Latest Issue of the MindBrainEd Think Tank + (ISSN 2434-1002) 5 MindBrainEd Bulletin V4i5 Think Tank Emotion May | Page 6

Emotion in the experience of language learning: I cannot tell you how many
times I have met students who were really interested in English as children, usually
because of some positive experience, such as making a foreign friend, lost that
interest in the painful language learning situation of high school, and then gained it
back in college, again because of good experiences, which might even include English
class. Naturally, the positive-negative emotions associated with the language
classroom are bound to influence their attitudes and motivations. Fear of failure
might make them study for a test, or it might make them skip class. Past enjoyment
might be why they engage now.
So, we have to stop making moral judgments based on student attitudes – “He is a
serious student; she is lazy” – and deconstruct those behaviors in other ways – “He
sees English study positively; she has bad associations with it, probably from pain in
the past.”
I had a personal experience once that helped me understand this. I
had a student in my class, Ayumi, who’d missed one third of the
classes, the university limit for getting the credit. I told her I had to
fail her. She pleaded with me not to, I mean literally begged, and
told me she’d never miss another class. I said I’d give her another
chance, and the next week she was there. Then the next too. But in
the third class after her plea, she was absent. I thought, as we all do,
“Another student who makes a promise and then fails to live up to
it…I was duped again.” However, that very weekend, something odd
happened to me that threw a different light on that situation. I had
set aside four days to prepare a JALT featured speaker workshop on
Adult Education, my doctoral field. I knew what I was going to do, so
writing the presentation up should have been easy. It wasn’t. I sat
down at least five times the first day and, to my bewilderment,
nothing came out. Nor on the second day. Nor the third. Then I
figured out why. The last time I was a featured speaker, a workshop
many big names were at, I was challenged by a participant in the first couple
minutes, and then, many times after. He was British and educational debate is
common in his culture. But as an American, I was totally unprepared for that kind of
interaction and it bothered me greatly. I lost track of my presentation and felt I had
failed. That memory was what made it impossible for me to write up the next
featured speaker presentation. But once I realized the problem, the words just flowed
out, and it ended up being a fairly good one.
Then suddenly, I understood Ayumi. She wasn’t taking her promise lightly. She
probably had some serious hurts in English class in the past, and these negative
associations were all part of her representations of English study. I then understood
that she truly did want to come to class and was probably trying hard, but fighting a
strong emotion of avoidance every time. Then on that third class day, the avoidance