Abstract
This paper aims to report on Chinese college students’ emotions in English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking classrooms, including the trajectory of their emotions, and their perceived impacts of these emotions on their performances in class. Through conducting a case study among 12 Chinese college students and qualitatively analyzing the reflections and interview data collected over a semester, the present research, adopting the Positive Psychology perspective, reveals diverse emotions experienced by students in their EFL speaking classrooms. The emotions students felt were both complex and dynamic throughout the semester, and were found to interact with the changing internal and external factors, displaying a transition from the mixed emotions of excitement and anxiety to lower-intensity emotions (i.e., relaxation and boredom), and finally becoming inter-individually varied. As for the impacts of students’ emotions, students believed that both positive and negative emotions were associated with their performances in class. The present study suggests that much attention should be paid to EFL college students’ emotions in speaking classrooms both by themselves and by their teachers, and provides some possible sources of their emotions. In order to enhance students’ psychological well-being and achieve better teaching effects, this study also recommends pedagogical practices that boost positive emotions and reduce negative emotions to be incorporated into EFL speaking classes.
Plain language summary
This study is concerned with the emotions of Chinese college students when they are engaged in English as a foreign language (EFL) speaking classes, and explores what these emotions are, how these emotions change, and students’ perceptions of these emotions’ impacts. The study lasted for a semester, and twelve students from a college in China participated in the research by writing weekly reflections and accepting an interview. Through analyzing these reflections and interview transcripts, the study reveals a complex and dynamic pattern of students’ emotions in EFL speaking classrooms throughout the semester. Specifically, the emotions they felt were mixed at the beginning of the semester, low-intensity in the middle, and inter-individually varied in the end. The study also finds that students believed both positive and negative emotions were associated with their performances in class. Implications of the findings include caring about Chinese college students’ psychological well-being in EFL speaking classrooms and providing suggestions for Chinese college teachers to achieve better teaching effects by making use of students’ emotions during EFL speaking classes. However, the limitations of the study should also be acknowledged. The participants are not representative enough, and the research design can also be optimized in future studies for more accurate findings.
Introduction
It has been found that students’ emotions, which can also be understood as their mental states during learning (Cabanac, 2002), are closely related to their academic achievements (Linnenbrink-Garcia & Pekrun, 2011), and such influences also manifest in language learning situations (Dewaele et al., 2019). But for decades, little attention has been paid to emotions other than anxiety in the area of second language acquisition (SLA; Dewaele & Li, 2020). Thus, to attract researchers’ attention to the roles of more diverse emotions, especially positive ones, Positive Psychology (PP), known as the scientific study of what makes life worth living (Csikszentmihalyi & Seligman, 2000), was introduced to the field of SLA in the last decade (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014).
However, even though the number of SLA studies from the PP perspective has been growing in recent years, much focus has been on specific positive emotions or traits, their individual differences and impacts (MacIntyre et al., 2019). There have been limited studies providing a comprehensive picture of emotions experienced by students (Piniel & Albert, 2018). Meanwhile, researchers have conducted many more cross-sectional studies than longitudinal ones (Li, 2021b), failing to attach enough importance to the trajectory of students’ emotions in foreign language learning over time.
The present study attempts to fill the research gaps on both the range of emotions studied and the research design. The EFL speaking classroom is chosen as the research context because speaking in a foreign language was found to be closely associated with both positive and negative emotions (Marzec-Stawiarska, 2015; Pishghadam et al., 2016). The research was conducted qualitatively among college students in China, and aimed at exploring their emotions in EFL speaking classrooms, including their emotional changes within a semester and their perceived relationship between their emotions and their performances in class. It is hoped that the findings of the study may help both Chinese EFL teachers and Chinese college students achieve better teaching and learning effects in EFL speaking classes.
Literature Review
Previous Emotion Research in Foreign Language Speaking
Emotions can be defined as states of physiological arousal involving complex interactions among external stimuli and subjective factors (Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981; Schachter & Singer, 1962). Studies have shown the strong predicting effects of students’ emotions on their academic achievements, and emphasized the significance of research on emotions in academic settings (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012). Furthermore, the emotional experiences in learning activities have been found to be domain-specific (Goetz et al., 2006), making it necessary to explore students’ emotions in the foreign language learning domain independently.
But in language learning settings, the role of emotions was greatly underrated before the 1980s due to researchers’ preference for cognitive factors (Prior, 2019). And despite the relatively abundant studies on affective factors in the field of SLA after Krashen’s (1985) proposal of Affective Filter Hypothesis, in terms of emotions, most attention has merely been paid to anxiety. The same was also true for the research on students’ emotions while using specific foreign language skills, among which speaking has been considered to be the most anxiety-provoking (Mahmoodzadeh, 2012).
