As can be seen from these extracts above, these changes in perception had led to changes in the participants' motivational tendencies. Due to experiencing a sense of change in his abilities and his life after SF, Ali for example felt more encouraged to expend more effort and "feel great about it"; he seemed to have had an increased tendency toward continued engagement.

To many of them, the SF experience led to not only more hopes in their life and future, but also a sense of direction and meaning. Adam for example described the SF he was in as an "eye-opening" experience and even a mechanism whereby his life questions made more sense and acquired a sense of purpose which made his quality of life better. Therefore, he thought he

was to choose this engagement regardless of his financial status: ". . .So even if I was so rich that I didn't have to work, I'd still do this." (Adam, Q3)

#### Task Level

At the single task level, the analysis revealed that enjoyment was the dominant type of affect as all the participants reported experiencing it most of the time while engaged in single SF tasks. For Helen, regardless of her intrinsic interest in the material, she found engagement in single tasks enjoyable because it would lead to her learning goal. As a result, even challenging tasks were experienced as interesting without causing boredom:

It is all interesting because it contributes to the end, of the end goal, even if it is something that is really dry like for example I am not a big fan of statistics, it is a massive challenge for me, but because it contributes to the end goal. . . So there is still the interest there. (Helen, Q2)

However, intrinsic interest in the L2 tasks, however, was reported by four participants: Suzan, Sahar, Umed, and Louise. Suzan had a pre-existing interest in watching TV shows in English prior to her SF; however, once in her SF, she changed her habit from watching TV randomly and for pleasure into watching specific shows with specific focus on learning certain aspects of the L2. She differed in how she engaged in watching TV; previously, it did not matter if she had missed a show or what type of TV program she watched, whereas while in SF she ensured she watched the episodes that improved her communicative skills, and she watched the same episodes twice – motivated primarily by the goal of learning versus intrinsic enjoyment.

Sahar also discussed how engagement in L2 tasks was perceived as interesting and fun time. Yet, it seemed that this was in part the result of her intrinsic interest in the Japanese language and culture. Therefore, she found engagement as "interesting past time" and a "hobby" initially, but later and as she encountered more challenging parts of the L2, her engagement became more goal-driven: "it was kind of as a hobby and a past time but at the same time improving myself so, it was it was an interesting time for me yeah." (Sahar, Q1)

Similarly, Louise's SF was based on learning Old Norse mainly because she was interested in reading literature produced in that language. Therefore, engagement was both intrinsically pleasurable and learning as the same time as learning to understand poetry in Old Norse was both a mechanism and a goal:

I think it was completely hedonistic aesthetic pleasure like when you understand some part of a poetry like. . . much better than the translation, and you think about those bright images that are about it and you feel happy because you are a part of it, because this is a part of your life. (Louise, Q1)

Some participants experienced repeated episodes of flow (see below). For all the participants, engagement in SF activities seemed to be one of the most, or the most, enjoyable undertaking compared to other daily involvements. For many of them, engagement in L2 learning was the first priority, not necessarily in terms of urgency, but mainly in how they affectively rated the L2 engagement, as evident from this excerpt from Helen:

Interviewer: Would you not rather think about something else other than your study?

Helen: What else is there to think about? Right now that interests me nothing really. . . . (Helen, Q3)

#### Satisfaction

In addition to enjoyment and happiness, the majority of the participants referred to a strong feeling of satisfaction while in their SF. Being satisfied emerged as a dominant emotional pattern reported mainly to describe the whole experience as evident from this example by Suzan:

[T]his two years was from the happiest days in whole my life actually, I am, when I think about it, I think I relate it to satisfaction because I am satisfied with what I am doing and succeeding in what I am doing. . . . (Suzan, Q3)

Contentment was not specific to the time the participants were engaged in L2 learning activities nor because of learning an L2 only. This is evident from this extract by Kardo:

Honestly, I was listening to English podcasts 5–8 hours a day. It looks a bit of hyperbole, but this is a reality. Beside this, I was reading interesting novels, articles surfing on YouTube watching motivational and inspirational videos made me on cloud nine and I was enjoying every second of my life that time. (Kardo, Q2)

From Kardo's description, it is clear that in addition to spending time on learning specific L2 skills, Kardo also watched "motivational and inspirational videos" which did not seem to be part of the linguistic aspects of the L2 learning, but perhaps one way of making sense of his unexpected, "crazy" transformation which seemed "hyperbole" to him.

#### Theme 2: Emotional Fluctuations

Although enjoyment seemed to be the dominant affective state for all the participants while in their SF, affect was not unchanging throughout. The majority of the participants referred to some instances of fluctuations in their emotionality. Since the emotionality charts were particularly utilized to collect data on these fluctuations, I report the results through the charts and in regard to fluctuations in moods (several days) and in daily emotional fluctuations (single sessions).

#### Mood-Level Fluctuations

Helen described the whole SF period (her MA studies) as being positive with regular fluctuations, but little negative affect: ". . . [T]here are some periods of my time here that were definitely more happy than some others. . .. But it doesn't go too far from that mean of happiness, you know what I mean?" (Helen, Q4)

At the time of interview (three interviews within 2 weeks), despite variations, she was maintaining positive emotionality: "Some days are better, some days are a little bit more difficult, but overall they are still pretty much constant. . . ." (Helen, Q5). As such, she rated her emotionality level on the developmental chart as around +80 to over +90 on average which suggested exceptionally high levels of positive emotionality

(**Figure 1**). One possible reason for this rating was that she was engaged in autonomous writing tasks that allowed for making tangible progress.

Although Adam seemed to be experiencing a somewhat similar kind of trend, he differed from Helen in how he drew his emotionality on the chart. In general, he felt he was experiencing "excitement" on a daily basis as he was making progress in his studies as discussed above (Q2). Nevertheless, having neutral or low-mood days was a consistent, although not frequent, pattern in his experience. When I asked him if he had any low-mood days, he described how he felt bored when he needed to spend many hours in collecting data for his studies, especially when

data collection spanned extended periods or if it involved hours of waiting. Adam perceived data collection as not "academic" progress, but a "technicality" chore he needed to do, and based on this judgment he rated 3 days in the 2-weeks period as neutral or low in mood (**Figure 2**).

For him, judging on whether he had a positive or negative day depended on his perceived achievement in measurable terms: "Yesterday, Sunday, was 5.25 hours. So I give myself 90% of satisfaction, because I feel I achieved something." (Adam, Q4). When he was studying for <3 h, he would feel less positive compared to 3 h or more.

#### Emotion-Level Fluctuations

For Helen, enjoyment was usually the norm while engaged in a typical study session. However, moments of negative emotionality did occur. She drew on the emotionality chart that she would feel frustrated when she faced a challenge only to be followed by a sudden hike in positive affect once she found a solution (**Figure 3**).

Adam stated that he would usually spend around seven consecutive (with short breaks in between) hours a day on learning. In drawing his single-session emotionality chart (**Figure 4**), Adam rated his sessions to be mostly positive with instances of frustration in between especially when he would

not make progress due to, for example, not finding the right sources of a citation.

Upon an initial hesitation, Adam would engage in intense study sessions. As a result, not only would his sessions end with a sense of satisfaction, but he would also experience a sense of achievement and productivity: "I have high productivity, reasonably high. . . several hours, five, six hours a day. . . This is pure productivity, not standing time." (Adam, Q5)

# Theme 3: Unremitting, Subdued Happiness

In general, the positive affect mostly experienced while in a SF was qualitatively different from the common usage of happiness. As described above, satisfaction was a main theme in the dataset and although the participants experienced momentary positive emotions of joy and excitement, the dominant form of happiness was rather in reference to positive mood or happiness all or most of the time – not while engaged in a learning session only. As such, a deeper form of happiness was experienced that went beyond instances of short-lived emotions.

Although Helen reported positive affect especially as a result of envisioning her final goal, it was mainly constant satisfaction rather than momentary excitement:

It is not excitement, it is satisfaction, it is there always at the back of my head, but it is not something that I will consciously go and dig around my brain to go and find it, you know. It is there at the back of my head, I know it is there, it is present. (Helen, Q6)

Here, it is clear that Helen felt happy beyond the times of task engagement and due to reasons beyond simply adding words to her dissertation. As a result, she had the sense that her happiness is incomparable to the overt joy of socializing or laughter:

[I]t is not the kind of laughter and joy kind of like you would at a barbeque or a party. But it is kind of more, how do I say it, it more, I don't really wanna use this word, but a more subdued kind of happiness. (Helen, Q7)

As this form of happiness seemed to be unique or probably unprecedented, the participants found it difficult to share it with others.

# Theme 4: Intense Mental/Affective Preoccupation

Perhaps as a consequence of experiencing this unusual form of happiness, the participants made attempts to make sense of their experience. To do so, the participants developed an unceasing affective connection to their SF. A holistic analysis of the data revealed that engagement – or thinking about the SF – was not always restricted to a specific time. The analysis also identified that, for most of the participants, learning did not depend on a single activity such as reading in the L2. **Table 3** illustrates that the participants made use of a combination of learning resources. The participants also varied in how much time they devoted to the L2 learning on a daily basis.

As can be noticed from **Table 3**, while a number of participants did spend a relatively high number of hours on their learning, for at least some of them the number was low (e.g., 1 h), and for a number of participants the average was around 2–3 h a day. Nevertheless, a holistic analysis of the dataset indicated that the number of hours spent on learning might have had little relevance to the motivational intensity of the SF.

An example on the extreme side of this table was Kardo who, on some days, spent 13 h studying English and reported his daily engagement in L2 learning as follows: ". . . Describing my routine in this two years, it would be speaking in English, dreaming in English, eating in English, reading in English, watching English televisions. . . all those are a great part of my life that time." (Kardo, Q3)

It is clear that learning had become a considerably major, if not the most significant, part of his daily occupation. However, it is important to note that this preoccupation was not always restricted to studying the L2, but also and perhaps more importantly a mental/affective obsession. An example of such an attachment to SF experience can be seen in Kardo (see Quote 2 above). Apparently, watching "motivational and inspirational videos" on the Internet was not aimed at learning any aspects of the target language.

Kardo's experience was a typical example of a SF displaying intensity of cognitive, physical, and emotional engagement. Engagement in SF behavior had become the norm and exceeded his and others' expectations.

As for the participants who did not spend as much time on learning, their experiences were still recognized for being intense, overwhelming, and obsessive. First, it is necessary to point out that the participants who spent less time on learning were virtually too busy to devote more time to studying. Louise, for example, whose SF occurred in a single summer, was meanwhile busy with a number of other responsibilities, and was only able to engage in the L2 learning in her free time. Despite the relatively little amount of time she devoted to learning, she nevertheless thought of learning Old Norse "all the time" and "even in the background": "Well, to tell the truth, I was not really pushing myself. Well, when you think about something all the time. . . and I think that is what helped me to do it all the time." (Louise, Q2). As such, because she was mentally and emotionally preoccupied with her L2 learning, she did not perceive engagement in learning as being homework performed at and for a certain time a day.

These examples suggested that all the SF experiences were considered as intense. However, this intensity of engagement was not measured by the number of hours the participants had spent on learning, but by the degree of mental, emotional, cognitive, and physical preoccupation with their SF.

# Theme 5: Constant Tendency Toward Engagement

All the participants expressed a strong desire toward engagement in SF activities, and this tendency was an always-present mental and affective orientation. The participants reported their inclination toward engagement in large part due to the prospect

of experiencing positive affect upon making meaningful progress; as a result, more engagement was interpreted as the potential for more positive affect. The analysis identified the following aspects as the mechanisms by which positive emotionality led or contributed to increased tendency toward engagement.

