Family socioeconomic status and foreign language emotions: Moderation of teacher–student relationships

Abstract

Family context has been found to influence achievement emotions, but the factors that might moderate this association remain relatively unexplored. To address this gap, this research examined the moderation of teacher–student relationships (TSR) in the link between family socioeconomic status (SES) and emotions in foreign language (FL) learning drawing on control-value theory of achievement emotions and attachment theory. The research involved 4,155 eighth-grade students from China, who completed scales reporting their SES, FL enjoyment, FL anxiety, and FL burnout. The moderating effect model demonstrated that TSR played a moderating role in the relationship between SES and negative emotions in FL learning such as anxiety and burnout. However, no significant moderation was observed between SES and FL enjoyment. Specifically, a warm TSR was found to alleviate the negative impact of low SES on negative emotions in FL learning, such as anxiety and burnout. Conversely, TSR did not demonstrate the capacity to enhance the positive emotions associated with FL learning, such as enjoyment, among students from higher SES backgrounds. This research suggests the necessity to intervene with low SES students, with the aim of fostering supportive TSR and ultimately alleviating negative emotions in FL learning.