Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Psychology of Language Learning Conference 2024 (PLL5), Madrid, İspanya, 16 - 18 Mayıs 2024
Directed motivational currents (DMCs) refer to highly intense, enduring, and goal-specific surges of motivation capable of energizing the study of a second/foreign language (L2). While positive emotionality is regarded as central to catalyzing the motivational intensity of DMCs, recent work suggests that the experience of DMCs involves highly mixed emotions and the failure to remain resilient against stressors results in the continuance of aversive feelings without relief, thereby jeopardizing one’s well-being and motivational progression. Such evidence indicates that emotion regulation (ER) abilities can play a potentially important role in coping with the lingering effects of negative emotionality within DMCs, an area which remains unexplored to date. Drawing on a sample of 5 English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners in Turkey, this qualitative study explored whether and how individuals regulate their emotions during DMCs and the potential role of ER in sustaining goal-directed behaviors. The data were collected by means of in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyzed in line with the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings revealed the interplay of various types of regulation aimed at both up-regulating positive emotions and down-regulating negative ones, which in turn facilitated goal-striving. Findings also showed inter- and intra-individual variability in the participants’ use of self-regulatory strategies to realize ER. Overall, the outcomes from this study contribute to a more nuanced picture of the affective properties of DMCs in L2 and provide implications for how to increase learners’ capacity to become more emotionally resilient in sustaining intense motivated behaviors in the study of an L2.