#### SF as the Most Preferred Engagement

The participants seemed to have developed a strong emotional link to their SF insomuch that they preferred SF engagement to other undertakings. Helen for example discussed how she was obsessed with her studies and wished to devote more time to studying, sometimes leading to physical exhaustion: "When I am not working, I feel that I should work. . . Some days, it is not funny, it is not really not funny, but I am so tired, I am absolutely drained, but even then my brain won't stop." (Helen, Q8)

Here, it seemed that Helen's preoccupation was beyond the requirements of the task (finishing her M.A. dissertation). Moreover, she reported rejecting social events and invitations such as invitations to movies, barbeques, and picnics.

Since engagement in SF behavior was perceived as emotionally satisfying, the participants strived to continue this engagement and its resulting positive affect in two main ways. First, the participants maintained an unceasing affective link to their SF even while they were not physically engaged in learning activities (i.e., in the background) as evident from this statement by Sahar: "[I]t was definitely something that was constantly on my mind so even during lectures I would find myself scribbling in the margins of the page like in Japanese." (Sahar, Q2)

The second way that was used by many participants was studying in free time. This strategy was especially used by the participants who were too occupied to integrate their SF routines to their daily lifestyle. Louise, who was too busy with other ongoing commitments, made use of her free time to study Old Norse: "Well I had to do a lot of other things. . . I had to graduate from my home university and finish my dissertation. . . But I used my free time for that, so whenever I was alone in my room. . . ." (Louise, Q3)

#### Personal, Me-Time

In addition to performing SF tasks in their free time, the participants believed that engagement was in main part about oneself and therefore the most enjoyable engagement. Sahar considered learning Japanese as "time for myself ": "When time allowed I think, so it was like I go to for free time and as soon as like the more important things are out the way then I could just have that time for myself and learn." (Q3)

In all the cases, the participants had developed a personal association with their SF. Suzan for example considered her SF time as her personal time: "Actually it was my time. I feel that it is for me only. It is like my leisure time or free time, yeah." (Q4). Moreover, engagement was seen as originated from one's own decision rather than to meet any external expectations. Consequently, positive affect resulting from perceiving engagement as about one's personal goals and benefits seemed to have led to motivation from within, as evident from this comparison Kardo put forth: "during my holistic learning of English, no one could oblige me to study or to get ready because I was staying ready for everything all the times." (Kardo, Q5)

#### Flow

Many of the participants reported repeated occurrences of flow as discussed above. As a result, in addition to the belief that engagement was necessary to make progress toward a SF goal, undertaking SF activities had sometimes become enjoyable for its own sake. Sahar for example described how engagement in L2 learning sessions was her "me-time" in which she would immerse in the L2:

[I]t was kind of like my personal me-time so it would be just time for me to focus on one thing and I could just shut my door in my room and just really immerse myself in the language and try to learn it. (Sahar, Q4)

As this seemed to have become a consistent pattern throughout her SF, engagement in the L2 task was seen not only as enjoyable, but, as Sahar said, a "treat for myself " and "Japanese was something that would keep me happy even if I was down so. . . ." (Sahar, Q5)

Regardless of whether the task at hand was intrinsically interesting, some of the participants had developed an emotional link to the media and materials they used for their learning as discussed above. As such, intrinsic enjoyment and a sense of progress/learning seemed to have functioned jointly to make engagement emotionally rewarding. Consequently, engagement was looked forward to as exemplified in this excerpt from Suzan: "[A]ctually I was waiting, I was holding my watch." (Suzan, Q5)

# DISCUSSION

fpsyg-10-02963 January 14, 2020 Time: 15:29 # 11

The findings of this research suggest that positive emotionality is the dominant type of affect experienced in SF. Positive affect is experienced while the participants were in SF, both in single learning episodes (positive emotions) or over extended periods (positive mood). Nonetheless, in addition to this dominance, the experience of positive affect seemed to be qualitatively different from experiencing positive emotions at most other times. In describing their SF as unique experiences, the participants in large part made this judgment in affective terms. In this regard, they particularly emphasized experiencing subdued happiness, long-lasting positive mood, and satisfaction – as opposed to merely short-lived emotions of excitement or the prospect of merely reaching a new level in learning or improving a second language.

The findings suggest that the underlying reasons behind these emotional patterns are based on two different, yet complementary appraisals: making tangible progress toward a personally valuable learning goal, and a perception of productivity, skill acquisition, personal development, and transformation. These two processes seemed to have given rise to two types of positive emotionality: anticipatory positive emotions (current experience of an emotion because of an event in the future; Baumgartner et al., 2008) in respect of an important future goal, and eudaimonic happiness in regard to a sense of self-actualization and growth (Ryan and Deci, 2001). Whereas the former led to short-lived emotions of pleasure and joy, the latter was associated with unremitting long-term positive mood and satisfaction.

Importantly, the results of this research imply that the uniquely high motivational intensity of SF is perhaps fueled by positive affect and utilizing its motivating force more than by a valuable final goal/vision or a salient structure as theorized earlier by Dörnyei et al. (2014; 2015; 2016). Motivational intensity seems to be measured by one's affective connection to their SF rather than by how much time they devote to individual learning tasks. In this study, although the participants varied in how much time they had spent on learning, they seemed to maintain a conscious mental relationship with their SF experiences. Kardo's spending time on "motivational and inspirational videos" and Ali's discussion of his happiness and progress at gatherings with friends, for example, probably mean that one appreciates and is therefore motivated by one's emotional appraisal of the experience rather than simply on-the-task engagement. The participants varied in how much time they had devoted to learning; yet, all the experiences were considered as uniquely intense, mainly because the intensity of engagement was perceived and interpreted in light of its status as one's most preferred or valued engagement – evident from engagement in learning in one's free time. As a result, the participants were preoccupied with their experiences beyond the time and contexts of engagement in SF tasks. As reported in the themes, regardless of how much time one spent on L2 learning, the SF engagement was an-alwayspresent preoccupation. Therefore, although engagement in study sessions was not always taking the participants' greatest time, the participants were mentally and affectively consumed by their SF even at times when they were involved in other daily activities.

This preoccupation seemed vital for supporting the continuation of SF routines and also for altering the perception of effort. Relatedly, studying in one's free time was a dominant practice among the participants suggesting that engagement in SF is not seen as homework: Engagement is probably too emotionally satisfying and meaningful insomuch as one prefers to maintain a strong and constant sense of relatedness. In SF, the perception of engagement changes from a task one needs to do to a task one wishes to do (Waterman, 2005). As a result, in SF, effort loses its traditional connotation and therefore self-regulatory measures become unnecessary; hereby one might invest the maximum amount of effort toward learning.

The findings provide some evidence for the impact of positive emotionality on motivated behavior. Whereas this impact has previously been assumed to be the function of both envisioning a learning goal and eudaimonia (Dörnyei et al., 2016; Ibrahim Z., 2016), the current findings suggest that the role of eudaimonic happiness might be more central than previously thought in engendering a long-lasting motivational tendency toward engagement. Therefore, the recently proposed term SF (Ibrahim and Al-Hoorie, 2019) in place of the original term DMCs might be more appropriate in describing the SF experience as it amplifies the role of positive emotionality in such experiences.

Nonetheless, eudaimonia can perhaps explain why people in SF experience the type of happiness related to positive emotions but more so to long-lasting positive mood. Yet, it is unclear if it is also behind the affective obsession people in SF usually experience which this study has found to be the primary force of motivated behavior and the alteration of effort. From the positive psychology perspective, this new conceptualization of SF as intense motivational forms of engagement fueled primarily by positive affective obsession has significant implications in at least two respects. First, while experiencing anticipated and anticipatory emotions (MacIntyre and Gregersen, 2012) can broaden people's momentary and enduring resources (Fredrickson, 2001, 2009), long-lasting positive affect is perhaps more important in sustaining motivated behavior. Secondly, positive mood and positive affection beyond the immediate task engagement might be more or as paramount in inducing long-term positivity, subjective wellbeing, and happiness. More research into SF experiences is obviously necessary to further investigate these two matters.

It is noteworthy to mention a major limitation of this research. Due to the fact that the majority of the participants provided accounts of their experiences in retrospect and mostly after a number of years from the experience, it is likely that

they had been biased in describing their experiences especially their emotions. That is, they were probably under the effect of remembering self rather than the experiencing self (Kahneman, 2011). Hence, they were at least partially influenced by how their experiences ended and how they recalled its details at the time of this research. Moreover, the two participants who were studied longitudinally were engaged in full-time postgraduate studies in L2 studies rather than in L2 itself. Although it has been proposed that SF is barely domain-specific, more research in participants who are engaged in L2 learning will be superior.

#### CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the findings of this research imply that while in SF, people might approach engagement in affective terms. That is, they are motivated by the prospect of enjoyment from personal growth and eudaimonia. Therefore, we might assume that SF is primarily an affective experience fueled by long-term enjoyment and subdued happiness. Consequently, engagement in learning activities is satisfying in part because of a sense of positive change and personal development. Little is thus necessary to constantly activate self-regulatory strategies. This new conceptualization of SF has important implications for long-term motivation and the role of enjoyment in sustaining motivated behavior. In the growing field of positive psychology within second language learning, SF can have a unique contribution in increasing our understanding of the role of positive affect and enjoyment in L2 learning (Dewaele et al., 2019).

#### REFERENCES

# DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

### ETHICS STATEMENT

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the University of Nottingham – English Department. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this manuscript.

### AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The research presented in this manuscript including the data presented here has been derived from a larger study conducted as part of the researcher's Ph.D. project at the University of Nottingham. The Ph.D. thesis is available on request from http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/33489/.

Ruspini, E. (2002). Introduction to Longitudinal Research. London: Routledge.

Ryan, R. M., and Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 52, 141–166. doi: 10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141

**Conflict of Interest:** The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2020 Ibrahim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

fpsyg-10-02963 January 14, 2020 Time: 15:29 # 13

# Reading Picture Books With Elements of Positive Psychology for Enhancing the Learning of English as a Second Language in Young Children

#### Anna N. N. Hui<sup>1</sup> \*, Bonnie Wing-Yin Chow<sup>1</sup> , Eva S. M. Chan<sup>1</sup> and Man-Tak Leung<sup>2</sup>

<sup>1</sup> Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, <sup>2</sup> Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong

#### Edited by:

Xinjie Chen, Stanford University, United States

#### Reviewed by:

Joanna Smogorzewska, The Maria Grzegorzewska Pedagogical University, Poland Leina Zhu, University of Houston, United States

> \*Correspondence: Anna N. N. Hui<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Educational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 16 May 2019 Accepted: 06 December 2019 Published: 23 January 2020

#### Citation:

Hui ANN, Chow BW-Y, Chan ESM and Leung M-T (2020) Reading Picture Books With Elements of Positive Psychology for Enhancing the Learning of English as a Second Language in Young Children. Front. Psychol. 10:2899. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02899 This study aimed to investigate the learning effectiveness of reading picture books with EMPATHICS elements using dialogic reading techniques in enhancing young children's English language learning and creativity. EMPATHICS is an acronym of Emotion and Empathy, Meaning and Motivation, Perseverance, Agency and Autonomy, Time, Habits of Mind, Intelligences, Character Strengths, and Self Factors (Oxford, 2016). It adopted a quasi-experimental design, and 78 kindergarten children aged from 4 to 5 years old in a cluster group were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Both groups read the same four picture books with their homeroom teachers, including two readers suggested in the curriculum and two picture books with enriched elements for 12 sessions over 8 weeks. A doubly multivariate analysis was used to measure the main time and group effects and the interaction effect on the performance of English receptive vocabulary, syntactic complexity, and verbal creativity of the two groups across three different times. There were significant differences only in the interactive effect on syntactic complexity. Children in the experimental condition gave responses with more complex syntactic structures. Significant time effects for receptive vocabulary, syntactic complexity, and verbal creativity were observed in all children. Reading enriched English texts better prepares children to creatively and effectively express themselves. This study extends previous research in two ways. First, this study is one of the few studies on the effectiveness of dialogic reading using EMPATHICS-enriched picture books among young language learners. Second, this study investigates the effects of dialogic teaching on English as a second language development in young children. The educational implications will be discussed.

