A Corpus Based Investigation of Academic Emotions in Foreign Language Learning Environment

Abstract

Academic emotions refer to various emotions that students experience in their academic activities during their language learning process. Emotions experienced in the learning environment have a great impact on learning. The aim of this project is to investigate students’ emotions in the English Language Department of Amasya University and to identify what emotions students experience most in classroom environment. Within this scope, data are collected via emotional experience diaries in which students write their experiences of various emotions each week in a 14-week academic term. Emotions are tagged and analyzed with the help of UAM corpus software. Dominant emotion types are identified and categorized as positive and negative. Findings demonstrate that negative emotions outnumber positive ones, which needs further investigations. Among 15 types of negative emotions, distress, fear, sadness are found to be the most frequent types students experience, whereas happiness is the most dominant one among 10 positive emotions types. Findings of the study will help foreign language teachers to better understand emotional procedures students pass through, and be aware of particularly negative emotions. In addition, teachers can create an educational atmosphere in which students enjoy language learning and use their cognitive skills effectively. The academic emotions model emerging with this study will be of great use to researchers, foreign language teachers and students.