2.2 Previous Research on Foreign Language Anxiety and Enjoyment
After a brief introduction to the notion of FLA and FLE, an overview of empirical studies related to this investigation is presented in this section. Resonating with the “Positive Renaissance” (Dewaele & Li, 2020), foreign language emotion research has begun to flourish and expanded quickly. Extant studies mainly focused on the FLA-FLE relationship, the sources, and the potential effects of the two variables.
2.2.1 Relationship between Foreign Language Anxiety and Enjoyment
To confirm whether FLE is on the positive end of a continuum and FLA at the negative pole, the seminal studies of Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014, 2016) have been the cornerstones of the ensuing flourishing research focusing on the relationship and interactions between the two variables (Boudreau et al., 2018; Piniel & Albert, 2018; Fang& Tang, 2019; Shirvan & Taherian, 2020; Resnik & Dewaele, 2021; Yeşilçınar & Erdemir, 2022).
Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014) first juxtaposed FLE and FLA in the same study and developed the Foreign Language Enjoyment Scale (FLES), with which they investigated the relationship between the two variables. They collected data from an international sample with participants coming from 90 different countries. Most of the participants were from western countries like the Belgium and the Britain. Although the findings suggested a significant negative correlation between foreign language (classroom) anxiety and enjoyment, they shared only 12.9% variance and the data distribution was quite different indicating that FLE and FLA were essentially independent rather than two pole ends along the same continuum. In other words, the absence of FLA does not guarantee the presence of FLE and vice versa.
Chapter Three Methodology .............................. 25
3.1 Research Questions .................................. 25
3.2 Participants .................................... 25
3.3 Instruments ................................... 26
Chapter Four Results and Discussion ......................... 33
4.1 Results ............................... 33
4.1.1 Results of Relationship between FLA and FLE ......................... 33
4.1.2 Results of Sources of FLA and FLE during L2 Oral Production Tasks ................................ 39
Chapter Five Conclusions ................................... 56
5.1 Major Findings .................... 56
5.2 Implications .......................................... 57
5.3 Limitations of the Study ........................ 58
Chapter Four Results and Discussion
4.1 Results
Section4.1 contains three subsections. The dynamic FLA-FLE relationship will be presented in sub-section 4.1.1 while sub-section 4.1.2 tends to uncover the sources of Chinese EFL learners’ enjoyable and anxious experiences during the process of L2 oral production. Finally, subsection 4.1.3 explores the influences of FLA and FLE on participants’ speech performances.
4.1.1 Results of Relationship between FLA and FLE
The first research question aims to portray the dynamic correlation pattern between FLA and FLE on an individual level. At first, each participant’s self-rating data on FLA and FLE are used to compute correlations separately across both their prepared and impromptu L2 oral production tasks. To describe the co-linear trends of the two variables