Kitano (2001) investigated the sources of students’ foreign language speaking anxiety in a Japanese FL classroom, and found that their anxiety resulted from their fear of negative feedback and their non-confidence in their speaking proficiency compared with their peers and the natives. In terms of the influence of anxiety on students’ oral ability, Phillips (1992) measured the oral examination performances of French FL learners and conducted interviews with them, and found that anxiety led to students’ negative attitudes toward foreign language speaking, thus resulting in their unsatisfactory speaking performances. Hewitt and Stephenson (2012) replicated Phillips’ (1992) study among EFL learners and found that while the most anxious students performed the worse in speaking tasks, the medium-anxiety students performed better than the least anxious ones in that they produced sentences more accurately, indicating that a moderate amount of anxiety contributed to the highest speaking proficiency.
These previous studies, although inspiring for foreign language speaking teachers, were limited in terms of the emotions studied. Future research should attach more importance to foreign language speaking emotions other than anxiety, and include both positive and negative emotions of foreign language speakers.
Defining Positive Psychology
Given the aforementioned research gap in the field of SLA, Positive Psychology (PP), which aims to accelerate a change in the field of psychology from only “repairing the worst things in life” to also “building the best qualities in life” (Seligman, 2002, p. 3), was introduced to the field of SLA (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). It is based on three pillars: valued subjective experiences (e.g., emotions), positive individual traits (e.g., interpersonal skill, perseverance), and “the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship” (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5).
In terms of emotion research, Positive Psychology has put particular emphasis on positive emotions. According to the PERMA model proposed by Seligman (2011), positive emotions signal human well-being, and are closely associated with the subjective level of Positive Psychology. Fredrickson’s (2001) broaden-and-build theory, which has been considered the most significant contribution from Positive Psychology by some researchers (MacIntyre, 2016), also argues for a distinction between positive and negative emotions, suggesting that while negative emotions are associated with narrowing powers, positive emotions share the ability of broadening mindsets and building personal resources (Fredrickson, 2001). By revealing the essential roles of positive emotions in optimizing human functioning, it further demonstrates that it is of significant importance to conduct research on positive emotions within the Positive Psychology framework.
Emotions in SLA Studies From the PP Perspective
Positive Psychology was introduced to Second Language Acquisition to encourage greater research emphasis on the positive elements in the foreign language learning process (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). In their work, MacIntyre and Mercer (2014) elaborated on Positive Psychology at the conceptual level, and pointed out that the introduction of Positive Psychology could be greatly beneficial to the SLA field, as the topics studied by PP (e.g., positive emotions, character strengths), which had rarely been studied in SLA, were relevant to the practical and human dimension of language learning, and were consistent with the needs of language educators.
Since then, there has been an increasing number of empirical studies on SLA and foreign language education from the PP perspective. These studies concentrated on the well-being and positive traits of both foreign language teachers and students (e.g., Hiver, 2016; Mystkowska-Wiertelak, 2021), and were associated with pedagogical practices, teacher education, and language education policies (e.g., Budzińska, 2021; Fresacher, 2016; Majchrzak & Ostrogska, 2021). A large number of topics have caught the attention of the researchers, including flow, perseverance, trait emotional intelligence, etc. (e.g., Belnap et al., 2016; Czimmermann & Piniel, 2016; Li, 2020). But generally speaking, most interests have been concentrated on the topic of emotions (Li, 2021b).
In the field of SLA, the first attempt to adopt a PP perspective in emotion research was MacIntyre and Gregersen’s (2012) study on the positive-broadening power of imagination in language learning. They argued that in FL learning, positive and negative emotions were different in terms of their functions, and that they were “not opposite ends of the same spectrum” (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012, p. 193). While negative emotions tend to restrict potential language input, positive emotions broaden the individual’s perspective to absorb more language. Their argument was later proved by an empirical study on the relationship between foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). Thus, Positive Psychology suggests that instead of the one-dimensional view presented in previous SLA studies, a two-dimensional view of emotions should be adopted by researchers (MacIntyre & Mercer, 2014). In other words, SLA research should focus on both positive and negative emotions, and consider the possibility of emotional ambivalence, that is, the co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions in the language learning process.
Empirical studies on foreign language learning emotions from the perspective of Positive Psychology have contributed to the literature in two aspects. For one thing, these studies focused on a wider range of emotions, such as enjoyment, boredom, shame, and guilt (e.g., Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014; Galmiche, 2018; Li, 2021a; Teimouri, 2018), which were different from the emotion of anxiety that had been studied in detail in terms of their basic characters (i.e., how they feature “dimensions of feeling, arousal, purpose and expression”; Reeve, 2005, p. 326), their causes and their roles in foreign language learning. For another, the emotions studied were strongly associated with motivation, which had been an extensively-researched topic in the field of SLA (MacIntyre & Vincze, 2017). However, since emotions are conceptually distinct from motivation (i.e., the combination of a goal, desire to achieve it, effort, and positive attitudes; Gardner, 1985), and since previous studies on motivation mainly “organized the results around attitude clusters” instead of emotional ones (MacIntyre, 2002, p. 64), studies on emotions in foreign language learning contexts were still significant in further understanding the underlying mechanism of motivation and its relation with foreign language learning.
