Caring and emotional labour: Language teachers’ engagement with anxious learners in private language school classrooms

Abstract

This study examines how a group of eight teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Greece discuss their efforts to address their students’ language anxiety (LA). We found that in most cases, these teachers’ efforts are motivated by an ethic of care (Noddings, 1988, 2005, 2013) in which they seek to construct positive relationships with students in order to help mitigate their students’ LA. Though desirable, such efforts often result in ‘emotional labour’ as teachers suppress their own negative emotions while attending to those of their students. Adopting a dialogical perspective to teacher engagement with anxious learners, we analyse the affective or emotional labour that language teachers often undertake in responding to their students’ displays of LA. Drawing on positioning theory, we explore these concepts through analysing these language teachers’ interview accounts, produced in response to questions related to their students’ LA.