Abstract
Until relatively recently the impact of emotions on language learning has often been ignored and “the nature and contribution of positive emotions and beneficial emotional states deserves further attention” (Bown & White, 2010, p. 433). Our study focuses on a flexible language learning system that combines different elements: work in a virtual learning environment, group work, counselling sessions and a logbook. One of its objectives is to help students progress towards autonomy—defined as “the capacity to take control over one’s own learning” (Benson, 2011, p. 2)—in their learning of English. The logbook has been shown to be useful in helping students become conscious of the new role they have to play in such a system (Chateau & Zumbihl, 2012). A discourse analysis of 100 logbooks from the 2012-2013 cohort of students showed that the traces of emotions they contained could enable us to identify important steps in the development of autonomy, as well as make hypotheses on the links between emotions, students’ self-efficacy and the development of learner autonomy.
Highlights
Numerous researchers in various fields concerned with language learning and acquisition have tried to understand what could make learners more successful in their language learning
In the 100 students’ logbooks analysed, we found two main categories: · Thirty logbooks were rather clearly limited to facts and contained only a very short description of the activities carried out by the students. In this first category of logbooks, students only gave the results they obtained in exercises, and there were no traces of emotion or transformation
These logbooks consisted in mechanical descriptions of exercises where we could not find any real trace of personal implication. · In the remaining 70, that is to say in a little more than two thirds of the logbooks, we could associate an “event” in the logbook and either raised awareness leading to a change in representations, or traces of emotions, or taking action
Summary
Numerous researchers in various fields concerned with language learning and acquisition have tried to understand what could make learners more successful in their language learning. Researchers of learner autonomy are among them. We would like to add that all psychological dimensions have not been as thoroughly investigated as others, with the organizational dimensions, both cognitive and metacognitive, being predominant in research. Given the widely accepted research in neurosciences showing that cognition and emotion are largely indistinguishable, studies of the emotional dimensions of learner autonomy remain rare. It is all the more surprising since the two studies of affective strategies Benson (2011) reported on “provide some evidence of their importance” 88), both suggesting that “language learners are aware of the emotional side of language learning and are capable of using strategies to control their emotions” It is all the more surprising since the two studies of affective strategies Benson (2011) reported on “provide some evidence of their importance” (p. 88), both suggesting that “language learners are aware of the emotional side of language learning and are capable of using strategies to control their emotions” (p. 89)
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