Emotions in Foreign Language Speaking From the PP Perspective
In terms of studies on foreign language speaking, the emotion of enjoyment has gradually attracted researchers’ attention in recent years. Boudreau et al. (2018) explored students’ emotions of enjoyment and anxiety in second language communication and found that the two emotions showed complex interactions in the communication process. Their study also revealed that lower anxiety was linked to better use of communication strategies, which was consistent with the aforementioned result (Hewitt & Stephenson, 2012). Chen et al. (2024) confirmed the complex interactions between foreign language classroom anxiety and foreign language enjoyment in speaking classrooms through investigating the relationship between trait emotional intelligence, FLCA, and FLE. The study also revealed the fundamental role of students’ personality in predicting students’ emotions in foreign language speaking classrooms.
However, despite such an “emotional turn” in SLA research, at the current stage, relevant studies from the PP perspective in the context of foreign language speaking classrooms have remained scarce. For one thing, even though previous research has revealed that students’ emotions change dynamically during foreign language learning (Dewaele & Dewaele, 2017), little longitudinal research on students’ emotional trajectory has been conducted in foreign language speaking classrooms, and even in the broader context of all foreign language learning situations (Dewaele & Li, 2020). For another, many aspects of students’ emotions in foreign language speaking classrooms have not been fully investigated yet. For example, the impacts of positive emotions on students’ performances in class still require further research. Therefore, given the complexity of emotions students experience in foreign language speaking classrooms and the scarcity of research on the topic, more empirical studies on the dynamic and comprehensive emotions in foreign language speaking classrooms need to be conducted from the PP perspective. The present study hopes to make up for such scarcity. As its context was EFL speaking classrooms in a college in China, the research was guided by the research questions below:
(1) What emotions do Chinese college students experience in EFL speaking classrooms throughout the semester?
(2) How do Chinese college students perceive the impacts of these emotions on their performances in EFL speaking classrooms?
The findings of the study hope to help both Chinese college students and teachers reflect on the EFL speaking classes they have attended or taught and make use of the emotions in class to achieve better learning and teaching results.
Methodology
A case study approach was used in the present study. The focus of the study was to explore Chinese college students’ emotional trajectory in class, during which several “how” questions were answered (i.e., “How did students feel?” “How did their emotions change?” “How did they perceive the impacts of their emotions?”). The case study approach allows researchers to capture information for an in-depth understanding of the construction of a phenomenon from multiple facets, making itself a preferred choice whenever the more explanatory “how” questions are to be answered (Crowe et al., 2011). Furthermore, students’ emotions could not be considered out of the context of the EFL speaking classrooms. Thus, the case study approach, attaching importance to the contextual factors during research, would be appropriate and helpful to reveal students’ emotions and their perceived performances in the context of EFL speaking classrooms (Baxter & Jack, 2008) . And the case study approach also allows researchers to flexibly collect diverse types of data from multiple sources, ensuring trustworthiness of the research findings (Crowe et al., 2011).
Research Context
The present study took place in the EFL speaking classrooms in a college in China. This course, whose name was Interpersonal Communication, was opened for first-year students, and aimed to improve their ability to express their ideas and communicate with others in English, which would be fundamental for their future studies. Students taking the course were divided into four classes, each of which contained 25 to 30 students and was taught by a different teacher. Each class lasted for 3 hr, with two breaks in between. The topics discussed in class came from a textbook named Interpersonal Discussions, and included self-identity, peer pressure, friendship, romantic relationship, etc.
In terms of pedagogical practices, although the specific design may differ from teacher to teacher and from class to class, the activities contained in class and their organization were similar among different classes and throughout the semester. Both teacher-student and student-student interactions were involved during these activities, with the latter taking up a larger proportion. Generally, a class started with a group presentation on the topic to be discussed in class, after which the teacher made comments and gave a further introduction to the topic. The main part of the class consisted of group and class discussions, during which students shared their opinions on the topic under the guidance of the teacher. Sometimes, the teacher may also include some more creative activities in class, for example, public speaking, debate, and role-play.
As for the assignments, students were divided into groups of two or three in the first class, and each group was asked to offer a group presentation on a specific topic at a given time within the semester. Apart from this, students were asked to preview the lessons and try to speak as much English as possible after class.
Participants
Sixteen students (14 females, two males) from a university in China took part in the study at the beginning of the semester. They entered university in September 2021, and were going through their first semester in the school at the time of the study. All of them are English majors. Their first EFL speaking classes were on 14th September, 2021, which was also the time that the present study began. The speaking classes were held once a week, and there were 14 classes in total in the semester. During the same semester, students also took other courses to improve their English skills, such as the listening course, the narrative writing course, the intensive reading course, etc.
The 16 participants voluntarily took part in the research after they were informed of the procedures of the study, that is, writing weekly reflections and accepting an interview. However, as the research procedures took up much time and energy of the participants, four students (two females, two males) decided to quit midway. Thus, the research studied the data of only 12 participants. They were from three different classes taught by three different teachers, and all of them were female. The 12 participants grew up in eight different provinces over China, and have been learning English for more than 10 years. Only one of them had graduated from a foreign language senior high school. Except for her, the other 11 students had had no previous experience of taking part in an EFL speaking class. For most of the participants, despite their high scores in the English subject in the National College Entrance Examination, their speaking skills were rather limited, and attending an EFL speaking class appeared to be a totally new experience. However, it should be noted that although most participants had not participated in an individual, separate speaking class, they had experience in speaking English in class. Thus, they were able to provide valid information by connecting their feelings in class with their prior experiences.
