Emotions in L2 Learning

The Effect of Emotional Affect in L2 Lexical Learning

Andie Faber, in collaboration with María Turrero-García (Drew University), recently published their work, “The Effect of Emotional Affect in L2 Lexical Learning,”  in Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de las Lenguas, volume 12, number 25: issue 25. This study uses invented words to investigate how emotional affect, activated through visual and auditory cues, affects L2 Spanish speakers’ acquisition of novel lexical items. They presented participants with a Picture Matching task as well as a Naming task, the results of which indicate that positive emotional context has a facilitative effect on learners’ recognition and recall of target lexical items when compared to the emotionally neutral or negative contexts. The implication of these results in L2 pedagogy suggests that lexical acquisition and retention can be enhanced by the incorporation of course materials with a positive emotional tilt.