Influence of emotions on learning the English language: analysis of the different linguistic skills

ABSTRACT

Studies published on the emotions students experience when learning English as a foreign language have focused on analyzing the emotions they feel and how they affect their learning process. However, the relationship between different language skills and the emotions they arouse in students has been little analyzed. In this article we intend to explore the emotions that EFL learners experience, when they carry out activities of comprehension and production of oral and written texts. To do this, we have passed the EFL Skills Emotions Scale questionnaire (Pishghadam et al. 2016), to a total of 217 students from the University of Extremadura. The results show that the most experienced emotions are fun for listening and reading skills, anxiety for speaking and hope in relation to writing, anger being the least present emotion in the four skills. After the discussion of the results obtained, some implications for teaching are presented, as well as future lines of research are designed.

Keywords:
emotions; English as a foreign language; language skills