Enjoyment and anxiety in second language communication: An idiodynamic approach

By C. Boudreau, P. Macintyre, Jean–Marc Dewaele. 2018

354 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Emotions are a fleeting experience, sometimes lasting only moments before dissipating. Prior research in SLA has either ignored emotions, underestimated their relevance, or has studied them as a relatively stable individual difference variable. In contrast, the present study takes an idiodynamic approach to examine the rapidly changing relationship between enjoyment and anxiety in second language communication, on a moment-to-moment timescale. University students who speak French as a second language were recruited to complete oral tasks in their second language. Participants then rated their per-second fluctuations in each emotion while watching a video recording of their tasks. Immediately after this, they were interviewed about their attributions for fluctuations in their ratings. We found that the relationship between enjoyment and anxiety is highly dynamic, resulting in varying patterns of correlation ranging from negative to positive. Triangulation of ratings of anxiety and enjoyment with interview data produces a richer understanding of the role of emotions in second language communication.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/28b4367f67fb8e3869c8035bcc70bc130128b7d1

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Language and Linguistics

Citations in the corpus

Language learners’ enjoyment and emotion regulation in online collaborative learning (2021, methodology): “Third, as emotions are a fleeting experience (Boudreau et al., 2018), the idiodynamic approachmay not be enough to catch all the subtleties of FLE and emotion regulation.”
A longitudinal study of foreign language anxiety and enjoyment (2021, methodology): “Except for a few preliminary studies on the dynamics of FLE and FLA in doing certain classroom tasks (e.g. Boudreau, MacIntyre, & Dewaele, 2018), so far little attention has been paid to the time flow in a foreign language course to look into the variability of FLE and FLA over a time scale of…”
Are foreign language learners’ enjoyment and anxiety specific to the teacher? An investigation into the dynamics of learners’ classroom emotions (2020, positive): “Boudreau, MacIntyre, and Dewaele (2018) used the idiodynamic approach to examine the highly unstable relationship between FLE and FLCA in FL speech, on a very short timescale.”
The Effect of Classroom Emotions, Attitudes Toward English, and Teacher Behavior on Willingness to Communicate Among English Foreign Language Learners (2019, background): “Some of these variables are hard to measure but can play a vital role in the decision to speak or not (Boudreau et al., 2018).”
The Effect of Perception of Teacher Characteristics on Spanish EFL Learners’ Anxiety and Enjoyment (2019, background): “Although higher levels of FLE are typically linked to lower levels of FLCA, they can fluctuate and co-occur (Boudreau et al., 2018; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014).”
A Positive Psychology perspective on Chinese EFL students’ trait emotional intelligence, foreign language enjoyment and EFL learning achievement (2019, background): “First, the negative and significant relationship between FLE and FLA has been consistently found in different L2 contexts (Dewaele and MacIntyre 2014, 2016; Dewaele and Dewaele 2017; Boudreau, MacIntyre, and Dewaele 2018; Dewaele and Alfawzan 2018; Saito et al. 2018).”
Online Foreign Language Learning in Higher Education and Its Correlates during the COVID-19 Pandemic (2021, result): “Our results are consistent with other studies which reveal that mixed feeling in L2 communication is detected in relation to speciﬁc events [85].”
Willingness to communicate in the L2 about meaningful photos: Application of the pyramid model of WTC (2021, methodology): “…motivation to talk about his wife and accompanying positive emotions both stated and those that can be inferred (e.g. pride, love) are strong enough to override the negative emotions (e.g. longing, sadness) aroused by talking about this photo (Boudreau et al., 2018; Dewaele & Pavelescu, 2021).”
The dimensions of foreign language classroom enjoyment and their effect on foreign language achievement (2018, background): “…raise the learners’ consciousness of language input and perceptions of linguistic forms, and boost their use of multiple problem-solving strategies (Boudreau, MacIntyre, and Dewaele 2018; Piechurska-Kuciel 2017), leading to the enlargement of the learners’ FL or L2 © 2018 Informa UK Limited,…”
The relationship between incommensurable emotions and willingness to communicate in English as a foreign language: a multiple case study (2019, background): “The dynamic nature of FLE and FLCA was at the heart of the study by Boudreau et al. (2018).”