Data Collection and Data Analysis
Data collection of the present study consisted of two parts. First, the participants were asked to write a reflection on their emotions every week after they completed their EFL speaking classes. These reflections were not part of their course assignments, and would not affect their scores of the course. The reflections were written in Chinese, the mother tongue of the participants, to ensure that they could express themselves freely. Most of the reflections contained 300 to 600 characters, and 168 reflections were collected in total. The participants were asked to write about how they felt in their foreign language speaking classes, what they believed evoked such feelings, and the implications of such feelings on their EFL speaking performances in and out of class. They were also free to write about their attitudes toward different elements in class (e.g., teachers, peers, pedagogical practices, etc.), their gains from the classes, and the challenges they faced in class. The study participants handed in their reflections every week to the researcher via email, while the researcher checked the email every week and reminded anyone who forgot to submit them. All the participants completed all of their weekly reflections throughout the semester. It is noted that the weekly reflections were likely to affect the participants’ perceptions toward their emotions (i.e., the Hawthorne effect), but as Holden (2001) noted, triangulation is an effective way of mitigating the Hawthorne effect. In the present study, none of the participants mentioned writing weekly reflections as an influencing factor of emotions in their reflections and, more importantly, in their interviews. Furthermore, the participants were informed at the beginning of the research that they were free to quit the study whenever they were aware of any negative impact of writing reflections, but the 12 participants chose not to give up midway. Generally speaking, in the present study, the Hawthorne effect was trivial and could be ignored.
Second, after the 168 pieces of reflections were collected and analyzed, the researcher, who was a fourth-year undergraduate student also majoring in English at the time, conducted one-to-one semi-structured interviews with the participants. A semi-structured interview contains an outline of planned topics or issues to be discussed, but may also include unplanned follow-up questions when new ideas emerge during the interview. Due to such flexibility, it is able to disclose “important and often hidden facets of human and organizational behavior” (Qu & Dumay, 2011, p. 246). Since students’ reflections were collected very frequently in the present study, only one semi-structured interview was conducted with each participant to elicit more detailed information. The interview questions were informed by research questions, and were mainly about participants’ experiences in speaking classes throughout the semester. Sample questions included “How do you feel about the speaking classes you attend?” “How do you self-evaluate your performance in class?” and “How do you feel about your change in class throughout the semester?” These interviews were also conducted in Chinese, and each of them lasted 20 to 40 min. They were recorded and transcribed by the researcher for further analysis.
The reflections and the interview transcripts were analyzed inductively by the researcher through qualitative thematic analysis approach, which is a widely used method for “identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79). The researcher identified the codes (e.g., stage fright due to introversion, worry about their poor oral English, worry about losing face in front of others) through carefully comparing and condensing the language used in the reflections and interview transcripts after reading them repeatedly. Categories (e.g., students’ anxiety in the first few classes, the negative effect of anxiety on students’ classroom performances in the first few classes) and themes (e.g., students’ mixed emotions of excitement and anxiety in the first few classes) were then developed by examining and combining the codes. During this step, some definitions from the existing literature were adopted to help identify the different emotions of students. These definitions used could be found in Table 1. In the end, the themes were organized to come up with answers to the research questions. The analysis was also checked by another qualitative researcher from the same department to ensure trustworthiness. And any difference was negotiated.
Definitions of Emotions Adopted in Data Analysis.
The reflections and interview excerpts were later translated into English by the researcher for the convenience of international readers. A combination of tests was implemented to ensure the maximum validity of translation, including back-translation and peer debriefing (Esposito, 2001).
Findings
The following four themes emerged from the data: (1) students’ mixed emotions of excitement and anxiety in the first few classes, (2) students’ low-intensity emotions of relaxation and boredom after several classes, (3) students’ inter-individually varied emotions of enjoyment and anxiety near the end of the semester, and (4) other emotions out of the trajectory. These four themes displayed three stages of change in students’ emotions in their EFL speaking classrooms over the semester, with some emotions showing no temporal feature and being out of the trajectory. Both the factors contributing to these emotions and students’ perceived effects of these emotions on their performances in class were manifested by categories under each theme.
The First Few Classes: Students’ Mixed Emotions of Excitement and Anxiety
The emotions shown by the study participants in their first few EFL speaking classes included both positive and negative ones (see Table 2 for the main codes and categories of this theme). While nine among 12 students claimed that they felt excited at the beginning, the emotions of anxiety were experienced by all the 12 participants, indicating that negative emotion seemed to be more dominating during the first few classes.
The Main Codes and Categories of the Theme “Students’ Mixed Emotions of Excitement and Anxiety in the First Few Classes.”
