The Positive Broadening Power of a Focus on Well-Being in the Language Classroom

Abstract

One of the problems with our historical approach to emotions in lan¬guage teaching and learning was that we tended to concentrate our efforts on eradicating negative emotions like language anxiety without considering how the whole array of positive emotions might be strategically used. Consequently, the purpose of this chapter is three-fold: (1) to demonstrate the influence of emotion by tapping into them through powerful true life accounts; (2) to provide evidence of the power of PP interventions (specifically gratitude, altruism, music, pets, exercise and laughter) through detailing previous investigations into their efficacy; and (3) to explore the potential of positive psychology interventions in language learning through sharing original quantitative and narrative data of participants in a recent study.