Motivation, Emotion, Learning Experience, and Second Language Comprehensibility Development in Classroom Settings: A Cross‐Sectional and Longitudinal Study
Parts of this study were presented at the 2017 Japan Second Language Acquisition Research Forum. We are grateful to anonymous Language Learning reviewers and Journal Editor, Pavel Trofimovich, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the article. We also acknowledge Hui Sun for her help with data collection, coding, and analyses. This study was funded by a grant from the Grant‐in‐Aid for Scientific Research in Japan (16H03455) and the Birkbeck College Additional Research Fund.
Abstract
This study presents a cross‐sectional and longitudinal analysis of how 108 high school students in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms enhanced the comprehensibility of their second language (L2) speech according to different motivation, emotion, and experience profiles. Students’ learning patterns were primarily associated with their emotional states (anxiety vs. enjoyment) and secondarily with their motivational dispositions (clear vision of ideal future selves). Students’ anxiety together with weaker Ideal L2 Self related negatively to their performance at the beginning of the project—performance that they had achieved after several years of EFL instruction. Students’ enjoyment together with greater Ideal L2 Self predicted the extent to which they practiced and developed their L2 speech within the 3‐month framework of the project. Results suggest that more frequent L2 use with positive emotions directly impacts acquisition, which may in turn lead to the lessening of negative emotions and better long‐term L2 comprehensibility.
Open Practices
This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.
Number of times cited: 2
- Chengchen Li, Guiying Jiang and Jean-Marc Dewaele, Understanding Chinese high school students’ Foreign Language Enjoyment: Validation of the Chinese version of the Foreign Language Enjoyment scale, System, 10.1016/j.system.2018.06.004, 76, (183-196), (2018).
- Kazuya Saito, To What Extent Does Long‐Term Foreign Language Education Help Improve Spoken Second Language Lexical Proficiency?, TESOL Quarterly, , (2018).