The participants’ emotions of excitement at the beginning of the semester were mainly triggered by two sources. For one thing, students had been looking forward to the classes before they started. As Alice mentioned, “I had always wanted to practice my English speaking skills before, but I seldom had any opportunity to speak out in senior high school. I really looked forward to the systematic training of speaking” (interview excerpt). With high expectations for the upcoming learning experiences, students would no doubt be in high spirits while attending their first several classes. For another, EFL speaking classes appeared to be a totally new experience for most of the participants due to the exam-oriented education before college in China (Zhang et al., 2017). Lisa wrote about her first speaking class in the reflection, “Everything was new. My classmate told me that it was a class for chatting and we would communicate with each other in English. That was totally different from my English classes in senior high school” (reflection excerpt). And Ivy described her first speaking class as something “magical, like learning in schools in those foreign films” (interview excerpt). Such novel situations as the first few speaking classes could naturally arouse students’ interest and curiosity, as well as increase their excitement.
Besides, anxiety and nervousness also appeared to be obvious. Several reasons could explain it. First, some participants felt stressed while or before speaking in public because of their stage fright. Nancy described her feeling as such, “As long as I stood on the stage and looked down, I felt my body tensing up and even trembling” (reflection excerpt), and she also explained, “I felt that speaking in English and in Chinese were the same. Ever since I was in high school, I have been afraid of speaking in public” (interview excerpt). Though speaking in front of others was just a piece of cake for extroverted students, for introverts like her, simply thinking of talking in front of people could make their hearts beat fast. Second, the negative emotions came from their worries about their poor oral English. Some students felt comfortable speaking in Chinese, their mother tongue, but anxious if they had to speak a foreign language in public because they were not confident in their English speaking skills. As Chris wrote in her reflection, “I was very worried and I felt my heart beat fast [before speaking] … In fact, I had a lot of experience speaking in public, but speaking in English was totally different from in Chinese, because that means I had to show others what I was not good at” (reflection excerpt). Third, some participants felt anxious whenever they were unprepared, as it was on these occasions that they were more likely to make mistakes. As Lily admitted, “I did not spend much time practicing [my first presentation] … During the presentation, I was so stressed that I hardly dare to look up” (reflection excerpt). Although both reflections and interviews have shown that students’ anxiety may last throughout the semester, this negative emotion appeared the most intense during the first few classes. First, it was probably because students were faced with unfamiliar teachers and classmates at the beginning of the semester. As Grace mentioned, “Everyone was not familiar with each other at the beginning, so I was extremely nervous about speaking of something wrong and losing face [in front of my new teacher and classmates]” (interview excerpt). Compared with simply making mistakes, it seemed that the participants felt more unacceptable losing face in front of strangers. Second, the participants’ greater anxiety at the beginning of the semester also came from the peer pressure they were aware of. As Wendy said in her interview, “One of my classmates was really good at English speaking. I only tried to speak English after the college entrance exam, but he had participated in English speech contests in high school. I felt so anxious every time I saw him and heard him speak in class” (interview excerpt). Lily also wrote, “Hearing my classmates’ fluent oral English made me feel terrible. Everyone could communicate with the teacher freely, but I was still struggling to understand what they said” (reflection excerpt). The participants tended to feel shocked when they suddenly noticed that they were left behind by others, followed by their increasing anxiety as they were very eager to catch up. Furthermore, students needed time to adjust their thoughts and attitudes, so it was quite understandable that they would feel relatively negative in their first feel classes.
The participants believed that both their positive and negative emotions affected their performances in class at the beginning of the semester. Their excitement in the first few classes made them more focused and more willing to participate. As Ivy mentioned, “Everything seemed amazing to me in my first class. I was very concentrated and listened to the teacher very carefully in class” (interview excerpt). And according to Alice, “My excitement made me more eager to express myself and communicate with others [when the teacher initiated a discussion]” (reflection excerpt). Negative emotions, however, were believed to reduce students’ engagement in class. Amy talked about the influence of anxiety in the interview, “Anxiety could make me deny myself in class, so I was unwilling to raise my hand and interact with the teacher sometimes” (interview excerpt). While feeling anxious, it was very likely that students would experience declines in self-confidence, and would avoid participating in any classroom activity. For those participants who experienced both positive and negative emotions, the influences of different emotions seemed contradicted. As Lisa said, “I really wanted to participate and answer the teacher actively, but the truth was I did not act like that [due to negative emotions]” (interview excerpt). The effects of the two kinds of emotions seemed to cancel each other out to some extent, and students did not show much improvement or decline in their in-class performances.
After Several Classes: Students’ Low-Intensity Emotions of Relaxation and Boredom
The participants’ emotions in EFL speaking classrooms gradually turned less intense after they attended several classes. They began to become relaxed and even felt bored in class (see Table 3 for the main codes and categories of this theme). Such emotional change generally appeared in the fourth to sixth class, in other words, in 3 weeks to 1.5 months.
The Main Codes and Categories of the Theme “Students’ Low-Intense Emotions of Relaxation and Boredom After Several Classes.”
