Understanding Emotions in English Language Learning in Virtual Worlds

Mariusz Kruk, Miroslaw Pawlak

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000570892
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book contributes to overcoming the deficit in research on emotions in foreign language learning in the domain of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in both traditional and virtual settings.

The authors divide emotions into positive (i.e., enjoyment and curiosity) and negative (i.e., boredom and language anxiety) and explore their role in L2 teaching and learning in CALL environments from theoretical, empirical and pedagogical perspectives. The book begins with a theoretical overview of selected issues concerning positive and negative emotions and surveys the studies that have dealt with this issue in L2 learning in conventional settings and CALL. The empirical part of the book is devoted to a research project which explores the experience of positive and negative emotions in learning English in the virtual world Second Life, the relationships of the emotions in question and factors influencing them. The book concludes by recommending a selection of practices which can help maximize the positive emotions and minimize the negative emotions in foreign language learning in CALL environments.

This is an important and illuminating read for students and scholars of applied linguistics, second language education and educational technology who are interested in CALL and in incorporating VW/VR-based language learning programs into their studies and teaching.

1 Positive and negative emotions

Overview of selected theoretical issues

DOI: 10.4324/9781003240068-2

Introduction

The main aim of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the theoretical underpinnings of empirical investigations into emotions in the domain of second language (L2) learning. Section 1 begins with a general discussion of the role of emotions, both positive and negative, in teaching and learning an L2 in traditional and computer-assisted language learning (CALL) contexts. Section 2 is devoted to an overview of theoretical issues regarding the positive emotions of curiosity and enjoyment, which are the two positive emotions investigated in the study reported in Chapter 4. This section begins with the presentation of the definitions of the emotions in question, their types and/or dimensions as well as their sources. The third section is dedicated to the negative emotions of boredom and anxiety, that is, the main negative emotions under investigation in the research project whose findings are presented in Chapter 4. In this section, the concepts of boredom and language anxiety are discussed in light of theories expounding on their definitions, typologies and sources.

The role of emotions in L2 teaching and learning in conventional settings and CALL

According to Reeve (2005, p. 294), “emotions are short-lived, feeling-arousal purposive-expressive phenomena that help us adapt to the opportunities and challenges we face during important life events.” Emotions can also be described as the desirable or undesirable domain non-specific, socially mediated reactions experienced in a positive (pleasant) and/or negative (unpleasant) way (Dewaele & Pavelescu, 2021; Feldman Barrett, 2017; MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012). MacIntyre and Gregersen (2012, p. 193) argue that “positive emotion facilitates the building of resources because positive emotion tends to broaden a person’s perspective, opening the individual to absorb the language … negative emotion produces the opposite tendency, a narrowing of focus and a restriction of the range of potential language input.” Positive emotions carry a pleasant subjective feeling (e.g., joy and happiness) but negative emotions involve an unpleasant subjective feeling (e.g., sadness and fear) (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001, 2003). Emotional reactions occur from an aroused state of an individual and generate physiological changes that are accompanied by certain feelings and memories that predispose individuals to act in certain ways (Goleman, 2001, 2006). While on the surface negative emotions may appear to be superfluous as they prevent individuals from acting productively and/or effectively, the matter is more complicated than it might seem at first glance. This is because “positive emotion has a different function from negative emotion; they are not opposite ends of the same spectrum” (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012, p. 193) and they constitute two qualitatively different aspects of experience (Plutchik, 1980). Another important consideration is that in specific situations negative emotions may lead to positive outcomes, while positive emotions may result in negative consequences. This might be visible, for example, in the case of anger, which in some circumstances might trigger improved performance on a competitive task (Tamir & Bigman, 2014). By contrast, happiness may sometimes generate loneliness or depression if it is sought too intensively (Gruber et al., 2011).

Emotions are part and parcel of what transpires in the classroom as they jointly shape the process of L2 learning and teaching. It is quite surprising, then, that for many decades second language acquisition (SLA) researchers focused almost entirely on the negative emotion of anxiety, especially since the publication of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale developed by Horwitz and her colleagues (Horwitz et al., 1986). The affective role of anxiety was investigated in connection with willingness to communicate, followed by research studies that brought other emotions into the picture, including enjoyment, frustration or hope (Imai, 2010). Other studies related to emotions in language learning were conducted as well, such as those carried out by Schumann (1997), who utilized neurological and psychological exposure to stimulus material in order to shed new light on the role of affect; Arnold (1999), who studied emotion (or affect) in relation to self-esteem, reflective learning, anxiety and autonomy; or Norton (2000), who considered the role of identity. As argued by Noels, Pon and Clément (1996), emotions play a substantial role in researching language learner identity, since learning an additional language can be an intense emotional experience as it inevitably takes place at the intersection of language, culture and identity. Of importance are also the psychological dimensions of L2 learning with respect to multilingualism and the divergent ways in which emotions are exhibited by multilinguals (Dewaele, 2005, 2011), as well as Bown and White’s (2010) social cognitive model of emotion in L2 learning, which helps to understand the role of emotions in this endeavor, highlighting the social antecedents of emotions, the significance of cognitive appraisals of situations, as well as the regulation of emotion.