Keywords: dialogic reading, positive psychology, receptive vocabulary, syntactic complexity, verbal creativity

# INTRODUCTION

fpsyg-10-02899 January 18, 2020 Time: 17:50 # 2

Reading story books to young children in an interactive way on a daily basis is an indicator of quality early childhood education (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2008) and a significant predictor of language learning in primary education (van Druten-Frietman et al., 2016) and of language and literacy outcomes in longitudinal studies (Ulferts et al., 2019). Adult–child book reading is a kind of extended intervention technique that enhances children's language skills for reading and written language outcomes when children actively engage in reading (Scarborough and Dobrich, 1994; Swanson et al., 2011). Teachers may use dialogic reading techniques, such as questioning, elaborating information, and initiating discussions, to encourage verbal interaction with children (Zevenbergen et al., 2003; Swanson et al., 2011) and to actively engage children in learning (Seligman et al., 2009).

In dialogic reading, children become a storyteller during book reading. Adults, on the other hand, become an active listener, audience, and questioner. Adults provide appropriate assistance to the child by using an evocative approach when reading a story, such as asking the child about the picture or content of the story, supporting the child in telling the story along with adults (e.g., Haden et al., 1996; Whitehurst and Lonigan, 1998; Swanson et al., 2011; Flack et al., 2018). There are significantly greater language gains than when adults simply read a book to children (Arnold and Whitehurst, 1994; Hargrave and Sénéchal, 2000; Chow and McBride-Chang, 2003). Additionally, children enjoy dialogic reading more than traditional teaching because the addition of prompts during reading together can enable adults to follow children's interests and attention (Valdez-Menchaca and Whitehurst, 1992). The pleasure of reading is beneficial to the child's language development (Zevenbergen et al., 2003). Recent studies found that dialogic reading has a positive effect on language and literacy development for the child, mainly in encouraging receptive vocabulary development and interest in reading, for both Chinese (Chow et al., 2008, 2010), and English language learning in elementary classrooms (Chow et al., 2017). Young children in Hong Kong received formal education in reading and writing, in both Chinese and English languages, at age 3 in Kindergarten, as stipulated in the Kindergarten Education Curriculum Guide (Education Bureau, 2017).

#### Effects of Dialogic Reading

Swanson et al. (2011) conducted a meta-analysis of reading interventions for children at risk for reading difficulties from preschool to third grade. The dialogic reading approach is one of the frequently used interventions, and outcome measures are mostly expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, word recognition, and semantic complexity (e.g., number of nouns, verbs, modifiers); and of the 27 studies, only one or two studies used syntactic complexity (e.g., mean length of utterance). These authors concluded that extended child–adult dialog and questioning around storybooks can improve literacy outcomes, mainly receptive and expressive vocabulary although fewer studies use syntactic variable.

Verbal creativity is another language outcome examined in studies with young children, schoolchildren, and college students. Smogorzewska (2014) found that both reading stories to young children, and asking them to make stories enhanced creativity as measured by semantic structure (continuous episodes), narration cohesion (time sequence, cause–effect), story complexity (number of connections among characters), story length (number of words), and originality (novel elements). Aerila and Rönkkö (2015) integrated arts, story reading, and telling as a creative learning process. They first read part of a story to a group of young children and they further verbally elaborated the story and made art craft of the characters and episode, then they read about the original ending, their new elaboration, and shared collaboratively about their own artistic products. Creative outcomes included verbal creativity as measured by the new story, and visual creativity as presented by hand drawn pictures and handmade characters.

Flack et al. (2018) conducted another meta-analysis on how children's language acquisition is related to reading picture/story books using 38 studies with 2,455 children. Children learned 3.025 words (raw change) on average, and 46% of the words were included in the reading process. Dialogic reading techniques increase word learning in children by at least one word when adults describe pictures and ask questions during reading, regardless of whether teachers or parents or caregivers serve as the reader. These authors also suggested some new future directions for research. Children aged between 3 and 5 years who are read the same storybooks repeatedly learned more words. Children between 2 and 10 years could learn approximately two to five new words (approximately 2.77 nouns, 3.10 verbs). Reading styles, exposure to the same storybooks, and learning nouns and verbs are all significant moderators when studying the dialogic reading approach with young children.

Of the 38 studies in Flack et al.'s (2018) meta-analysis, four major types of reading stimuli were employed. First, two studies used a wordless picture book (Ard and Beverly, 2004; Abel and Schuele, 2014). Second, approximately 15 studies used authorcreated picture books embedded with targeted words that were mainly nouns (e.g., Blewitt et al., 2009; Houston-Price et al., 2014; Flack and Horst, 2018). Third, two studies used adapted picture books with target words or grammar structures (McLeod and McDade, 2011; Evans and Saint-Aubin, 2013). The final type of picture books were popular story books in children's literature with no specific target words or structures (Beck and McKeown, 2007; Pullen et al., 2010; Strasser et al., 2013; Chen and Liu, 2014). Commercial picture books differ from wordless, author-created or adapted children's picture books in that the former have significantly more words, more types of words, and more grammar structures. Flack et al. (2018) did not define or observe that type of picture book was a significant moderator. The dialogic reading technique had the greatest effect.

Reading stories with themes on resilience, or enriched with sensory stimuli also enhance creativity among older students. Boytos et al. (2015) discovered that college students scored higher in the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking after reading an underdog story than those who read a top dog. The underdog displayed resilience when undergoing hardship in life and creativity in problem solving. Bos et al. (2015) found that kindergarten children with higher sensory richness scores

wrote highly original stories with more sensory words and situational words. Webb and Rule (2014) integrated story reading with humor, wisdom, and emotion when learning about health and nutrition in a second grade classroom. Students displayed higher creativity in figural creativity but reported no significant differences on enjoyment of book, enjoyment of making figural transformation, and perceived creativity.

In this study, award-winning commercial picture books written in English for children aged between 3 and 6 years were chosen for three reasons: the narrative level was appropriate for the kindergarten age group, they had appealing illustrations to children, and they had enriched elements of the EMPATHICS model (Oxford, 2016) outlining the psychological dimensions of positive language learning. EMPATHICS is an acronym for Emotion and Empathy, Meaning and Motivation, Perseverance, including Resilience, Agency and Autonomy, Time, Habits of Mind, Intelligences, Character Strengths, and Self Factors, especially self-efficacy. The enriched content provides more interesting elements to enhance vocabulary and syntax compared with traditional reading, which usually focuses on repetitive semantic (e.g., food items) and syntactic elements (e.g., "I like . . ."). To our knowledge, this study is the first study to adopt the EMPATHICS model for studying how beneficial it is for young children's L2 learning. The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of reading picture books with EMPATHICS elements using dialogic reading techniques for enhancing young children's English language development and verbal creativity.

#### MATERIALS AND METHODS

#### Participants

The study was a quasi-experimental design with three different time points, including a pretest, mid-test, and posttest, to investigate how picture books with EMPHATICS elements and read using dialogic reading techniques help the language and creativity development of young children learning English as a second language. Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics and Research Committee of the university. Parents provided written and informed consent for their child and themselves to take part in the study. Seventy-eight kindergarten children aged from 4 to 5 years in cluster groups were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups. Initially, a total of 89 kindergarten children in three K2 classes and three K3 classes (43 in the experimental condition and 46 in the control condition) were included. Only 39 children (19 boys and 20 girls) in the experimental group and 39 (18 boys and 21 girls) in the control group completed the three assessments, yielding an attrition rate of 12.3%, usually due to sick or casual leave during the second or third assessment times.

#### Procedure

At the baseline measurement, each child was individually tested for approximately 15–20 min in the kindergarten classroom by trained psychology undergraduate and postgraduate students. With a double-blind design, the experimenters and the child participants did not know which children belonged to the experimental or control groups. Children were briefed that they would use English to play all games before the tests. There were three tests for the children: an English receptive vocabulary test, a story-telling task (STT), and free conversation. After all the tests, a cartoon sticker was given to the child as a token of appreciation, and each child was given an English picture book to bring home as another token.

Four classes of kindergarten children from two different age groups (ages 4 and 5) were randomly assigned into two groups: (a) an experimental group with dialogic reading first with ordinary English stories and then with creative English stories or (b) a control group with traditional reading first with ordinary English stories and then with creative English stories. After the baseline measurement, the former 4-week dialogic reading sessions with typical English reading as assigned by the kindergarten were conducted in the experimental group, whereas traditional reading with the same typical English reader was implemented in the control group. There were a total of 12 lessons (240 min) and 20 min for each lesson. Two participating teachers in the dialogic reading group were trained by the researchers in how to use dialogic reading techniques to link creativity and vocabulary learning in the story books. Teaching materials with clear instruction and procedures, i.e., using the Prompt–Evaluate–Expand–Repeat sequence and five types of questions with CROWD as the acronym, namely, Completion, Recall, Open-ended, Wh-words, Distancing, were provided for teachers (please see **Appendix I** for sample questions). There was a classroom observation in the first or second lesson taught by trained teachers to ensure fidelity of implementation. According to a recent review on fidelity of dialogic reading studies in early childhood education of Towson et al. (2019), the fidelity level of the current study can be classified as the highest level when "authors stated training was provided and gave a detailed description of training" (p. 136).

The classes were also recorded to evaluate the whole teaching process. After the 4-week intervention, a mid-test assessment was conducted with the same procedures and assessment materials as those completed at the baseline assessment. The next 4-week dialogic reading sessions with English stories with EMPATHICS elements were implemented in the dialogic group, and four sessions of traditional reading with the same English stories with enriched elements were conducted in the control group. The posttest measurement was completed within 1 month of the reading intervention taking place.

To control for cognitive ability and parental influence, children's non-verbal reasoning ability was assessed by Raven's standard progressive matrices (Raven et al., 1996), and no significant difference was found (t = 0.854, p = 0.397) between the experimental and control groups. The Parent–Child Interaction Questionnaire (Yau and Yang, 2014), and Chinese Early Parental Involvement Scale (Lau et al., 2012) were used to measure psychological and language interaction, and parental involvement in school. No significant differences in parent–child interaction overall mean scores (t = 0.653, p = 0.516), and those of parental involvement (t = 0.487, p = 0.628) were found in between the experimental and control groups.

#### Materials

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Four English story books were used for the 8 weeks of the 12 sessions of dialogic reading lessons, including two typical English readers assigned by the school used in the first six sessions and another two English EMPATHICS picture books in the second six sessions. Features of these readers and picture books are described in great detail in **Table 1**.

#### Instruments

#### Receptive Vocabulary in English

#### **The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test IV (PPVT-IV; Dunn and Dunn, 2007)**

This test is an English-graded vocabulary test for children aged between 3 and 6. Children were orally presented a vocabulary item and asked to choose the picture for this item out of a fourpicture grid. The four-picture grid included pictures representing a target word, an onset distractor, a rhyming distractor, and an unrelated distractor. For example, in one testing trial, "Cat" was a target word, "Hat" was a rhyming distractor, "Cookie" as an onset distractor, and "Dog" was an unrelated distractor. The Cronbach's alpha was 0.982 for Time 1. The correlation coefficients between Time 1 and the other two time points were Time 2 (r = 0.679, p = 0.000) and Time 3 (r = 0.722, p = 0.000), and between Time 2 and Time 3 (r = 0.741, p = 0.000), indicating satisfactory test and retest reliability.

