Invitation to attend: FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANXIETY AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE ENJOYMENT – TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN? by Prof. Jean-Marc Dewaele

Hosted by the UCL Institute of Education, University College London

5:30 pm, Tuesday, 9 December 2014
Rm 731/736, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H OAL

The talk will explore the relationship between Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) in the FL classroom (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). Participants were 1746 current FL learners from around the world. The starting point of this mixed-method investigation was the fact that Second Language Acquisition research has been much more preoccupied with negative emotions than with positive emotions. Inspired by Positive Psychology (Fredrickson, 2006), we focused on FLE, using a newly designed scale, and looked whether FLE and FLCA are situated at the opposite ends of a single dimension.  We also looked at inter-individual variation in FLE and FLCA scores, linking them with sociobiographical variables and language profiles.  An open question on enjoyable episodes in the FL class allowed us to see what FL learners enjoy in FL classes.