Emotional Processes of Foreign-Language Learning Situated in Real-Time Teacher Support

Abstract

The dynamic turn in the field of psychology of foreign-language learning has inspired researchers to capture the nitty-gritty dynamics of development in inter- or intraindividual variables. Despite the growing number of techniques for analyzing dynamics, there is still a need for techniques that capture how intraindividual dynamics are situated in a changing context. One of the techniques that can contribute to this knowledge is a clustering technique called Kohonen’s Self-Organizing Maps (SOM). In this study, we aimed to explore the intraindividual process of foreign-language enjoyment and foreign-language classroom anxiety in alignment with teachers’ level of emotional support during teacher-student interactions for two dyads. The findings indicated the emergence of recurring patterns of teacher support, and student anxiety and enjoyment. These patterns highlight the self-organizing nature of these teacher-student interactions, the bidirectional nature of this process, and, in general, the notion of teachers and students as dynamic systems. Moreover, the specific nature of the emergent patterns suggests that the traditional positive association between teacher support and student affect may (mostly, but not always) be generalized to real-time and real-life processes. And finally, our results point toward the importance of the student in determining the affective nature of the interactions from moment to moment.