bodily reactions, expressive behaviour, as well as a subjective feeling – conscious aspects of our interactions with/in context (Cahour, 2013; Damasio, 2003). The trigger for an emotion is known as its object or event focus (Shuman & Scherer, 2014 – although see later in the chapter for my revised conceptualization). Emotions are also said to involve an action-tendency element (Shuman & Scherer, 2014). They channel our behaviour, through processes of ‘appraisal of the situation by the persons, as a function of the meaning that they attribute to it, as well as their interests and goals … including beliefs, values, and aspects of previous experience that are mobilized in the situation’ (Cahour, 2013: 58). Finally, while there are undoubtedly problems with dichotomizing emotions, they have traditionally been grouped into negative and positive valences based on whether the feeling is pleasant or unpleasant. On the one hand, negative emotions are said to prompt ‘fight or flight’ actions, such as anger engendering attacking tendencies or fear calling forth the urge to run away; on the other hand, positive emotions elicit broader tendencies to build resources, such as curiosity to seek information (e.g. Fredrickson, 1998; Plutchik, 2001; Shuman & Scherer, 2014).
Concerning L2 learning, researchers have tended to focus on distinct emotions. One of the most researched, language anxiety, is a situation-specific worry or nervousness about using an L2 (Horwitz et al., 1986). In many cases, it concerns perceived negative evaluation by others and threats to self-image due to difficulties in presenting ideas to the same degree as in one’s native language (e.g. Dewaele & Alfawzan, 2018; MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012). A good deal of recent empirical work has also begun to investigate the relationships between anxiety and enjoyment (Boudreau et al., 2018; Dewaele & Alfawzan, 2018; Dewaele & Dewaele, 2018; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014, 2016). Such a focus would seem overdue, as positive L2 emotions have been correlated with greater willingness to communicate (Dewaele & Dewaele, 2018), motivation (MacIntyre & Vincze, 2017) and performance in L2 classes (Dewaele & Alfawzan, 2018). This line of research has revealed that L2 anxiety and enjoyment function independently rather than proportionally (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2016: 230; see also Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). Dewaele and MacIntyre (2016) moreover illuminated two different dimensions of L2 enjoyment – a social dimension from supportive peers and teachers, and a private dimension involving an internal sense of pride through succeeding in the face of challenges.
Situated and dynamic research into L2 study emotions is much more limited in extent yet has provided alluring insights. For instance, research by Garrett and Young (2009) has found the profound impact of understandings of identity on L2 feelings. In their study, the participant’s identity as a proficient speaker of other additional languages lead to negative emotions connected with her comparisons between abilities in languages; her social identity as a student initially fostered negative emotions as she made erroneous social comparisons between her own ability and that of her peers, yet transformed into positive emotions as she revised her appraisal of peers and developed relatedness with them; and her identity as an L2 French teacher connected with positive emotional evaluations of the teaching styles of her instructors and materials. In another study, Méndez López and Peña Aguilar (2013) unearthed some fascinating relationships between classroom emotions and action tendencies. Intriguingly, while positive emotions at times spurred greater self-efficacy and motivation to take risks, at other times such feelings engendered a kind of coasting wherein students sat back and just enjoyed the pleasant feeling; conversely, negative emotions such as anxiety about assessment tasks led some participants to stop trying in class and consider giving up entirely, while a sense of difficulty such as when learners realized a mistake elicited motivation to improve that particular skill. Their study reveals that, while teachers may prefer students to always experience pleasant feelings, in fact, both pleasant and unpleasant feelings can prompt helpful and detrimental action tendencies. As Pinner (2016: 182) similarly articulates based on his experiences with classroom research, ‘not all learning experiences have to be good. In fact, some of the best learning experiences come from bad experiences and these have an important contribution to make in both education and learning.’ Lastly, Imai (2010) followed a group of three Japanese university EFL students as they participated in a series of lesson-external meetings in order to prepare for a group presentation in English. Imai collected data from multiple perspectives, through video recording discussions (in Japanese), asking participants to fill out emotion logs and questionnaires and using stimulated recall to gain participants’ own interpretations. Imai uncovered that while participants brought their own understandings of the task and course to the discussions, these understandings were adapted via verbally manifested ‘emotional intersubjectivities.’ Intriguingly, these co-formed, emotional understandings had a large, non-linear impact on the learning task, as group members collectively changed their goal for the presentation in rejection of the teacher-intended pedagogical outcome. As such, Imai (2010: 288) argues that there is a need to consider ‘emotions as socially and discursively constructed acts of communication that mediate learning and development’.
My Path to Studying L2 Feelings
As a classroom teacher, I have always been keenly interested in the emotional experiences of learners in my classes. However, my entry to exploring L2 feelings as a research focus involves a somewhat more meandering path. A couple of years ago, I received funding to study the social nature of L2 learning motivation. I implemented action research together with undergraduates in two of my compulsory EFL classes (n = 47), introducing change-action through classroom activities that encouraged learners to think about and discuss the meaning of their EFL studies. My interest was in the ways in which motivation and action emerged through social processes connected to students’ hopes for the actions of their peers in the classroom (Sampson, 2018), as well as their felt expectations from significant others and society (Sampson, 2017, 2019a). Data were collected via action research activity worksheets, classroom seating charts with observational notes (students were randomly assigned new partners every lesson), introspective learner journals and an open-ended semester-final questionnaire. It is the journals that inform discussion in this chapter.
As a form of introspective data collection, journals in classroom research have the potential to ‘take us to a place that no other data collection method can reach – into the mind of the learner or teacher’ (Nunan & Bailey, 2009: 307). They offer a feasible tool that does not overburden participants nor interrupt the natural processes of classroom action, yet has the ability to provide contextualized, dynamic, personal and candid perceptions of learning experiences (Gilmore, 2016; Nunan & Bailey, 2009; Sampson, 2016a). In arguing for the aptitude of journals for classroom research, Phelps (2005: 40) remarks that:
No-one knows the complex interplay of factors that impact on an individual, or the significance of any one factor, greater than the individual themselves. This is not to assume for a moment that the individual learner is fully aware of all these factors, but rather that they are in a better position to understand them than anyone else.
Based on past experiences using journals in classroom research (e.g. Sampson, 2012, 2016a, 2016b), I worked to ensure such benefits, whilst trying to alleviate possible drawbacks sometimes found in this method of data collection. In order to reduce concerns about low compliance rates and large variations in the length of entries (Gilmore, 2016), the journal was introduced as a reflective pedagogical task. Students were assessed by how many weekly entries they submitted, and whether entries were over a minimum of 70 words. As part of facilitating the journaling process, as well as trying to head off problems of recall (Hall, 2008; Nunan & Bailey, 2009; Porto, 2007), participants wrote the journals as an email to me directly following each lesson. The prompt was simply:
Please write about your experiences in lessons. However, do not merely list the activities we did in the lesson. Try to write your perceptions and reflections about your actions and those of other class members doing the various activities.
Hall (2008) warns of utilizing data collected in the L2 of participants, as their capacity to write what they truly think is determined by their level of L2 capability. However, the English level of learners in this context was reasonable (Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) scores ranged from mid-400 to 800). Being part of pedagogical practice, it was also my wish as a teacher to show my respect for participants’ developing L2 identities (Sampson, 2016a). Learners were therefore encouraged and wrote these journals in English, although