Scaffolding emotional communication in an L2 discussion course: strategies for talking around the facemask

Abstract

ABSTRACT Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, facemasks became obligatory in many educational contexts. In order to emotionally scaffold undergraduates in his English as a foreign language discussion course, the author inquired with students as to their ideas of strategies to convey emotions and communicate more effectively even when wearing facemasks. Suggestions were then reintroduced to the class, and students acted on these strategies each week. Data in the form of weekly learner journals were collected over the 14 lessons making up one semester, resulting in a corpus of around 20,000 words. This article describes the intervention and the kinds of strategies used in lessons. Results indicate that in their journals, participants primarily reflected on their degree of accomplishment of the strategies, experiencing feelings of difficulty and achievement as they used a variety of strategies above and beyond what was expected. Additionally, over the semester, they gradually became more aware of the strategy use of their peers, eliciting feelings of admiration, gratitude and motivation to further act upon the strategies. The article aims to provide food for thought for other teachers and researchers in supporting learners to develop their emotional literacy and, in this specific case, ‘talk around the facemask’.