“To Teach and Delight”? Emotions and second language acquisition: onsite and online practices

Sir Philip Sidney’s words quoted in the title envisaged the general all-encompassing idea that teaching and learning should go hand in hand with positive emotions. Several education experts have pointed out that emotions are directly associated with and affect learning performance. Emotion and cognition are strongly interrelated processes, meaning that thought is imbued with emotion and vice versa. In a learning context, motivation, the direction of attention, the stored contents and how they will be understood and retrieved will be influenced by an emotional component. Therefore, students’ emotional state and learning are strongly intertwined. In the case of second language acquisition, feelings and emotions assume particular relevance, as has been amply demonstrated. Language influences how we think, interact, apprehend our surroundings, and feel and express our emotions. The alterity produced (and that underlies) communication in a second language contains a vast number of emotions, both positive and negative, which are also present in a classroom, whether onsite or online. Garrett & Young (2009), Bown & White (2010), Lopez & Aguilar (2013), among others, demonstrated the determining role of emotions and theoretical analysis of their importance in understanding bi- and/or plurilingualism. Studies on online second language acquisition using synchronous communication concluded that sets of positive emotions, with corresponding negative emotions, might be relevant to learning, namely anxiety- confidence, boredom – fascination, frustration – euphoria, and discouragement – enthusiasm. This paper aims to identify the emotional state of second language students in an online (e-learning) environment (totally asynchronous) and to analyse whether there are differences between the emotions experienced in a face-to-face learning model and an online learning system. It is also the purpose of our paper to detect any emotional variations according to gender and age. A questionnaire with two Likert scales (Well-being and Emotional discomfort) was applied in two higher education institutions for data collection. The results clarify any requirements on adjusting classroom dynamics, teacher-student interaction and teaching methodologies.