Towards Innovative Research Approaches to Investigating the Role of Emotional Variables in Promoting Language Teachers’ and Learners’ Mental Health

The adequacy of language education largely depends on the favorable and unfavorable emotions that teachers and students experience throughout the education process.Simply said,emotional factors play a key role in improving the quality of language teaching and learning.Furthermore,these emotional factors also promote the well-being of language teachers and learners and place them in a suitable mental condition.In view of the favorable impact of emotional factors on the mental health of language teachers and learners,many educational scholars around the world have studied these factors,their background,and their pedagogical consequences.Nonetheless,the majority of previous studies have employed traditional research methods in assessing these variables and their influences on language teachers’and learners’mental health.Because of the complex and dynamic quality of emotional factors,traditional research approaches often fail to evaluate these factors and their dynamic,non-linear connections with teachers’and learners’mental health and well-being.Accordingly,some novel research approaches are required to measure the dynamicity and complexity of emotional factors in language education settings.To address this call,the current state-of-the-art conceptual article seeks to provide new insights for investigating emotional factors and their potential impact on language teachers’and learners’mental states.This study also intends to offer a comprehensive list of emerging methods that take into account the complex and dynamic nature of emotional variables.Finally,the study outlines the potential implications of this review for educational researchers.

A Brief Analysis About the Function of the Communicative Approach -- It Can Lighten Classroom Anxiety in Foreign Language Teaching

Classroom Anxiety is very common and to some extent it influences students＇ achievements in foreign language learning. So, how to solve this problem in order to help students have a good performance in foreign language learning is a very urgent issue. According to the writer＇s study, communicative approach is an effective method to deal with it.

A Case Study on the Pattern of Classroom Discourse in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language

Based on the IRF(initiation,response,and feedback)classroom discourse structure model proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard,this research analyzes and studies the actual corpus of Chinese classroom teaching in Thailand,focusing on the structural model of teacher-student communication discourse,mainly from two aspects of teachers'feedback.On the one hand,it investigates whether IRF is fully applicable to Chinese classroom teaching and whether there are special situations to it.On the other hand,it attempts to summarize the discourse structure model of Chinese classroom teaching and explores the application of the research results in helping Chinese teachers improve their teaching quality in hope that constructive suggestions can be proposed for teaching Chinese as a foreign language.

Language Learning Strategies and Strategic Teaching in the Foreign Language Classroom

The results of a great deal of research have suggested that language learning strategies can be taught and that instructing learning strategies and integrating them into regular instruction can greatly facilitate the learning of a second/foreign language.The aim of this article is to draw the readers' attention to strategic teaching that should be introduced in the foreign language classroom in order to meet the demands of contemporary language education. In particular, it points to the necessity that teachers should change their attitudes towards the roles they play in the classroom to become truly responsible for their learning.

Researches on Foreign Language Learning Anxiety

Foreign language anxiety is one of the factors of affecting foreign language achievement. It is negatively associated with language skill learning. This article will show some researches on foreign language anxiety from certain aspects.

The Implication of the Research of CALL in English Teaching in China

In the rapidly evolving academic field of CALL （computer-assisted language leaming） in China, it is no longer a question of whether to take advantage of the technologies of computer and Internet in foreign language instruction, but of how to make effective use of them. By reviewing the literature of CALL in China and abroad, this article holds the view that in China where the educational resources are insufficient and unevenly distributed, the use of CALL should confirm and expand ESL/EFL theories to the utmost; the research of CALL should focus more on learning or learner, especially on learning strategy in CALL environment; to have a better understanding of the potential and functions of CALL in foreign language instruction, the research of CALL should cover all aspects of language learning.

An Empirical Study on Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety of College Students

Classroom anxiety could exert a tremendous influence on foreign language learners during their process of studying.Within this study,353 college students of China Youth University of Political Studies(CYUPS)are selected as participants;the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale(FLCAS)is applied as a tool and Statistic Package for Social Science(SPSS)software is used to analyze all the data to figure out whether there is difference on genders,grades,and majors among college students on their levels of foreign language classroom anxiety.The results show that considering all three anxiety perspectives:communication apprehension,test anxiety,and fear of negative evaluation,anxiety level between males and females are similar;there is also no significant difference among grades;however,English majors are significantly less anxious than non-English majors on test anxiety.