#### Syntactic Complexity in English

#### **Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI; Schneider et al., 2002; Schneider and Hayward, 2010)**

The story-telling test measures children's syntactic development. In the test, a series of five wordless pictures was shown to participants in an individual session. Each participant was required to tell a story about the pictures on his/her own in English. Before telling the story, the participants were allowed 1 min to look through all pictures, and they were asked and briefed to tell an interesting story later. Five-picture stories in A1 and five-picture stories in B1 were used. In the pilot test, half of the children randomly used the A1 story, and another half used the B1 story. In the baseline measurement and posttest assessment tasks, the B1 story was used while the A1 story was used in the pretest to reduce the effect of time. The Cronbach's alpha value for the following 10 items for Time 1 was 0.709, indicating satisfactory reliability. An overall mean score was computed using the 10 items. All stories were video-recorded and scored in the target items: (a) the amount of words total number of words (TNW), (b) number of different words (NDW), (c) mean length of communication units (MLCU), (d) included utterance (IU), (e) independent clause (IC), (f)

dependent clause (DC), (g) clausal units (CU), (h) complexity index [CI = (IC + DC)/IC], (i) story grammar (SG) units to evaluate overall content and marco structure (organization) for characterizing good stories, and (j) first mentions (FM) to measure the referential cohesion using FM of characters and objects first when telling a story. The correlation coefficients between Time 1 and the other two time points were Time 2 (r = 0.386, p = 0.000) and Time 3 (r = 0.470, p = 0.000), and between Time 2 and Time 3 (r = 0.526, p = 0.000), indicating moderate test–retest reliability.

#### Verbal Creativity in English

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#### **Story-telling task (STT; Hennessey and Amabile, 1988; Hui et al., 2013)**

The STT was conducted by an experienced researcher and trained research assistants. Each child was presented with an unseen picture and was asked to tell a story about the picture. In this test, child participants were provided 3 min for preview and 5 min to create their story. The participants were allowed to continue until they indicated completion. The storytelling process was digitally recorded and then independently evaluated by two raters for 13 criteria: (1) relevancy to the story, (2) ability to describe the story, (3) ability to organize the story, (4) ability to express, (5) ability to show emotions, (6) ability to speak in an audible tone, (7) ability to add conversations, (8) ability to include humorous elements, (9) ability to include creative elements, (10) ability to identify problems and find relevant solutions, (11) ability to name the story, (12) ability to make story by themselves, and (13) ability to use vocabulary. Each criterion was rated on a fivepoint scale (from 0, lowest, to 4, highest). A composite score was calculated for each participant. Each story was rated by two trained researchers. There were positive correlations between the composite scores calculated by the two markers for the three tests (r = 0.56 ∼0.73, p < 0.001), indicating moderate interrater reliability. The correlation coefficients between Time 1 and the other two time points were Time 2 (r = 0.439, p = 0.000) and Time 3 (r = 0.468, p = 0.000), and between Time 2 and Time 3 (r = 0.545, p = 0.000), indicating moderate test–retest reliability.

#### RESULTS

Descriptive statistics of the vocabulary, creativity, and syntax scores across three time points are listed in **Table 2**. An independent sample T-test was conducted to examine whether there was any initial difference among the pretest scores and no significant differences were found: receptive vocabulary (t = - 0.325, p = 0.746), verbal creativity (t = 1.182, p = 0.241), and syntactic complexity (t = 1.334, p = 0.186).

A two-way (two groups × three times) repeated measured MANOVA was conducted to assess whether there were differences across the three time points and between the DR and TR group. The assumption of sphericity was not violated and thus the sphericity assumed values were used. Statistically significant multivariate effects were found for the main effects of group, Wilks' lambda = 0.781, F(3,74) = 6.909, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.219, and time, Wilks' lambda = 0.340, F(6,71) = 22.953, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.66, but no overall interaction effect between time and group, Wilks' lambda = 0.911, F(6,71) = 1.151, p = 0.343.

Within the same group, the time effect showed the difference between reading with typical reader (Time 2) and the enriched EMPHATHICS picture books (Time 3). There was a significant group effect, Wilks' lambda = 0.781, F(3,74) = 6.909, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.219, indicating the difference between the dialogic reading group and the traditional reading group when using the same type of reading materials at the same period. A follow-up ANOVAs revealed that the statistically significant change from Time 1 to Time 3 was only for the syntactic complexity variable, F(1,76) = 49.956, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.397, and that the change was different from the two groups, F(1,76) = 4.676, p < 0.05, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.058. The effect size was small. **Table 3** shows the time and group and interaction effects of the variables.

Follow-up ANOVAs show that the means of language and creativity scores suggest that all children had significantly higher across the three time points in receptive vocabulary, F(2,152) = 16.379, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.177, syntactic complexity, F(2,152) = 57.95, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.433, and verbal creativity, F(2,152) = 23.597, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.237. **Figures 1–3** show the increases of the outcomes across the three time points in all participants. All children benefited from reading both typical reader and the enriched picture books; however, more

Time 1 Time 2 Time 3 M SD M SD M SD Experimental group (N = 39) Receptive vocabulary 26.53 8.04 27.42 7.87 30.79 9.09 Syntactic complexity 4.84 3.55 7.39 4.12 8.74 4.33

TABLE 2 | Means and standard deviations of variables.

TABLE 3 | Effects of time and group on variables.

\*p < 0.05, \*\*\*p < 0.001.

observable gains were found when both groups reading the enriched picture books.

Significant differences were found between the experimental group and the control group in verbal creativity, F(1,76) = 6.184, p < 0.05, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.075 and also in syntactic complexity, F(1,76) = 16.94, p < 0.001, eta<sup>2</sup> = 0.182 but no such difference was reported in vocabulary, F(1,76) = 0.005, p = 0.944. Inspection of the **Figures 2**, **3** suggested that the dialogic reading group told stories with higher syntactic complexity, and higher creativity than the control group. Both groups gained similarly in receptive vocabulary and thus no significant differences were observed among them.

#### DISCUSSION

This study investigated the learning effectiveness of reading picture books with EMPATHICS elements (Oxford, 2016) using dialogic reading techniques in enhancing young children's English literacy development as a second language. The findings have showed both groups reported similar pattern of vocabulary, syntactic, and creativity development when reading frequently with teachers after the 12-week intervention. More advanced developments in syntax and creativity are reported when using dialogic reading techniques of dialogic teaching. This study extends previous research by investigating the effectiveness of dialogic reading techniques on English as second language development among kindergarten children using typical school readers and stories enriched with positive psychology elements.

#### English Receptive Vocabulary

The increase in young children's English vocabulary across the 12 weeks has indeed indicated that reading picture books to children in early childhood classroom frequently brings benefits to their receptive vocabulary, regardless of using traditional or dialogic techniques. These findings are partly consistent with the literature that picture book reading strengthens students' vocabulary knowledge (Flack et al., 2018). Teachers reading to children in a daily basis is an important indicator of quality early childhood environment (Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2008), and serving as a predictor of children's later language outcomes (van Druten-Frietman et al., 2016; Ulferts et al., 2019). The impact of using EMPATHICS enriched storybooks on vocabulary gain is reported when these books are used between Time 2 and Time 3. This finding is consistent with a recent study on reading extensively with different types of books to children in a dialogic method can enhance expressive vocabulary (Wesseling et al., 2017).

The lack of significant positive effects of dialogic reading on English vocabulary knowledge may be due to the relatively short implementation period. With a longer implementation time, dialogic reading approach which promotes more interactions might have a beneficial effect on language skills like other interventions of interactions on the first language acquisition, such as extratextual interactions programs of over 30 weeks (Wasik et al., 2006). In some successful studies, vocabulary items related to the picture books have been included as assessment items and expressive vocabulary can serve as alternative vocabulary outcomes (Ong, 2017).

# English Syntactic Complexity

Our findings have indicated that reading frequently to children with different types of stories promotes syntactic development in L2 English in young learners, in addition to vocabulary enhancement. This finding is consistent with previous studies (Smogorzewska, 2014; Flack et al., 2018). The type of reader does make a difference to literacy development, and does the reading approach as well. The original books chosen by the kindergarten teachers are written and produced by textbook suppliers. These picture books often focus on one or two repetitive sentence patterns, related vocabulary, and simple illustrations with an intention to use repeated reading and rote learning to foster semantic and syntactic gains. Language acquisition in L2 learners follows a similar developmental theory of an integration of complex syntax, lexical learning, and vocabulary development as suggested by Dye et al. (2019). Story reading is also a good pedagogical strategy to foster syntactic development (Schneider and Hayward, 2010).

The EMPATHICS model enables teachers to take into account the psychological aspects of the language learner. The positive impact of EMPATHICS elements is manifested when enriched storybooks are read between Time 2 and Time 3. To sustain children's reading motivation and support children to be fluent readers, the EMPATHICS elements serve as excellent criteria for teachers and parents to choose books that strengthen both learners' reading behaviors but also agency, autonomy, and self-efficacy of children (MacIntyre, 2016; Oxford, 2016).

Both incorporating extended child–adult dialog by questioning around the stories, and using traditional reading approach encourage children to speak longer and complex sentences, communicate more eagerly, and express themselves more willingly. This finding is consistent with Lonigan and Whitehurst's (1998) study that children produced more lengthy sentences with more different words when reading unfamiliar book with dialogic reading approach. The extended child–adult dialog and questioning techniques with CROWD can help young children read the text creatively and extensively, and encourage

them to read with greater intrinsic motivation (Walsh and Blewitt, 2006; Chow et al., 2017).

# English Verbal Creativity

Although the increase in young children's verbal creativity in the two groups did not show a significant interaction effect, their verbal creativity increases when reading constantly with both types of readers across the 12 sessions. Children tend to tell more creative stories when they are asked frequently about questions generated from the readers. The EMPATHICS enriched readers serve as interesting stimuli to enhance creativity through cultivating children's imagination (Kohm et al., 2016; Moedt and Holmes, 2018). Kohm et al. (2016) reported teachers observed children actively creating "new adventures based upon the story's content and language" and engaging in more social play with peers and generating positive affect.

Previous studies have also found similar mixed results on older children and in children from other non-Chinese cultures (Fleith et al., 2002; Hommel et al., 2011; Leikin and Tovli, 2014). Leikin and Tovli (2014) examined the creative performance of two groups of kindergarten children under 6 years old who spoke both Russian and Hebrew or only Hebrew. Verbal creativity was assessed by asking children to generate as many responses as possible to three semantic categories (animals, food and things to be taken on a picnic) and generating as many solutions as possible to a problem solving task. Bilingual children outperformed monolingual children in semantic tasks but did not show significant differences in the problem solving task. Fleith et al. (2002) found no significant difference in figural creativity among Grade 5 schoolchildren, half of whom spoke both Brazilian and English, and half of whom were monolingual children, after participating in a 15-week creativity training program. Hommel et al. (2011) studied English vocabulary and two cognitive tests, including a remote associates task and an alternate uses task between two groups of college students who were highly proficient Dutch–English bilingual students living in the Netherlands and low proficiency bilingual students with German origins. The highly proficient group of Dutch–English participants scored higher on English vocabulary and the remote associates task, but the low proficiency group scored higher in fluency and the alternate uses task.