The fundamental source of the participants’ gradual relaxation was their progress in English speaking after the first few classes. As Alice mentioned, “Compared with the first class, I felt I was better at expressing myself in English. For me, communicating with my peers was more like chatting in class” (reflection excerpt). And Lily also said, “I have learned many methods on how to better express myself [by the middle of the semester], so I felt more relaxed speaking in public than in the beginning” (interview excerpt). As students’ EFL speaking abilities improved, they became increasingly confident in their oral expression, which made them less anxious both in group discussions and in public speaking. The study participants’ relaxation also resulted from their familiarity with teachers and peers. As Ivy mentioned, “We had known each other well, and my classmates were clear about my oral English proficiency, so they had an appropriate expectation for me, which could make me more relaxed” (interview excerpt). Getting familiar with teachers and peers reduced students’ stress as they felt less worried about losing face in front of them. Furthermore, students’ adjustment to their own attitudes also contributed to their relatively peaceful emotions. Lily talked about how she got rid of anxiety in the interview, “I was very anxious at the beginning, but later I gradually changed my attitude. I felt it meaningless to compare myself with them, as I came to the class simply for improving myself” (interview excerpt). Although some stressors, for example, gaps among peers, still existed, their negative impacts seemed to decrease due to the students’ self-adjustment.
Boredom was another low-intensity emotion that the participants experienced in class in the middle of the semester. In their reflections and interviews, nine among 12 participants admitted that they sometimes felt bored during their sixth to ninth classes. Their boredom was found to be associated with diverse external factors. First, the participants felt that the topics in class were not worth discussing, and the guiding questions were also weird. As Ivy mentioned, “I was really not interested in some topics, such as ‘family’… And the ‘activity’ parts (providing guiding questions for the class) in the textbook were also strange. We had nothing to talk about around those questions” (interview excerpt). They also explained why they were more likely to feel bored in the middle of the semester. According to Wendy’s recollection, “The topics discussed in class were extremely boring in the middle of the semester, for example, family, friendship, romantic relationship, etc.” (interview excerpt). Second, some participants found in the middle of the semester that the modes of organizing classroom activities were fixed and uncreative. As Mary wrote, “After discovering the routine of the teacher’s teaching (presentation followed by group discussion or role-play), I gradually felt that there would be nothing novel about class arrangements” (reflection excerpt). Third, others’ performances also influenced students’ emotions. They were more likely to feel bored if no inspirational points were raised in class. As Alice wrote, “I felt that the performances of other students [during their presentations] were not good enough. Except for a few students who were loud in voice or chose novel themes, other students’ presentations could not attract me much” (reflection excerpt). In fact, it was quite difficult for students to come up with interesting ideas when the topics they discussed were boring, which in turn further increased students’ boredom in class.
As for the effects of these low-intensity emotions, the participants believed that being relaxed was beneficial for their classroom performances, while boredom hinder them from participating in class. The positive influence of relaxation manifested in both the quality and quantity of students’ speaking in class. As Lily mentioned, “Relaxation allowed me to participate more actively in class discussions, and it would also make my mind clearer, thus improving my ability to produce words and sentences” (interview excerpt). Students no longer avoided participating in classroom activities as they had done in the first few classes, and their oral English also turned more accurate and fluent. In contrast, boredom was found to make the study participants less attentive and motivated in class. As Chris admitted, “[Since I felt bored in class], I did not want to listen to the lecture given by the teacher, and was even watching videos on my phone” (reflection excerpt). The bored participants did not even pay attention to what the teacher was saying, let alone took part in classroom activities and discussions.
Near the End of the Semester: Inter-Individually Varied Emotions of Enjoyment and Anxiety
The study participants’ emotions became complicated again in class near the end of the semester, and the emotions they felt varied inter-individually (see Table 4 for the main codes and categories of this theme). Four among 12 participants felt completely positive emotions. They continued to feel relaxed and were feeling increasingly enjoyed in class. Five participants were anxious because of the exam. The other three participants experienced both enjoyment and anxiety in class, but they believed that their positive emotions were predominant.
The Main Codes and Categories of the Theme “Students’ Inter-Individually Varied Emotions of Enjoyment and Anxiety Near the End of the Semester.”
Some participants simply enjoyed the process of speaking English, which was a valuable event from which they could get a sense of achievement. And as the classes progressed, their more active class participation led to their greater enjoyment. As Wendy mentioned in her interview, “I became happier near the end of the semester because I felt that I spoke more English in class. As there were few chances to express myself in English in daily life, I felt happy whenever I spoke English in class” (interview excerpt). The study participants’ positive emotions also came from their collisions of ideas with others. As Mary wrote, “I felt so excited when discussing domestic and foreign events with classmates in class. I was happy that we had a lot of common languages on the topic ‘Conflicts in the complex social environment’” (reflection excerpt). And according to Mary, her positive emotions were more apparent near the end of the semester due to her progress in English speaking which enabled her to better express her thoughts to others. As she explained in her ninth reflection, “As I was able to produce long sentences much more fluently now, I felt that I was paying more attention to the depth of what I said during discussions. And such communication of thoughts was what I found more exciting” (refection excerpt). Furthermore, as Ivy mentioned, “My partner and I got to know each other better, and the two of us also got along very well, so I felt that it was a happy thing to meet each other every week” (interview excerpt). Alice also wrote, “Gradually I found out that there was something special about my classmates. A girl spoke beautiful British English, and a boy always raised new points. Their presence made the class more interesting and exciting” (reflection excerpt). Having classes and communicating with friends and interesting people could be enjoyable and exciting for the participants, and such emotions were stronger near the end of the semester, as students became more familiar with their peers and discovered more interesting traits of them.
