Vietnamese English-as-a-Foreign-Language Learners’ Emotions in Online Learning Environments : Preliminary Findings

Control-Value Theory of Achievement EmotionsAchievement emotions or academic emotions refer to emotional responses that arise from individuals' perceptions of their control over achievement-related tasks or outcomes, as well as the personal significance they attach to these achievements (Pekrun, 2006).In the field of educational psychology, the control-value theory of achievement emotions (Pekrun, 2006;Pekrun et al., 2011) is regarded as a well-established framework for understanding the range of emotions that arise in academic contexts.Control-value theorists classify achievement emotions along three key dimensions: valence (positive vs. negative), object focus (activity vs. outcome), and activation (activating vs. deactivating) (Pekrun et al., 2002;Pekrun et al., 2023).For example, enjoyment is a positive emotion which may be aroused from fun activities in a second language classroom and activate subsequent students' L2 learning effort and engagement (Tsang & Dewaele, 2024).In contrast, boredom is a negative and deactivating feeling which may result from learners encountering repetitive activities in class (Derakhshan et al., 2021;Pawlak et al., 2020).Pekrun (2006) argues that students' emotional experiences are determined by their two major cognitive appraisals of perceived controllability and the subjective value of the achievement activities.While the latter refers to value (e.g., instrumental value) of learning activities, the former reflects learners' perceived competence or success expectations of the activities.For example, a student with high levels of perceived competence and instrumental values linked to English may find learning the language joyful.On the contrary, anxiety and boredom may be experienced by students who either are unconfident of their English or find the language hardly useful to their future goals.