Creativity among young children may vary with the nature of the creativity tasks. Familiar tasks tend to generate more creative responses, e.g., creative artwork (Fleith et al., 2002; Webb and Rule, 2014; Aerila and Rönkkö, 2015). The STT is a familiar activity in early childhood classroom when compared with the remote associates tasks or alternate use tasks (Hommel et al., 2011) or instance tasks (Leikin and Tovli, 2014). In other studies with older students, language proficiency is found to be an important variable in studies showing an advantage in creativity. Given the young age of participants in the current study, their language proficiency is still developing and of similar level, and it is reasonable to observe that reading both types of readers have enhanced verbal creativity. The lack of significant positive effects of dialogic reading on verbal creativity can be due to the emerging language proficiency in L2 when learning two languages in early childhood (Kharkhurin, 2018).

#### Limitation and Further Studies

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There are three major limitations in this study. First, the dialogic reading approach is implemented for only 12 sessions in this study. Further studies can involve a longer implementation period to provide a clearer picture of its effects on students' language development. Second, the sample size is small which might affect the effect size. Third, this study has demonstrated positive effects of EMPATHIICS-enriched literacy texts on English sentence complexity but does not examine the underlying mechanisms. Future research can include observation of teacher– child interactions to examine factors mediating these causal links. Variables of the children's well-being may also be included and a larger sample may be used to improve the effect size.

#### CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

This study has provided evidence for the effectiveness of EMPATHICS-enriched reading on facilitating language development through enhancing syntactic development in young children learning Chinese as a first language and English as a second language. The findings have several major implications for language learning and second language learning. First, the present study has extended the application of positive psychology in language learning and early childhood classroom by demonstrating close links between the EMPATHICS model and English language learning in kindergarten, in addition to direct instruction, on positive psychology as investigated by Kristjánsson (2012) and Shoshani and Slone (2017). This finding stimulates further research in this area, particularly in investigating the underlying mechanisms of these phenomena. Additionally, this study has provided a new direction for educators and parents to design and implement learning activities that enhance positive emotions, character strengths, and joy in learning. It is feasible to integrate positive psychology in

# REFERENCES

language education (Ciarrochi et al., 2016). The findings have demonstrated the importance of providing a stimulating learning environment in language instruction for young children in kindergarten. Future directions include a longitudinal study of how young children further develop their language skills in both Chinese and English from kindergarten to primary school.

# DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

# ETHICS STATEMENT

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by City University of Hong Kong. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

AH served as the principal investigator of the research project described in the manuscript. BC, EC, and M-TL served as coinvestigators. All authors conducted the study together, visited the experimental and control classrooms, trained the teachers in the experimental group, and discussed about data analyses.

## FUNDING

This work was solely supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No: CityU 11403514).

# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank the young children and teachers participating in the study as well as Miss Cindy Chan, Miss Li Wing Hei, and Mr. Sam Chung Ting, research assistants to the project.

Bridges to Literacy: Children, Families, and Schools, ed. D. K. Dickinson (Oxford: Blackwell), 103–128.

**Conflict of Interest:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2020 Hui, Chow, Chan and Leung. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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# APPENDIX I

# Dialogic Reading

a) Steps in dialogic reading:

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Questions used to prompt children to speak:

#### School reader:

Book Name: I Like. . . Story by: Jillian Cutting

Reading with EMPATHICS enriched picture book:

Book Name: Along a Long Road Author and Illustrator: Frank Viva

# Current Research on the Impact of Foreign Language Learning Among Healthy Seniors on Their Cognitive Functions From a Positive Psychology Perspective—A Systematic Review

#### Blanka Klimova\* and Marcel Pikhart

*Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Kralove, Hradec Kralove, Czechia*

#### Edited by:

*Amado M. Padilla, Stanford University, United States*

#### Reviewed by:

*Bencie Woll, University College London, United Kingdom Merel Christina Joanna Keijzer, University of Groningen, Netherlands*

> \*Correspondence: *Blanka Klimova<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

*This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology*

Received: *21 December 2019* Accepted: *30 March 2020* Published: *21 April 2020*

#### Citation:

*Klimova B and Pikhart M (2020) Current Research on the Impact of Foreign Language Learning Among Healthy Seniors on Their Cognitive Functions From a Positive Psychology Perspective—A Systematic Review. Front. Psychol. 11:765. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00765* The purpose of this review study is to explore the existing research focusing on the impact of foreign language learning among healthy seniors on their cognitive functions from the positive psychology perspective. The methods are based on a literature review of available sources found on the research topic in two acknowledged databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The search period was not limited by any time period since there are not many studies on this topic. Altogether seven original studies were detected. The findings of this review study thus reveal that foreign language learning (FLL) has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities irrespective of age. In addition, the FLL courses seem to offer new opportunities for healthy seniors in the area of socializing and integration into society, which consequently may positively affect their overall well-being. Furthermore, the research shows that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed. Cognitive aspects of older age are to be further investigated, including the importance of learning a foreign language, as basically all research conducted proves at least some maintenance or even improvement of cognitive functions of older people when starting intensive language training.

Keywords: aging, older adults, foreign language learning, cognitive functions, positive psychology

# INTRODUCTION

The demographic situation of the so-called developed world can be described as a rapidly aging population. Consequently, in the coming decades the increase in the number of people in the age-group of older adults will be dramatic and unprecedented (Panitsides, 2014; Klimova, 2018). Additionally, incidences of dementia in developed countries have risen significantly and a similar global rise can be expected in the near future (Wong et al., 2019). In fact, at present, there are about 50 million people living with dementia (Klimova et al., 2019). The estimate for 2030 is 82 million demented people; in 2050, this number should reach 152 million (WHO, 2019). These facts have motivated researchers to look for ways of improving the quality of life of the older generation and to delay the onset of serious cognitive disorders such as dementia, of which Alzheimer's disease is the most common (Alzheimer's Society, 2019). Both pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions have been studied with a variety of findings (van de Glind et al., 2013; Klimova et al., 2016). Unfortunately, the pharmacological strategies to treat the decline of cognitive functions have not yet produced satisfactory results (Klimova, 2018).

However, as research findings show (cf. Klimova and Kuca, 2015), there are several promising non-pharmacological strategies that appear to improve and/or maintain cognitive functions. These include physical activities, cognitive training, nutritious diet, as well as interventions for improvement of social interaction (cf. Ballesteros et al., 2015), including the use of modern information and communication technologies (cf. Ballesteros et al., 2014). One such cognitive training strategy seems to be FLL (Antoniou et al., 2013). Research has proved that foreign language training among older adults leads to improvement of cognitive functions (Wong et al., 2019). As Antoniou and Wright (2017) claim, cognitive performance can be boosted even at a later age by activities such as learning a foreign language and playing games. This happens because of the engagement of an extensive network in the human brain that overlaps with those brain parts that are most affected by the negative effects of aging (Antoniou and Wright, 2017). Multilingualism is a predictor of better cognitive abilities even in older generations and can delay the onset of serious mental illnesses, such as dementia, by a few years. This particular fact has been proven by research on bilingualism, which reveals that people who learn a second language in their adulthood may prevent cognitive decline in later life by ∼4.5 years (cf. Bak et al., 2014; Bialystok et al., 2016).

Furthermore, it must be highlighted that aging dramatically influences fluid intelligence (i.e., the ability to reason and solve things) but does not affect crystallized intelligence (i.e., the ability to use knowledge and experience) (Klimova, 2018). Findings by Blumenfeld et al. (2017) indicate that older adults have better visual imagery and episodic memory than younger people.

In addition, learning a foreign language is considered to improve the quality of human life because, as proven by research, there is a definite correlation between life-long learning and the general well-being of a person (Pilar et al., 2014). Moreover, lifelong learning, especially learning a foreign language, improves a person's social participation. Therefore, after a person's basic needs are covered, his/her general well-being can be improved through education-led personal improvement. Lifelong learning, thus, touches upon a very important aspect, something that is inadequately addressed at the undergraduate level: education increases one's positive feelings about the self (Pilar et al., 2014; Narushima et al., 2018).

From a positive psychological perspective, FLL is not restricted to a young age—it is free of age-related constraints (cf. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Current research into the impacts of bilingualism shows that it can boost a person's cognitive performance. However, bilingualism processes are bidirectional, i.e., language can impact cognitive functions and cognitive functions can impact language learning performance. Moreover, linguistic outcomes of third-age language learning are either not very important or they do not play a role at all (Pot et al., 2019).

Positive psychology holds immense promise for the improvement of positive emotions, well-being, and FLL (MacIntyre and Mercer, 2014). Learning is a process of acquiring new ideas, information, skills, and competencies with the eventual aim of attaining a state of knowledge. In this paper, the learning process focuses mostly on the journey, i.e., the process itself is sufficient when seen from a positive psychological perspective (Pot et al., 2019). The essential, and most positive, thing about the learning process is that the seniors are motivated to study a language for the sheer pleasure of learning (MacIntyre and Mercer, 2014), for the expressed purpose of learning another language and knowing about another culture, and for improving their social status as immigrants (Pot et al., 2018). The crucial point from a positive psychology perspective is that the outcomes of this learning process are significantly different from standard basic school or high school language education because in the older population the focus is on (1) the joy of lifelong learning, (2) their satisfaction with time well-spent in learning a new language, (3) their sense of belonging to a community of learners, and (4) the significant improvement of their cognitive functions, including memory, retention, and an enhanced sense of cognitive control (cf. MacIntyre and Devaele, 2014; Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2014).

There are few studies on the effects of FLL on cognitive functions in old age (Antoniou et al., 2013). The most significant studies on this topic include those by Bak et al. (2016), Ware et al. (2017), Kliesch et al. (2017), and Wong et al. (2019)—the findings, however, are inconclusive. While Ware et al. (2017) claim that their research subjects found the program motivating and pleasant, they also admitted that scores in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)—a test designed to evaluate global cognitive functioning in older adults before and after instruction—did not differ significantly. On the contrary, Wong et al. (2019) proved that their computer-based language training software called Rosetta Stone had contributed to the improved cognitive abilities in healthy older Chinese. Bak et al. (2016) contend that even a short-term intensive language course is beneficial for participants' attentional functions.

The purpose of this review study is to explore the existing research focusing on the impact of FLL among healthy seniors on their cognitive functions from a positive psychology perspective.

# METHODS

The method used was the review of literature on the topic available on two acknowledged databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The search period was not restricted because there are not many studies on this topic. The collocated keywords are as follows: language learning AND healthy older people; language learning AND healthy seniors; language learning AND healthy older adults; language learning AND cognitively unimpaired older people; language learning AND cognitively unimpaired older adults; language learning AND cognitively unimpaired seniors; and language learning AND cognitively unimpaired elderly. The keywords were combined and integrated into database and journal searches. The terms were searched using AND to combine the keywords listed and using OR to remove search duplication where possible. A backward search was also conducted, i.e., references of retrieved articles were assessed for relevant articles that authors' searches may have missed.

From the database/journal searches, 69 titles/abstracts were identified on the basis of the keywords: 62 in Web of Science and seven in Scopus. Another two articles were identified from other sources, mostly references of the already detected articles. After removing duplicates and titles/abstracts unrelated to the research topic, 55 studies—all in English— remained. Of these, only 22 articles were relevant to the research topic. These studies were thoroughly investigated and considered against certain inclusion and exclusion criteria.