The direct source of the participants’ anxiety was the upcoming final exam. Some participants were nervous about the form of the final exam. As Chris said, “The form of the speaking exam was different from other exams. There would be a teacher sitting there listening, there would be recording, and there would be timing. These would create a more terrifying atmosphere” (interview excerpt). Since this would be the first time students had taken an exam of such a unique form, it would be reasonable that they felt worried. The participants were also worried that they may not be able to perform well in the exam. As Emily wrote, “I felt anxious when our teacher showed us the contents of the final exam, because the exam required us to use some knowledge or techniques in the book, but it seemed that I remembered nothing” (reflection excerpt). Although in the last two classes, the students were organized to practice for the exam, some of the participants even became more anxious because of their bad performance in practice. As Helen said, “I didn’t do well in practice, so I was very anxious and wanted to improve my speaking proficiency in a short period of time, so that I could perform better in the final exam” (interview excerpt). But for others, such practices reduced their anxiety and fear of the exam. As Nancy mentioned, “I was anxious when the teacher first talked about the exam in class, but after practice, I got to know the exam better. Therefore, even though there was worry during practice, I felt enjoyed and relaxed overall” (interview excerpt).
Both positive and negative emotions felt by the participants in class near the end of the semester seemed to have positive influences on their classroom performances. Their enjoyment increased their desire to express themselves, making them more active in class. As Ivy said, “I hoped to keep talking [when I felt happy in class]. I was no longer worried about my English at that time, and just expressed what I want to express, so I actually talked more in class” (interview excerpt). And their anxiety also drove them to be more focused and pushed them to participate more in class. As Emily mentioned, “During the last two classes, I paid more attention to what the teacher was saying, and participated more in exercises that were related to the exam” (interview excerpt). Therefore, although the participants varied inter-individually in terms of their emotions near the end of the semester, all of them actually performed better in class than before.
Other Emotions: Out of the Trajectory
Except for the aforementioned emotions, there were also some emotions that were not related to the change in time (see Table 5 for the main codes and categories of this theme). These emotions were usually linked with the outcomes of certain events in class, and usually appeared after the completion of these events. Both positive emotions (e.g., joy and satisfaction) and negative emotions (e.g., sadness) were included in this category.
The Main Codes and Categories of the Theme “Other Emotions Out of the Trajectory.”
The participants’ joy and satisfaction usually existed after they successfully completed a task in class, such as making a good presentation or raising a good point. For one thing, they were happy and satisfied with their own performances which met and even exceeded their expectations. As Helen mentioned, “I had practiced many times in advance, so my presentation went smoothly… I was very happy and satisfied after this successful presentation” (reflection excerpt). For another, the participants’ positive emotions also resulted from the positive feedback from others. As Nancy said, “When I was talking on the stage, I observed that my classmates were quite interested [in my presentation], so I was quite satisfied and happy after I went off the stage” (interview excerpt). Their sadness, in contrast, occurred after unsatisfying performances and negative feedback. As Lisa wrote, “I was chosen to make a summary for our group discussion in class, but my summary was tedious and made my classmates sleepy. I was not satisfied with my summary, and my teacher also pointed out that my logic was not good. I was quite upset” (reflection excerpt).
The positive emotions encouraged students to perform better in class through the improvement of their concentration and their willingness to participate. As Helen mentioned, “These emotions (joy and satisfaction) continued to influence me in class. I listened to my classmates carefully, learned from their opinions, and exchanged ideas with them more actively and confidently” (reflection excerpt). Sadness, however, seemed to have little effect on the participants’ in-class performances, though it could be related to students’ practices after class. For example, after Lisa was pointed out by her teacher that her logic was problematic during English speaking, she was determined to make changes, “I felt sad and upset, and felt that I needed to accumulate some conjunctions and watched more debate in English after class” (reflection excerpt).
Discussions and Implications
This semester-long research investigated the emotions and their changes that were experienced by 12 Chinese college students in their EFL speaking classrooms, and yielded three major findings.