A Path Analysis of the Interrelationship Among EFL Learners’ Humor Style, Anxiety, and Language Proficiency

Humor is a complicated part of the human experience and therefore an important dimension of humanity’s unique ability for language. The main purpose of this study is to find which dimension of humor styles can better predict anxiety and language achievement. The participants of the present study were 210 (103 female and 107 male) Iranian advanced EFL learners with different ages, both genders, and various educational backgrounds. Convenience sampling was employed to collect data. This study utilized one test and two questionnaires which are Preliminary English Test (PET), the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ), and The Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). Path Analysis and Pearson correlation were used to analyze data. Results showed that all four sub-constructs of humor styles, affiliative humor (β=-0.27, p < 0.05), self-enhancing humor (β=-0.31, p < 0.05), aggressive humor (β= 0.17, p < 0.05), and self-defeating humor (β= 0.20, p < 0.05) are significant predictors of learners’ anxiety. However, among four sub-constructs of humor styles, only affiliative humor (β=-0.32, p < 0.05), and self-enhancing humor (β=-0.25, p < 0.05) are positive significant predictors of learners’ Language Achievement. In addition, language achievement is predicted negatively by anxiety (β=-0.26, p < 0.05). Two paths from aggressive humor to language proficiency (β= 0.09, p > 0.05), and from self-defeating humor to language proficiency (β= 0.07, p > 0.05) were not significant and removed from the model. With regards to the field of foreign language, humor has been identified as a powerful means to decrease students’ anxiety in a foreign language learning situations and it helps language learners in performing in a foreign language.

Foreign Language Enjoyment and Anxiety: The effect of teacher and learner variables (Ⅰ)

Positive psychology has boosted interest in the positive as well as the negative emotions that Foreign Language learners experience. The present study examines whether -and to what extent -foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and FL classroom anxiety (FLCA) are linked to a range of learner-internal variables and teacher/classroom-specific variables within one specific educational context. Participants were 189 British high school students learning various FLs. Levels of FLE were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, the FL teacher, FL use in class, proportion of time spent on speaking, relative standing and stage of development. Lower levels FLCA were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, relative standing and stage of development. FLCA thus seems less related to teacher and teacher practices than FLE. The pedagogical implication is that teachers should strive to boost FLE rather than worry too much about students' FLCA.

Review of Studies of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety

Anxiety is considered to be one of the key psychological variables as well as one of the important emotional factors that affect language learning. Taken into account that classroom is the main place in which Chinese college students learn English,it is of great significance to study students' language anxiety in the classroom environment. Based on the previous researches, this paper reviews the relevant studies in this area conducted at home and abroad.

A Study on Left-behind Junior Students'Foreign Language Learning Anxiety

Since the 1960s, foreign language educators and researchers home and abroad have started to pay attention to the influence of the affective variables including language learning anxiety on foreign language learning. This thesis tried to find out the factors that may influence the foreign language learning anxiety level of left-behind students and put forward ways to help lower down the foreign language learning anxiety level of the left-behind junior middle school students.

A Brief Look at Classroom Activities of Foreign Language Teaching

分别对热身、采访、猜疑、拼板、协同、讨论、模拟与角色扮演等七类外语教学课堂活 动进行论述,分析了它们在外语教学中的作用,并针对活动的操作提出了一些建议。

Foreign Language Classroom Discourse Analysis

This paper reviews some works done to classroom discourse analysis and summaries some peculiarities of foreign language classroom discourse.Some strategies are proposed for the teachers to activate students into communicative teaching activities in classroom for the purpose of improving college English teaching and learning.

Foreign Language Enjoyment and Anxiety:Associations With General and Domain-Specific English Achievement

Recent research has confirmed the predictive effect of general foreign language(FL) achievement on Foreign Language Enjoyment(FLE) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety(FLCA).However,few studies have examined the effect of domain-specific language achievement in shaping FL learning emotions.The present study thus aims to examine how FLE and FLCA are linked to overall FL achievement and self-perceived achievement in six different domains across listening,speaking,reading,writing,vocabulary,and grammar.A total of 1,415 Chinese senior secondary students participated in the questionnaire survey.Regression analyses showed that 1) both FLE and FLCA were predicted more by self-perceived general English proficiency,while less by actual English achievement;2) perceptions of speaking and grammar competence were significant predictors of both emotions;3) perceived reading competence predicted FLE significantly but not FLCA;and that 4) perceptions of listening,writing,and vocabulary competence predicted neither FLE nor FLCA.The implication is that domain-specificity should be taken into consideration in future explorations of FL emotions.

