Abstract
In the past half century, the research on emotions of foreign language learners (FLL) has shifted the focus from an exclusive analysis of negative emotions to a more holistic study of both negative emotions and positive emotions, and currently to mediators of multiple emotions. Of the FLL’s negative emotions, foreign language anxiety (FLA) attracts the most attention. Researchers have widely discussed the relationship between FLA and foreign language achievement, the influencing factors of FLA, the dynamicity of FLA as well as regulation and intervention strategies of FLA. Foreign language enjoyment (FLE) is the most heavily studied research subject on FLL’s positive emotions. Researchers generally focus on the influencing factors of FLE, the dynamicity of FLE and the relationship between FLE and FLA. With the implementation of holistic education, emotional intelligence (EI), a mediator of multiple emotions of FLL, has been becoming a newly hot topic in the field of FLL’s emotions. By reviewing the previous studies, this paper proposes that the future research on FLL emotion needs to expand the research perspectives, enrich the research topics, and innovate the research methods.
Highlights
As an activity to promote the development of learners’ cognitive and thinking abilities, foreign language learning can stimulate learners to experience a variety of emotions, and emotions have an inseparable relationship with cognitive ability, which is an important factor affecting foreign language learning
The recent development and expansion of positive psychology in second language acquisition has broken the previous situation of over-focusing on negative emotions like anxiety in research on foreign language learners (FLL)’s emotions, and FLL’s positive emotions have begun to draw attention from scholars (Dewaele and MacIntyre, 2014, 2016; Dewaele and Alfawzan, 2018; Elahi Shirvan et al, 2020; Elahi Shirvan and Taherian, 2020)
With the application of dynamic approach to foreign language anxiety (FLA), FLA was regarded as an emotion of multi-faceted nature and in a fluctuating state over time, even from second to second and from minute to minute (Saghafi and Elahi Shirvan, 2020) and the fluctuation of FLA was reported to be affected by contextual factors (Gkonou, 2017; Saghafi et al, 2017)
Summary
Faculty of Humanities and Foreign Languages, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, China. In the past half century, the research on emotions of foreign language learners (FLL) has shifted the focus from an exclusive analysis of negative emotions to a more holistic study of both negative emotions and positive emotions, and currently to mediators of multiple emotions. Of the FLL’s negative emotions, foreign language anxiety (FLA) attracts the most attention. Researchers have widely discussed the relationship between FLA and foreign language achievement, the influencing factors of FLA, the dynamicity of FLA as well as regulation and intervention strategies of FLA. Foreign language enjoyment (FLE) is the most heavily studied research subject on FLL’s positive emotions. With the implementation of holistic education, emotional intelligence (EI), a mediator of multiple emotions of FLL, has been becoming a newly hot topic in the field of FLL’s emotions.
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