The inclusion criteria were as follows:

The exclusion criteria were as follows:

• Descriptive studies (Panitsides, 2014); studies not focusing on the research topic, including the studies on bilingualism (Small et al., 1999; Friebe and Schmidt-Heartha, 2013; Clare et al., 2014; Zahodne et al., 2014; Narushima et al., 2018); studies having different age of the subjects (Schlegel et al., 2012; Bak et al., 2016; Ghazi-Saidi and Ansaldo, 2017); and review studies (Antoniou et al., 2013; Klimova, 2018) were excluded.

Based on these criteria, seven studies were included in the final analysis. **Figure 1** illustrates the selection procedure.

# RESULTS

Altogether seven original and relevant studies were detected. Two studies were randomized controlled trials (Bubbico et al., 2019; Wong et al., 2019) and five were experimental studies (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996; Kliesch et al., 2017; Ware et al., 2017; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Valis et al., 2019). Most of them originated in Europe: Austria, Czechia, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Switzerland (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996; Kliesch et al., 2017; Ware et al., 2017; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Bubbico et al., 2019; Valis et al., 2019) and one (Wong et al., 2019) was a joint research of China and Australia.

The main aims of these studies were to investigate whether FLL enhances cognitive skills among healthy older individuals; to detect functional changes in the brains of healthy seniors who have learnt a foreign language; to explore the effect of cognitive capacities on learning outcomes when learning a second language (L2); to investigate feasibility of a FLL course among healthy older people; and to test the keyword method for acquiring new L2 vocabulary.

The number of subjects in the above-mentioned studies ranged between 10 and 153 healthy older individuals. Except for one study (Pfenninger and Polz, 2018) where there were six German–Slovenian bilinguals, all subjects were monolingual native speakers. Apart from the study by Gruneverg and Pascoe (1996), whose subjects were studying Spanish, participants were studying English as a foreign language. In three studies (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Wong et al., 2019) there were active control groups in addition to the experimental intervention groups. Two studies had passive control groups (Bubbico et al., 2019; Valis et al., 2019) and two studies did not have any control group. The intervention period ranged from 1 day to 6 months. All studies, except one (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996), were run onsite—most often in classrooms. As far as the teaching methods are concerned, four studies implemented different face-to-face approaches to FLL. Two studies (Ware et al., 2017; Wong et al., 2019) were computerbased and one study (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996) used a special self-study keyword method for acquiring new Spanish vocabulary. The key outcome measures usually included a battery of neuropsychological tests, foreign language assessment tests, and statistical analysis.

The findings of these studies revealed that FLL has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996; Ware et al., 2017; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Bubbico et al., 2019; Valis et al., 2019; Wong et al., 2019), irrespective of age and bilingualism (Pfenninger and Polz, 2018), which is in contrast with another study (Kliesch et al., 2017). However, one has to be slightly critical of these results as some of the studies lacked control groups, some had passive groups, some employed qualitative analysis, and there were significant differences in the length of the intervention period. Despite these shortcomings, FLL courses appeared to be feasible and stimulating for healthy older people (Ware et al., 2017; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Valis et al., 2019) and positively affected their overall well-being, including their emotional well-being. Results showed that they felt optimistic and self-confident (Ware et al., 2017; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Valis et al., 2019). The participants also reported that they were proud of their families that supported them in their studies (Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Valis et al., 2019). Furthermore, the research indicates that teaching methods such as group discussions, reading, playing games, watching YouTube videos, or singing in a foreign language can stimulate older adults learning a foreign language (Gruneverg and Pascoe, 1996; Kliesch et al., 2017; Pfenninger and Polz, 2018; Valis et al., 2019). **Table 1** summarizes the key findings of the detected research studies, which are ordered alphabetically according to the surname of their first author.

# DISCUSSION

As seen in **Table 1**, FLL has a positive effect on the maintenance and/or improvement of cognitive functions in healthy seniors irrespective of their age and bilingualism, although bilingual participants, compared to monolinguals, performed better at task-switching in a color–shape task (i.e., categorization of images by their color and shape). Furthermore, fMRI scans taken during this activity revealed a decreased activity in the bilinguals' left lateral frontal cortex and cingulate cortex—an indication of efficient executive functioning (Antoniou and Wright, 2017).

Wong et al. (2019) conducted the first randomized controlled study on the potential influence of foreign language acquisition in old age on a person's cognitive functions and the study offers crucial empirical findings. After a 6-month period of foreign language training, the authors could measure improved cognitive skills in the test group, and similar improvements in the control group, which focused on participation in games. Particularly, foreign language training resulted in improved working memory; the games, however, improved attention. The preliminary findings—even if the researched sample was relatively small—proved to be significant for further research to show whether FLL has an advantage over other activities connected to the improvement of cognitive skills in elderly people. The results highlight that intensive FLL, even at a later age, can yield statistically relevant results regarding working TABLE 1 | An overview of the research studies on the intervention of foreign language learning among healthy older individuals.

Language Learning

and Healthy Seniors

memory and cognitive function improvement. These findings are in agreement with other studies such as Borella et al. (2013) who claim—on the basis of their verbal working memory training program in old-old individuals aged 75+ years—that there is still room for plasticity in the basic mechanisms of cognition in advance old age. The same is true for the study by Buschkuehl et al. (2008). In addition, Buitenweg et al. (2012) emphasize that for successful brain training among healthy seniors it is important to focus on memory strategy training, important to tailor the training to the needs of each individual, and include flexibility and novelty in the training.

Valis et al. (2019) do not confirm a significant improvement in the cognitive functions in elderly people because of FLL. Instead they confirm the more realistic maintenance of cognitive skills rather than their improvement. Intuitively, as well as supported by various studies, we can accept that FLL will have some positive impact on cognitive skills. However, the most important question is that to what extent it will influence the cognitive skills in the older population. The research results do not confirm the hypothesis that the learning of a foreign language will naturally enhance cognitive skills. Nevertheless, they yield significant findings suggesting a possible impact of FLL on the maintenance of cognitive skills, i.e., there was, at least, no observable decline of cognitive functions in the test group. Regular cognitive training, such as FLL, thus, will not function as a way to improve cognitive skills but rather as an efficient tool for their maintenance. Therefore, FLL can sufficiently contribute to a non-pharmacological strategy in preventing the onset of cognitive decline.

Furthermore, short-term language training in healthy seniors can lead to a significant improvement in global cognition with increased functional connectivity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, the right superior frontal gyrus, and the left superior parietal lobule. These findings are part of the current neuroscience breakthroughs that reshape neural networks through foreign language training. Bubbico et al's (2019) recent study indicates that a 4-month language course of English in Italian seniors improves global cognitive functions and reorganizes functional cognitive connectivity. It was only the intervention group that yielded significant improvement results in both functional and behavioral measures after the intervention of the language class. In addition, FLL studies conducted among adult learners show that certain teaching methods, such as repetition, imitation, and drilling, can have a positive impact on higher network configuration (Ghazi-Saidi and Ansaldo, 2017).

The results of this review study also reveal that FLL in older adults contributes to establishing strong social ties between the participants, promoting social interaction and integration. Naturally, most language classes are held in classrooms, facilitating regular physical meetings of participants. This helps to develop social connections among participants and instills in them a sense of participation. The older generation often suffers from social isolation, which can possibly be an important factor of lower level of well-being and a source of depression (Popa-Wagner et al., 2014; Sandu et al., 2015). Therefore, language classes may not just improve or maintain cognitive functions but also create an environment of social meetings and networking (cf. Diaz-Orueta et al., 2012). As Narushima et al. (2018) point out, continuous participation in life-long learning courses, such as foreign language courses, can develop social cohesion and improve the sense of community participation, which may lead to improved social performance and enhanced well-being. Pot et al. (2018) expand that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed.

In light of expected global demographic changes, the established cognitive and mental benefits of FLL in old age, and the role of FLL in the improvement of general human well-being, universities should offer relevant courses for the third-age learners. The breakthrough research by Singleton and Pfenninger (2018) moves our attention to the importance of language learning in old age. Their study highlights an abundance of research into second-language education in young people and a dearth research regarding the importance of such education in old people. They also confirm the hypothesis that FLL is a promising way to healthy and active aging because of its many advantages. Moreover, according to them the traditionally accepted approach that early exposure to foreign language necessarily brings better results than late exposure has not been proven. Early beginners did not necessarily outperform late beginners, therefore, this widely and intuitively accepted premise is not necessarily true and needs further investigation. Some research into specific learning needs of elderly students has been conducted and the findings are important. Take for example the research of Gruneverg and Pascoe (1996) into the efficiency of the keyword method for foreign language vocabulary learning in the elderly.

Yi-Yin (2011) researched the motivation paradigms in the older generation and concluded that they are rather different from the younger generation. The most important drives are desire for knowledge, desire for stimulation, desire for selffulfillment, and desire for generativity. These findings are significant for the creation of curricula of the universities of the third-age creators.

Moreover, there is an emerging trend within learning psychology and related disciplines—the use of mobile technologies in the learning process. Again, there is a plethora of literature on the use of technology in basic, high school, and university education but little on the use of technological tools by older learners. Some introductory experimental findings are, however, described by Ware et al. (2017) and Wong et al. (2019). Additionally, the authors suggest future directions for the use of technology in FLL as a therapeutic and cognitive intervention.

Further pedagogical implementations of the findings will be important. Moreover, pedagogy and psychology of learning ought to try to find new pragmatic approaches and methodologies in the light of both expected global demographic changes and the possible positive outcomes of FLL in old age. There is immense scope for FLL in old age and we need to create courses that will incorporate earlier research findings with anticipated future developments in the field Kliesch et al. (2017).

It is important to highlight that even authoritative textbooks on psycholinguistics such as Traxler's Introduction to Psycholinguistics. Understanding Language Science (Traxler, 2012) totally ignore the area of language acquisition in old age, focusing entirely on language development in infancy and early childhood. A similar thing can be observed in An Introduction to Psycholinguistics by Steinberg and Sciarini (2006) where some references to old age and FLL can be found, but it is rather insufficient and unrepresentative of research in the area. Similarly, other authoritative textbooks on cognitive linguistics do not address the aspect of old age and/or do not take it into consideration—or do so only fleetingly (Ungerer and Schmid, 2006). It is for these reasons that this review attempts to bring this matter to the attention of scholars and researchers, so that research effort into the issue could be improved. The authors of this study believe that the findings of this research will expedite the implementation of the results into reality as the way to the sustainability of our society and also our global competitiveness.

The above-mentioned research has several limitations. The findings are usually not very systematic, the author applies different methodologies, and the results are difficult to replicate and difficult to verify by further research (cf. Melby-Lervag and Hulme, 2013). However, the data provided is relevant and presents a significant view of the multifaceted aspects of healthy aging. Naturally, cognitive aspects of old age need to be further investigated—including the importance of learning a foreign language—because almost the entire body of research conducted on the topic shows some degree of maintenance—in certain cases even improvement—of the cognitive functions of older people when they start intensive foreign language training.

#### CONCLUSION

The findings of this review study thus reveal that FLL has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities irrespective of age. In addition, FLL courses seem to offer opportunities to healthy seniors for socialization and integration into society, which may positively affect their overall well-being. Furthermore, research shows that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed.

#### REFERENCES

The topic of FLL in old age has attracted widespread attention of scholars in the past few years. The topic holds great promise for further development especially in the identification, analysis, and development of learning strategies to maintain—or even improve—cognitive and psychological aspects of older people's life. Foreign language education for older generation might offer crucial non-pharmacological strategies for healthy aging—a topic of utmost importance due to the negative demographic trends both in Europe and in the so-called developed world. However, further research is needed.

