The Interplay between Basic Psychological Needs and Emotions in the Foreign Language Learning Context: Pedagogical Implications

Abstract

Emotions play a major role in the process of learning. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether autonomy, competence, relatedness, and novelty (basic psychological needs) affect the  emotions of pride, enjoyment, boredom, hopelessness, anger, and anxiety in the context of foreign language learning. We first studied whether the Basic Psychological Needs Scale (BPNS) would be reliable, adding novelty to the original scale, and then administered the BPNS and the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) to 194 students to investigate whether BPN predicts certain emotions (RQ1). We further performed multiple regression analyses to study the specific predictions of BPN factors with AEQ factors (RQ2). The findings affirm the necessity of incorporating the basic psychological need for novelty into the theoretical framework. Among the basic psychological need variables, competence emerged as the highest value. Additionally, the emotion of enjoyment was identified as the most influential factor.
Furthermore, the study yielded additional results and highlighted pedagogical implications.