The Production-Oriented Approach Updated:Introduction to the Special Issue

More than a decade has passed since Wen Qiufang(2007)first proposed that foreign language teaching could benefit from output-driven practices in the classroom.Her original ideas were reformulated and further elaborated in the Production-Oriented Approach(POA),which aims to deal with the input-output separation in foreign language teaching in Chinese universities and colleges to optimize students’learning(Wen,2015,2016b).Integrating the strengths of Chinese traditional pedagogy and Western instructional approaches,this approach engages learners with production,merging the learning and use of language to enhance the efficiency of language teaching(Illes,2018,p.242)in a Chinese context.This introduction to the special issues includes three major sections.It starts out with an overview of what the POA system includes and how it works with a focus on its teaching procedures.The second section is about dialectical research(DR),a new research paradigm specifically designed for instructed second language acquisition(Wen,2017b)with“dialectical materialism as its philosophical basis”(Wen,2019,p.385).Finally,seven papers collected in this issue are introduced.We hope that this special issue sets a research agenda towards a better understanding of the POA.

Speaking Anxiety in a Kazakhstani Foreign Language Classroom

The present study aimed to contribute to our understanding of foreign language anxiety, in general, and in particular speaking anxiety in Kazakhstani environment. It was the first attempt to fill this gap and reveal more about the speaking anxiety in the Elementary level of Kazakh students group, having considered how anxiety might have affected speaking and overall classroom performance. This study addressed the issue of identifying foreign language speaking anxiety and the major consequences of language speaking anxiety reported by students learning English in the evaluation of the foreign language classroom. Anxiety levels in Kazakh students of English were studied through self-evaluation using a scale adapted from the FLCAS （Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale） developed by E. K. Horwitz, M. B. Horwitz, and Cope （1986）. As revealed by the results of this study, English language speaking anxiety does exist among the Kazakh second-year university students who participated in this study. And too, the study revealed that these students have had a number of negative experiences with speaking activities in a foreign language class.

An Interpretation of the Topic for the Prepared Speech of the 2018 FLTRP Cup English Public Speaking Contest

The FLTRP(Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press)Cup English Public Speaking Contest is one of the major nationwide English competitions for Chinese learners as well as a hot spot for extracurricular activities among Chinese colleges.The prepared speech has always been of great significance to all participants in that its survivors will qualify for the next round and gain a chance of making it to the final summit round.This essay intends to interpret the topic of the prepared speech“The Stones,______”by tracing the origin of“stones”,analyzing relevant key words with an intent to advise rhetorical strategies on speech writing based on the principles of three beauties.

Observation of UK schools and perspective of TEFL classroom in ChinaElia publis se nos fecris. Faucienatque

In this paper, 3 different foreign/second language-learning classrooms will be presented. There will be a comparison between those classes and TEFL classes in China, including background of different education systems and different teaching methodologies and approaches. In the end, some suggestions will be given to Chinese TEFL classes. The aim is mainly to show the differences between language teaching and learning in the UK and in China, and also to give people a chance to think deeply over the current TEFL teaching and learning in China.

On Teacher Talk in ELT Classroom Teaching

Teacher talk (TT for short) in China's ELT (English as Foreign Language Teaching) classroom teaching refers to the speech that the teacher uses to speak to students when the teacher undertakes teaching tasks and spread knowledge. This article will firstly introduce teacher talk briefly and then analyze some strategies with regard to TT with the ultimate purposes of illustrating how effective teacher talk contributes to the good relationship between teacher and students in ELT classroom.

A Review of Domestic Research on Production-oriented Approach

The Production-oriented Approach is a theoretical system of foreign language teaching created by ChineseProfessor Wen Qiufang. This article uses literature research as a clue to sort out the relevant domestic literatures of“Production-oriented Approach” from 2015 to 2020, and summarize the domestic research results of“Production-oriented Approach” on the basis of statistical analysis, and points out the existing problems. At thesame time, it also made some prospects for the future development of the “Production-oriented Approach”.