From a positive psychology perspective, future research should focus on what kind of positive instruction should be given to older adults so that we can understand them in a better way. It is also important to develop methodologies to improve old people's sense of accomplishment in the learning process. Last but not least: investigating how to improve the pleasure of learning in the older generation of learners because it is one of the most important aspects of their language education.

## DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

All datasets generated for this study are included in the manuscript.

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

BK and MP drafted, analyzed, wrote, and read the entire manuscript.

# FUNDING

This paper was supported by the project titled Excelence (2020) at the Faculty of Informatics and Management of the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic.

with early-stage Alzheimer's disease in Wales. J. Neuropsychol. 10, 163–185. doi: 10.1111/jnp.12061

**Conflict of Interest:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2020 Klimova and Pikhart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

fpsyg-11-01204 June 3, 2020 Time: 18:45 # 1

# Engaging Second Language Learners Using the MUSIC Model of Motivation

Brett D. Jones\*

Virginia Tech, School of Education, Blacksburg, VA, United States

The overall aim of this article is to explain how the MUSIC Model of Motivation can be applied to L2 instruction in a manner that is consistent with positive psychology, which emphasizes individuals' strengths and the conditions in which they thrive. The article begins by describing the MUSIC model, which is a research-based framework that organizes strategies that instructors can use to motivate students to engage in learning. The MUSIC model can be used by L2 instructors to create learning experiences that consider learners' cognition, affect, needs, and desires in order to foster their motivation and engagement in L2 classes. The article also provides teaching strategies related to the MUSIC model and presents an assessment tool (the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation Inventory) that can be used by L2 instructors to measure students' MUSIC perceptions of their class. The assessment tool provides feedback to instructors that can be used to improve their instruction by incorporating strategies that allow their students to flourish. Examples of how the MUSIC Inventory can be used to assess L2 instruction are provided. Although researchers have examined the use of the MUSIC model in L2 classes, this research is underdeveloped, and many questions related to its use in L2 classes remain. The article concludes by proposing unanswered questions that could lead to more effective uses of the MUSIC model in L2 classes.

Keywords: L2 instruction, foreign language, second language, motivation, engagement, MUSIC Model of Motivation, motivating students, engagement

# INTRODUCTION

Learning a second/foreign language (L2) can be interesting and worthwhile; yet, for some students, their experience in L2 courses can be boring and frustrating (Kruk and Zawodniak, 2018). Therefore, some L2 instructors could benefit from understanding principles related to students' motivation and how to implement motivation strategies in their courses. Researchers have developed several different motivation-related theories over the past few decades that could be useful to instructors (see Dörnyei and Ushioda, 2011; Al-Hoorie, 2017; Al-Hoorie and MacIntyre, 2019; Lamb, 2019). For example, Gardner's (1985, 2019) Socio-educational Model of Second Language Acquisition identifies several different factors that affect students' motivation in the learning context and Dörnyei's (2009) L2 motivational self-system recognizes the importance of the L2 learner's sense of self and the effects of the L2 learning experience on learners' motivation (Hadfield and Dörnyei, 2013).

In addition to these types of L2-specific motivation theories, decades of research in the disciplines of psychology, motivation science, and education have led to broader theories of human

Edited by:

Xinjie Chen, Stanford University, United States

#### Reviewed by:

Nourollah Zarrinabadi, University of Isfahan, Iran Lee-Luan – Ng, University of Malaya, Malaysia Mirosław Pawlak, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland

> \*Correspondence: Brett D. Jones<EMAIL_ADDRESS><EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Language Sciences, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 19 February 2020 Accepted: 11 May 2020 Published: 05 June 2020

#### Citation:

Jones BD (2020) Engaging Second Language Learners Using the MUSIC Model of Motivation. Front. Psychol. 11:1204. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01204 fpsyg-11-01204 June 3, 2020 Time: 18:45 # 2

motivation that have been applied to educational settings (see Schunk et al., 2014; Wentzel and Miele, 2016), including, but not limited to, self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986), arousal theories (Berlyne, 1960), flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), self-theories of intelligence (Dweck, 1999), interest theories (Hidi and Renninger, 2006), control-value theory (Pekrun, 2009), attribution theory (Weiner, 2000), and expectancy-value theory (Wigfield and Eccles, 2000). Researchers have applied these theories in L2 settings (e.g., self-determination theory, Jones et al., 2009; Noels et al., 2019), which demonstrates the utility of applying broader motivation theories to L2 education. Researchers have also begun to study the role of positive psychology—the study of the positive aspects of human life—in L2 education (e.g., flow theory, Gregersen, 2019; Piniel and Albert, 2019).

The overall aim of this article is to discuss how a conceptual model of motivation can be applied to L2 instruction in a manner that is consistent with positive psychology, which emphasizes individuals' strengths and the conditions in which they thrive. To achieve this goal, I describe the MUSIC Model of Motivation (Jones, 2009, 2018) and how it can be used by L2 instructors to create learning experiences with a consideration of learners' cognition, affect, needs, and desires in order to foster their motivation and engagement in L2 classes. The MUSIC model does not replace existing L2 motivation theories, but rather, it can be used as a complementary approach that focuses on what Lamb (2019) referred to as "motivating learners, as opposed to learner motivation" (p. 288).

# THE MUSIC MODEL OF MOTIVATION

The MUSIC <sup>R</sup> Model of Motivation (Jones, 2009, 2018) provides instructors with a research-based framework that summarizes effective motivational strategies for instructors. The key principles of the MUSIC model are that "the instructor needs to ensure that students:

The acronym MUSIC is used to help instructors remember the initial sounds of these five groups of strategies: eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, Interest, and Caring.

In the MUSIC model, motivation is defined as "the extent to which one intends to engage in an activity" (Jones, 2018, p. 5), and thus, it precedes engagement. Engagement is defined as participating in an activity, either behaviorally (e.g., taking notes in a class) or cognitively (e.g., thinking about class ideas) (Jones, 2018, p. 6). Students' motivation and engagement are affected by their perceptions of the class, which are influenced by external variables (i.e., variables that are outside students' bodies, such as teaching strategies, family, culture, etc.) and internal variables (see **Figure 1**). The goal of the instructor is to use teaching strategies that create conditions in the class to motivate students to engage in the learning activities. Through positive engagement in class over time, students are more likely to learn and perform at higher levels and to develop more productive cognition and affect related to the L2 and learning activities (e.g., "I can learn to speak Spanish," "I like learning Spanish"). As a result, students are more likely to meet the course objectives and have a positive experience while doing so. **Figure 1** shows how these variables form a cycle in which the instructor participates by implementing teaching strategies that motivate and engage students in ways that help the students flourish over time. This social, contextual, and dynamic approach to motivation is consistent with approaches fpsyg-11-01204 June 3, 2020 Time: 18:45 # 3

advocated by some L2 researchers (e.g., Dörnyei and Ushioda, 2011; Dörnyei et al., 2015; Yim et al., 2019).

# Teaching Strategies Related to the MUSIC Model

In the MUSIC model, the key to motivating students in classes is to positively affect their MUSIC perceptions (i.e., perceptions of empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring). Empowerment strategies include those that give students choices and control in the class. For example, L2 teachers can give students choices among or within assignments and incorporate student-centered approaches that provide students with some autonomy (Jones, 2009, 2016). Usefulness strategies help students to understand the usefulness and benefits of what they are learning, either in the short- or long-term. For instance, L2 teachers can use real-life and practical examples and ask students or others (former students, professionals) to share the reasons they find the course content useful. Success strategies lead students to believe that they can succeed if they put forth effort. Examples include L2 teachers (a) providing regular, specific feedback that can help students to improve; (b) matching the difficulty level of the class assignments with the abilities of the students; and (c) attributing students' struggles to their lack of effort or to their use of ineffective study strategies and then helping them to use more effective strategies (Jones, 2018). Interest strategies are used to engage students cognitively and affectively by creating enjoyable and interesting activities. Teachers can accomplish this by designing activities that grab students' attention, pique their curiosity about the content, and arouse them emotionally. Caring strategies ensure that students believe that their teacher cares about their success and that they are treated with respect by their teacher and classmates. Teachers can foster perceptions of caring by being approachable and relatable to students, as well as by ensuring that students in the class treat each other fairly and with respect.

Although the MUSIC model was designed to be applied by instructors in any discipline, the model is consistent with motivational teaching strategies proposed by L2 researchers. For example, Dörnyei and Ushioda (2011) note that it is important for L2 teachers to create learner autonomy and promote self-motivation (the eMpowerment component in the MUSIC model) and to help students understand the relevance of activities and set goals so they can better understand why what they are learning is important (the Usefulness component). They also recommend increasing learners' expectancy of success and self-confidence as learners (the Success component), getting students curious about and interested in course activities and in foreign languages more generally (the Interest component), and fostering teacher-student relationships and promoting group cohesiveness (the Caring component).

#### Evidence for the MUSIC Model

Many studies have been conducted to demonstrate that (1) students' MUSIC perceptions of a class (i.e., perceptions of empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring) are related, but distinct (Jones and Wilkins, 2013; Jones and Skaggs, 2016b; Chittum and Jones, 2017); (2) students' MUSIC perceptions are related to their engagement in the class (Jones, 2010, 2019; Jones and Carter, 2019); and (3) teachers and researchers can assess students' MUSIC perceptions in a class and for specific learning activities (Chittum et al., 2017; Jones and Cruz, 2017). The research supporting these findings is quite robust given that studies have been conducted across disciplines and age levels.

# Assessment of the MUSIC Model Components

Instructors can assess their motivational strengths and weaknesses in a class in a variety of ways, such as by surveying students, reflecting on their teaching experiences, talking to students, and soliciting feedback from colleagues about their instruction (Jones, 2018). In this section, I focus on assessment using surveys by describing quantitative and qualitative questionnaire items that have been used by teachers and researchers.

A questionnaire, titled the MUSIC <sup>R</sup> Model of Academic Motivation Inventory (Jones, 2012/2020), is available for free<sup>1</sup> and provides instructors with scores ranging from 1 to 6 on each of the MUSIC model components: eMpowerment, Usefulness, Success, situational Interest, and Caring. The MUSIC Inventory has been shown to produce valid scores with students when considering Cronbach's alpha values (α) and fit indices from factor analyses in samples from elementary school (Jones and Sigmon, 2016a, M α = 0.72, U α = 0.71, S α = 0.65, I α = 0.76, and C α = 0.64), middle and high school (Parkes et al., 2017, M α = 0.73, U α = 0.86, S α = 0.92, I α = 0.91, and C α = 0.92), college (Jones and Skaggs, 2016b, M α = 0.91, U α = 0.96, S α = 0.93, I α = 0.95, and C α = 0.93), and professional schools (Jones et al., 2019, M α = 0.85, U α = 0.88, S α = 0.88, I α = 0.80, and C α = 0.82 for sample 2; Pace et al., 2016, M α = 0.89, U α = 91., S α = 0.92, I α = 0.91, and C α = 0.92) (see Jones, 2012/2020 for more complete validity evidence). The MUSIC Inventory has been translated to a variety of languages and preliminary evidence indicates that it produces valid scores when used in L2 courses in China, Egypt, Iran, and Mexico (Jones et al., under review). Qualitative items have also been used to ask students about their MUSIC perceptions (see Jones, 2012/2020). An example item is: What could be changed in this course to make it more interesting and enjoyable?

An example of the five MUSIC scale scores produced from the MUSIC Inventory is shown in **Figure 2** and instructors can use these scores to identify their motivational strengths and weaknesses. For example, teachers whose students rate them low on success and interest (as shown in **Figure 2**) could consider incorporating strategies that increase students' perceptions of success and interest in the class.

