away from an exclusive focus on second language learners' deficits, the Positive Psychology approach advocates a more holistic view on humans, which in SLA terms means moving away from the overwhelming focus on negative emotions (foreign language classroom anxiety -FLCA) to include L2 learners' positive emotions, such as Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014Dewael...

Advanced learners’ foreign language-related emotions across the four skills

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Classroom anxiety and enjoyment in CLIL and non-CLIL: Does the target language matter?

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Teaching modern foreign languages in multilingual classrooms: an examination of Key Stage 2 teachers’ experiences

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