First, the study participants experienced diverse emotions in EFL speaking classrooms. Their emotions were caused by both internal and external factors, among which the contextual ones played a vital role. According to the study, the sources of the participants’ anxiety included their gaps with peers, their fear of making errors and of losing face, and their worries about the exam. Such findings not only mirror that of the previous studies (e.g., Tsiplakides & Keramida, 2009), but also indicate the influence of the Chinese cultural context. For one thing, echoing Jiang and Dewaele’s (2019) study, the exam has been found to be an important anxiety-provoking element because of the exam-oriented culture in China. For another, their anxiety was closely related to their desire to save face, which is also a vital tradition in Chinese culture. And in terms of enjoyment, a previous study in a general foreign language classroom (not specifically for speaking) has found that teacher-centered variables were highly correlated with foreign language enjoyment (Dewaele et al., 2018). But in the present study, the participants’ enjoyment seemed to be only associated with their own progress and their outstanding peers. Although most of the participants spoke highly of their teachers, the teacher-related variables did not contribute much to their enjoyment. The reason may be the specialty of the speaking classroom context, in which students, instead of teachers, were the real center. Apart from the two aforementioned emotions, other emotions (e.g., relaxation, boredom) and their sources were also investigated in the present study. As the existing literature on foreign language classroom emotions mainly focuses on one or two emotions (usually anxiety and enjoyment), the present study complements previous studies by revealing more diverse emotions of students.
Second, throughout the semester, a dynamic pattern of emotions was experienced by the study participants: from mixed emotions (excitement and anxiety at the same time) in the beginning, to low-intensity emotions (relaxation and boredom), finally to a set of complex inter-individually varied emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, or both). This finding echoes the results of the previous longitudinal studies (Dewaele & Dewaele, 2017; Elahi Shirvan & Taherian, 2018) in that students’ positive and negative emotions, as well as the causes of their emotions, were dynamic and inter-individually different. However, these previous studies were merely interested in the dynamicity of foreign language classroom anxiety and foreign language enjoyment. For example, Elahi Shirvan and Taherian (2018) found that in foreign language classrooms, students’ enjoyment generally increased, and their anxiety decreased over the semester. The present study, however, yielded a more detailed and complicated emotional trajectory containing a wider range of emotions. To be specific, the emotions examined included not only students’ anxiety and enjoyment, but also their excitement in the first few classes, their boredom in the middle of the semester, etc. In addition, as most previous longitudinal studies on foreign language learning emotions took place in general English classrooms (e.g., Pan & Zhang, 2021), the present study can also be seen as a complement to the research on students’ emotional trajectory in the context of foreign language speaking classrooms, which has remained poorly explored.
Third, in terms of the perceived influences of students’ emotions on their performances in class, the participants believed that positive emotions generally had a positive impact on their performances. But as for negative emotions, they believed that some emotions (e.g., anxiety) had both positive and negative impacts, while others (e.g., boredom) merely inhibited their active participation. Their perceptions further corroborate the relationship between students’ emotions and their speaking in foreign language classrooms as shown by the previous research (Wang & Marecki, 2021). However, the present research also contributes to the literature in two aspects: First, the relations between students’ classroom performances and a larger set of emotions were revealed in this single study. Second, unlike the previous research in which the impacts of positive and negative emotions were examined separately, this study also looked at how students performed when their positive and negative emotions co-occurred. For example, it was found that the perceived effects of students’ positive and negative emotions contradicted each other in the first stage (i.e., in the first few classes), while their anxiety and enjoyment in the third stage (i.e., near the end of the semester) jointly contributed to students’ more active performances.
The implications of the present study are as follows. College students in China should not only pay attention to their own emotional health in EFL speaking classrooms, but also understand that all students experience negative emotions in class. They can feel free to communicate their emotions with their classmates, during which they may be able to get more support and assistance. And they are also encouraged to talk to their teachers when they experience negative emotions in class. In this way, they can not only get encouragement and suggestions, but also help teachers make adjustments to their teaching. The findings of the present study are also important for Chinese foreign language speaking teachers. Teachers should praise and encourage students more in class, and try to be tactful when they have to point out students’ problems. As students tend to feel more negative at the beginning and near the end of the semester, teachers should pay special attention to students’ emotions in class, and offer them more encouragement and advice during these two periods of time. In addition, teachers had better adopt multiple boredom-reducing approaches to enhance students’ experiences in class, especially in the middle of the semester. Some approaches involve showing greater enthusiasm, the skillful use of humor, the constant change of teaching methods and task designs, including more contents concerning foreign language-related culture (e.g., news, movies, music), etc.
Limitations
The present study focused on a limited number of students from the same grade of a university in China. As all participants were voluntary, and the volunteers were all female, the present study only included female students in the research. Therefore, the findings of the present study are not representative enough, and may not be generalized to other contexts. To better understand students’ emotions in EFL speaking classrooms, studies on a larger number of both male and female students over a longer period of time can be conducted.
In addition, as the researcher had limited access to the classrooms, the effects of students’ emotions on their in-class performances could not be investigated in the most accurate way. What was studied was merely students’ perceived impacts of their emotions on their performances in class. If the condition permits, researchers can conduct field observations to collect data for future research on the impacts of students’ emotions in EFL speaking classrooms.
A final limitation was that this study mainly centered on students’ experiences in the classrooms and obtained few personal and social characteristics of them. Future research may pay more attention to how personal and social contexts contribute to students’ emotional variations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethical Approval
The researcher followed the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed Consent
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. All participants gave their informed written consent.
Data Availability Statement
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.