Afection and Gratitude: Korean EFL Learners’ Construction of Emotion acros Diferent Proficiency Levels

Abstract

This study examines how L2 emotion is constructed across learners of different proficiency levels in a video elicitation task. After viewing a video clip, the participants were asked to imagine what the characters would have said, and this task was used to elicit talk that centers on the emotions of affection and gratitude. The main findings indicate that the novice-level students mostly favored expressions like “I love you” and “thank you.” Although their responses were grammatically correct, some of them evaluated their own imagined dialogue as being simplistic. The intermediate-level students provided responses that were lengthier, syntactically more complex, richer in content, and more various in their types of speech act. The responses of the advanced-level participants, on the other hand, were brief, simple, and less various. Instead, their responses marked a strong preference for nonverbal displays of affection and gratitude, which was based on an analysis of the video character’s relationship. These findings not only shed light on the changing trajectories of L2 emotion but also produce pedagogical implications for EFL classrooms.