Southeast Asian Language Students’ Foreign Language Enjoyment And Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

In the field of second language acquisition,research on emotions has largely concentrated on negative ones,with language anxiety having been an extensively studied topic in the past decades(Horwitz,2010;MacIntyre,2017).Recently,positive psychology has been introduced into SLA by MacIntyre and Mercer(2014),and positive emotions,especially enjoyment in the process of foreign language learning,have gained growing research popularity(Dewaele & MacIntyre,2014;Dewaele & MacIntyre,2016)Thus,there emerged a shift from focusing on learners’ negative emotions,foreign language classroom anxiety(FLCA),to laying stress on positive emotions in foreign language classroom,foreign language enjoyment(FLE).Due to its short research history,more research is needed to be conducted on FLE and FLCA.Moreover,much empirical research took English learners as subjects,leading to few studies on FLE and FLCA for learners of languages other than English(LOTEs)such as Thai,Vietnamese and Burmese.The present study aimed to explore FLE and FLCA of learners of Thai,Vietnamese or Burmese as a foreign language in the Chinese context,and to examine the relationship between learner-internal and teacher-related variables and their FLE and FLCA.To this end,444 undergraduate students from eight universities in Yunnan province were recruited to complete the questionnaire.Among them,171 majored in Thai,158 majored in Vietnamese and 115 majored in Burmese.The quantitative data were computed by SPSS 22,and qualitative data were analyzed by means of Nvivo 11.The results obtained from the data analysis revealed that: 1)Mean levels of FLE(3.85)and FLCA(3.40)of Southeast Asian language learners were at a moderate level,and they reported significant higher level of FLE than FLCA with the effect size at a medium level;2)A significant negative relationship between students’ FLE and FLCA emerged.With 7% overlapping variance,the strength of this correlation was small and thus,the two emotions were considered as separate dimensions;3)A statistically significant difference was found on FLE but not on FLCA among the three majors: Thai,Vietnamese,Burmese majors.Burmese language students got higher scores on FLE than Thai and Vietnamese language students;4)Taking learner-internal and teacherrelated factors as independent variables and the two emotions as dependent variables,it was found that all of them linked to FLE positively and related to FLCA negatively except that strictness of teacher showed no significant relationship with FLE and FLCA.Multiple regression analyses displayed that the stronger predictors of FLE were teacherrelated factors and those of FLCA were learner-internal factors;5)The participants’ descriptions of FLE and FLCA experiences demonstrated that enjoyable moments most originated from behavior of teacher while anxious-provoking events were largely related to learner themselves.This finding further supported the findings indicated in quantitative data.This study provides some implications for less commonly taught languages learning and teaching in China.The thesis ends with the limitations of the study and suggestions for future research.