The positive psychology movement has also had an important role to play in emotion research in the field of SLA (Wang et al., 2021). Positive psychology, defined by Fredrickson (2001, p. 218) as development of the ability to “understand and foster the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to flourish,” inspired research into positive emotions (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). The role of enjoyment in learning an L2 was confirmed in the study carried out by Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014), who investigated this positive emotion together with foreign language anxiety. They found that language learners experienced less anxiety than enjoyment, and that the latter played a more important role as it appeared to be more meaningful to the participants. Ross and Stracke (2016) explored the emotion of pride among tertiary language learners in Australian universities with regard to the situated learning environment of the language classroom and authentic out-of-class social interaction. The results showed a considerable role of pride in the language classroom context, primarily as a consequence of good grades or praise from peers, although the students did not feel pride in reaction to successful task performance when no rewards were offered. Pride also played an important part in communicative settings outside the classroom, where the participants experienced this positive emotion more frequently and did not expect rewards. The positive emotion of hope was investigated by Ross and Rivers (2018) among university-level Australian learners in their English-speaking out-of-class context. The researchers showed that hope was not at all linked to the students’ formal learning environment, but was related to their future ability and willingness to confidently and effortlessly use a language in naturalistic settings for communicative purposes. Yet another positive emotion, love, was examined in the studies conducted by Pavelescu and Petrić (2018), and Barcelos (2021). In the former, love turned out to be the driving force of L2 learning and by itself motivated the participants to look for ways of overcoming the difficulties they faced and to put more effort into their learning. In the latter study, love constituted an important element of the participant’s identity as a prospective teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL), nurturing her inner and interpersonal peace needed for both herself and her future students.

As mentioned above, negative emotions constitute an integral part of learning an L2. Although SLA research has been preoccupied with the negative emotion of anxiety for many decades, resulting in the fact that other negative emotions experienced by language learners have largely been overlooked in the SLA literature, recent studies, albeit still few in number, have also focused on such negative emotions as shame, guilt, anger and boredom. To begin with, the negative role of shame was investigated by Galmiche (2017), who found that it was the most commonly reported negative emotion when compared to anxiety and frustration. The feeling of shame reduced the learners’ linguistic confidence, their perception of identity, and self-esteem. As for guilt, this negative emotion (along with shame) was the focus of the study carried out by Teimouri (2018) among EFL learners. The results showed that guilt was found to positively correlate with the students’ motivation and their language achievement, while shame was strongly and negatively linked to these two variables. Cook’s (2006) mixed-methods study explored the effect of shame and anxiety in learning the English language. The researcher reported that multiple shame episodes were primarily sparked by the students’ sensed deficiency in their target language (TL) ability. The observed shame-anger sequence revealed that the shame the learners felt culminated in reliance on anger as a strategy of defence. Finally, Kruk and Zawodniak (2018) showed that feelings of boredom were triggered by teacher-imposed topics, an unchallenging, repetitive nature of the tasks performed, teacher personality and the discrepancy between language activities used and the students’ level of English proficiency.

As can be seen, the role of emotions in conventional settings has changed due to the introduction of positive psychology into SLA research, which resulted in a shift from “the exclusive preoccupation with learners’ anxiety to the inclusion of both positive and negative classroom emotions” (Dewaele & Li, 2020, p. 37). It should be noted, however, that the same trend has hardly been mirrored in the realm of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). This is because, for many decades, primary importance in this setting has been attached to the negative emotion of language anxiety. In fact, only recently have the aversive emotion of boredom and other emotions (e.g., enjoyment) and their roles in teaching and learning an L2 in digital settings been brought to the fore. With respect to anxiety, CALL researchers, for example, uncovered a decrease in the effect of this negative emotion in a stress-free learning environment generated by means of CALL technologies (e.g., Ataiefar & Sadighi, 2017; Bashori et al., 2020; Freiermuth & Jarrell, 2006; Kartal & Balçikanlı, 2018; Kissau et al., 2010; Roed, 2003; Satar & Özdener, 2008). As regards boredom, the role of this negative emotion (also in conjunction with language anxiety) has mainly been explored in the field of the virtual world of Second Life (SL; e.g., Kruk, 2019, 2021a, 2021b), and also in studies carried out by Li and Dewaele (2020) as well as Derakhshan and colleagues (Derakhshan et al., 2021), who explored the role boredom played in connection with the use of online learning platforms. These studies showed that the experience of boredom (as well as language anxiety) was generated by a host of factors that prevented the participants from taking full advantage of these digital platforms. When it comes to research that involved positive emotions, Yoshida (2020a) found that enjoyment was the most often occurring positive emotion during online text chats in Japanese with Japanese native speakers, while a feeling of difficulty was the most frequent negative emotion. While the chat process and issues with the Japanese language played a role in generating negative emotions, the chat partners, conversations about hobbies, shared interests, and culture played a part in evoking positive emotions (for a thorough overview of studies on positive and negative emotions in L2 learning in CALL, see Chapter 2).

Positive emotions: curiosity and enjoyment

The present section is dedicated to the positive emotions of curiosity and enjoyment, that is, the two positive emotions that are the focus of the study whose results are offered in Chapter 4. This section commences with a presentation of the relevant definitions of curiosity, including language learning curiosity, its types and sources. This is followed by a discussion of pertinent definitions of enjoyment, different dimensions and sources of this positive emotion.

Curiosity

In view of the fact that curiosity is one of the least frequently examined positive emotion in L2 contexts (Mahmoodzadeh & Khajavy, 2019), the construct needs to be approached from a more psychological perspective and elucidated on the basis of different theories and models such as optimal arousal (Spielberger & Starr, 1994), dynamic subsystem regulation (Iran-Nejad & Cecil, 1992) or information-gap (Loewenstein, 1994). For example, in optimal arousal theories, curiosity is viewed as a pleasant experience in which individuals pursue an appropriate degree of novelty (i.e., the level should not be too high/low so as not to tri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. Positive and negative emotions: Overview of selected theoretical issues
• 2. Research on positive and negative emotions in L2 learning and teaching in conventional settings and CALL
• 3. Methodology of the research project
• 4. Research findings
• Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• References
• Index