Foreign language anxiety and enjoyment shape language awareness in EFL

What is it about?

Language learners often experience both positive and negative emotions related to learning and using their foreign languages. An intriguing question is whether positive emotions can outweigh the effects of negative ones. If someone enjoys learning English, but they also feel anxious while using English in certain situations, which emotion will influence their English competence more: enjoyment or anxiety? This study set out to answer this question by looking at how well German learners of English can spot grammar mistakes in English sentences and decide if the sentences are polite or impolite after reading a short description about the situation in which the sentences occurred. We found that enjoyment helps learners excel in finding politeness mistakes in the sentences; however, anxiety weakens their ability to catch grammatical errors. These results show us that positive and negative emotions push language learners to focus on different aspects of language (correct grammar vs. socially accepted politeness) and that those who find joy in learning languages may also be better communicators even if they experience some anxiety while using the foreign language.

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Photo by Ling App on Unsplash

Photo by Ling App on Unsplash