Original title: Positive and negative emotions underlie motivation for L2 learning
Researchers asked Italian secondary-school students in South Tyrol about emotions they felt while learning German and about their motivation. They compared 10 positive emotions, such as interest and pride, with 9 negative ones, such as embarrassment and stress. Positive emotions were strongly and consistently linked with motivation, while links involving negative emotions were weaker and less consistent. The balance of positive over negative emotion was also strongly linked with all the motivation measures they examined.
Imagine getting ready for a long school day. Some mornings you feel curious and hopeful, while on others you feel stressed or embarrassed. Those feelings can shape how willing you are to keep going, and the mix matters too. In this paper, the school day is learning German, and the researchers find that students’ positive feelings and their balance against negative feelings are closely linked with motivation.
Students learning another language do not bring only confidence or anxiety to class; many emotions may relate to how motivated they feel. Teachers and researchers may miss part of that picture if they focus on just one or two emotions.
The abstract reports correlations, so it does not establish that emotions cause motivation. The respondents were Italian secondary-school students learning German in South Tyrol, a high-contact setting, so the findings do not establish whether the same patterns hold for other ages, languages, or contexts.
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Positive and negative emotions underlie motivation for L2 learning — Peter D. MacIntyre, László Vincze — Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching — doi:10.14746/ssllt.2017.7.1.4
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.