Emotions that facilitate language learning: The positive-broadening power of the imagination

Abstract

The imagination is powerful, in part, because of the emotions that can be activated by imagining future states. Imagined future states are a key fea-ture of the L2 self-system proposed by Drnyei, and emotion may be the key to the motivational quality of the imagined future self. In particular, this pa-per focuses on positive anticipated and anticipatory emotions related to language learning. It is argued that, in general, positive emotion has a dif-ferent function from negative emotion; they are not opposite ends of the same spectrum. Based on the work of Fredrickson, we argue that positive emotion facilitates the building of resources because positive emotion tends to broaden a person's perspective, opening the individual to absorb the lan-guage. In contrast, negative emotion produces the opposite tendency, a nar-rowing of focus and a restriction of the range of potential language input. This article draws a framework for finding a balance between the positive-broadening and negative-narrowing emotions in the language classroom,