One way to use the MUSIC Inventory is to collect data near the end of a course and then use the results to improve the course in the future. Le et al. (2014) used the MUSIC Inventory in this way to assess the MUSIC perceptions of 197 students in a Medical English course (an English for Specific Purposes course) at a

<sup>1</sup>www.theMUSICmodel.com

medical university in Vietnam. Some students also participated in focus group interviews after they completed the inventory. Findings indicated that students were generally motivated in the course, but that some aspects of the course could be improved. For instance, student feedback suggested that instructors could empower students more by providing them with more choices related to how to achieve the goals of the course. Overall, they concluded that the "MUSIC Model is also believed to be a practically helpful idea for those delivering ESP courses in non-English major universities" (p. 724).

In another study, Li and her colleagues (Li et al., 2016) used the MUSIC Inventory near the end of a college English class in China to examine the relationships between students' MUSIC perceptions and their engagement. They found that students reported lower scores on the empowerment, success, and interest scales and that all of the MUSIC scales were significantly correlated with students' engagement. They concluded that "it is possible for Chinese college EFL teachers to use the strategies in the MUSIC model to redesign their instruction to motivate and engage their students in the English coursework" (p. 1767).

Another way to use the MUSIC Inventory is to collect data at multiple time points throughout a course. Doing so allows the instructor or researcher to track how students' MUSIC perceptions change over time. It also allows instructors to alter their teaching strategies during a course or to develop an intervention to address weaknesses that may arise before the course is completed. As an example, Li and Jones (2019) implemented an intervention during a course based on the results of the MUSIC Inventory that were obtained early in the course. Three instructors administered the MUSIC Inventory during the second week of one of their L2 classes and students reported lower perceptions of empowerment, success, and interest. To increase these student perceptions, they developed an intervention that used student group presentations and an associated rubric to grade the presentations. After this 10-week intervention, students completed the MUSIC Inventory again and students' ratings on all five MUSIC model components were statistically higher after the intervention than before the intervention.

Furthermore, experimental studies with control groups have been conducted in other disciplines to demonstrate that interventions that focus on one or more MUSIC-related constructs can have a positive effect on students' MUSIC perceptions and engagement (Reeve et al., 2004; McGinley and Jones, 2014; Lin-Siegler et al., 2016). For example, when students in an experimental group were asked to write essays about how the class material was useful to their lives, students with lower expectations were more likely than a control group to increase their success expectations, become more interested in the content, and achieve higher in that class (Hulleman et al., 2017).

# DISCUSSION

# Designing Instruction Using the MUSIC Model

One purpose of this article was to present the MUSIC model as a framework that can be used by L2 instructors to design learning experiences that motivate and engage students. Consistent with the tenets of positive psychology, the MUSIC model can be used to create conditions in which students can thrive by supporting their cognition (thoughts, beliefs, goals, values), affect (emotions, moods), needs, and desires. Conceptually, the MUSIC model is a promising means to engage students in L2 classes because it is based on well-established motivation theories. Although the MUSIC model has been used in a variety of disciplines and grade levels, many questions remain about how the MUSIC model can be most effectively used in L2 classes, including:

Understanding the answers to these types of questions could help instructors more effectively plan their instruction to target the most important MUSIC strategies.

# Assessing Instruction Using the MUSIC Inventory

Another purpose of this article was to describe ways in which the MUSIC Inventory can be used by L2 instructors to measure students' MUSIC perceptions in class. The MUSIC Inventory and other open-ended questions related to the MUSIC model components have been successfully used by L2 instructors to

fpsyg-11-01204 June 3, 2020 Time: 18:45 # 4

provide data that can be used to redesign their instruction. However, questions as to how the inventory can be used most effectively in L2 classes remain, such as:

Answering these types of questions could be helpful to both instructors and researchers as they strive to collect useful data.

#### REFERENCES

#### CONCLUSION

Using strategies related to each of the MUSIC model components appears to be a promising means to create a class environment that promotes student engagement and allows students to flourish. The MUSIC model provides an organizational framework that teachers can use to design and evaluate their instruction. However, many questions remain about how the MUSIC model can be used most effectively by L2 teachers within different contexts. Through rigorous empirical study, researchers and instructors can answer many of these questions, which will allow instructors to create L2 classes and activities that promote positive student growth and learning.

# AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

BJ is the sole author of this article and is accountable for the content of this article.

# FUNDING

The author would like to thank Virginia Tech's Open Access Subvention Fund for paying the publication fees for this article.

eds M. Lamb, K. Csizeìr, A. Henry, and S. Ryan (Berlin: Springer), 21–37. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-28380-3\_2

fpsyg-11-01204 June 3, 2020 Time: 18:45 # 5

**Conflict of Interest:** The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright © 2020 Jones. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

fpsyg-11-01204 June 3, 2020 Time: 18:45 # 6

# Contracting Students for the Reduction of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety: An Approach Nurturing Positive Mindsets and Behaviors

Yinxing Jin<sup>1</sup> \*, Lawrence Jun Zhang<sup>2</sup> \* and Peter D. MacIntyre<sup>3</sup>

<sup>1</sup> School of Foreign Languages, Hainan Normal University, Haikou, China, <sup>2</sup> Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, <sup>3</sup> Department of Psychology, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS, Canada

#### Edited by:

J. Lake, Fukuoka Women's University, Japan

#### Reviewed by:

Andrew Obermeier, Kyoto University of Education, Japan Michiko Toyama, Bunkyo University, Japan

#### \*Correspondence:

Yinxing Jin<EMAIL_ADDRESS>Lawrence Jun Zhang<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
#### Specialty section:

This article was submitted to Educational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

Received: 11 March 2020 Accepted: 02 June 2020 Published: 14 July 2020

#### Citation:

Jin Y, Zhang LJ and MacIntyre PD (2020) Contracting Students for the Reduction of Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety: An Approach Nurturing Positive Mindsets and Behaviors. Front. Psychol. 11:1471. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01471 The quasi-experimental study reported in this paper investigated whether contracting students' speaking in the foreign language (FL) classroom could effectively mitigate their FL classroom anxiety. It also explored the working mechanisms of this approach to the reduction of classroom anxiety and examined the attitudes FL students had toward it. To these ends, 42 Chinese-as-the-first-language university students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) were recruited and placed into the experimental (n = 20) and comparison groups (n = 22). Both groups were tested for anxiety before and after completing a 1-week contract and a non-contracting treatment, respectively. The experimental group participants' diaries were also collected, and their attitudes toward the intervention were elicited. Results showed that the experimental group's level of anxiety decreased significantly more as compared with that of the comparison group, suggesting the better efficacy of contracting speaking in FL anxiety reduction. Diary analyses also suggested that contracting speaking could increase learners' FL learning engagement; enhance their self-efficacy; facilitate their self-reflection of weaknesses and strengths as an FL learner; cultivate their character strengths and positive emotions; and diminish their fear, nervousness, and worries in class. Furthermore, the experimental group participants generally did not feel uncomfortable with the intervention. These findings were discussed in relation to classroom pedagogy for more effective delivery of FL education.

Keywords: English, Chinese-first-language university students, contracting speaking, foreign language classroom anxiety intervention, positive mindsets and behaviors

# INTRODUCTION

Foreign language (FL) anxiety has taken a central position in studies of emotion in the field of second language or FL teaching and learning. Empirical findings have shown that FL anxiety has the potential to disrupt behavior and interfere with interpersonal communication, cognition, and learning (Dewaele and MacIntyre, 2014; Castillejo, 2019). The adverse effects of anxiety can be damaging to a learner's progress, if not properly handled (Zhang, 2000, 2001). Therefore, there

is a need to explore interventions for anxiety reduction that are effective, easily applied, and psychologically acceptable to students in classroom contexts.

The present study addressed this research gap by using "contracting speaking" (that is, students sign a contract to commit to speaking in FL class) to attempt to reduce FL classroom anxiety. Anxiety can be considered a self-exacerbating syndrome where reactions to anxiety—such as distracting selffocused attention, worrying about making mistakes or appearing nervous to others, and avoiding practice opportunities that come with communication—help to maintain a feedback loop of that anxiety. By contracting speaking, we attempt to break the feedback among the causes and/or symptoms of anxiety. The research project explores what the participants thought about this approach using relevant diary entries. This kind of intervention has not been reported in the second language acquisition (SLA) literature as an anxiety-reducing technique.

A total of 42 Chinese-first-language university students in Year 2 were randomly assigned to an experimental or a comparison group in a 1-week intervention. The experimental group signed a formal contract, and the comparison group received an informal written instruction form. The rationale for this study lies in engagement theory that foregrounds the beneficial interactions among behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and social dimensions of engagement (Philp and Duchesne, 2016). More broadly, Oxford's (2016) positive psychology model emphasizes a multidimensional view of learner wellbeing under the rubric of nine EMPATHICS dimensions (E = emotion and empathy; M = meaning and motivation; P = perseverance; A = agency and autonomy; T = time; H = hardiness and habits of mind; I = intelligences; C = character strengths; S = self factors such as self-efficacy, self-concept, self-esteem, and self-verification). The major goal of this study is to improve pedagogical practices through reducing learners' negative emotions and boosting positive emotions.

# LITERATURE REVIEW

In an early synthesis of the literature on anxiety in language learning, Scovel (1978) revealed a confusing picture regarding the relationship between anxiety and FL achievement. Scovel hinted at a need to specify the anxieties relevant to FL learning and to develop corresponding measures. Horwitz et al. (1986) focused their attention on the construct of FL anxiety by defining it as "a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process" (p. 128). They also developed a 33-item Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) that has been used in a large number of studies (Horwitz, 2017). With the introduction of the FLCAS and other language-specific measures of anxiety, the literature has flourished and extended the conceptual boundaries of FL anxiety to include language use, processing of language at various stages, and skills-specific anxieties (e.g., MacIntyre and Gardner, 1994; Elkhafaifi, 2005; Gargalianou et al., 2016).

Research has shown that the effects of FL anxiety are pervasive, affecting learners at cognitive, academic, physiological, and social levels (MacIntyre, 2017). More specifically, anxiety arousal leads to increased self-related cognition (e.g., thoughts of failure and worry) and further consumes the cognitive resources needed for each of the three stages of FL learning: input, processing, and output (Eysenck, 1979; MacIntyre and Gardner, 1994). Academically, anxious students tend to perform worse in language proficiency or achievement tests than their more relaxed counterparts in part because anxiety tends to be associated with less effective study strategies, such as memorization (Gregersen et al., 2014). In addition, anxious students are less willing to engage in communication in FL with others, due in part to the self-deprecating worries about being able to communicate authentically and fear of the interlocutors' negative evaluation (Sevinç and Backus, 2017; Dewaele, 2019). The physiological correlates of anxiety, including increased heart rate and skin conductance, suggest that it is a multidimensional experience that is only partially under the control of a learner (Gregersen et al., 2014; Sevinç, 2018). Horwitz et al. (1986) reported that anxious students showed many psycho-physiological symptoms that include tenseness, trembling, perspiring, heart palpitations, and sleep disturbances. When aroused, the physiological correlates of anxiety take time to settle down.

Foreign language anxiety affects learners' verbal and nonverbal behaviors. MacIntyre and Gardner (1994) found that anxious students' oral descriptions were less complex, were less fluent, and showed less of a native accent. Such patterns may be attributed to the reduced complexity and fluency in anxious students' oral output, which may be connected to difficulties encountered in vocabulary learning and retrieval. Kim and Tracy-Ventura's (2011) study showed that high-anxiety learners tended to be less accurate in the use of simple past tense. Thus, anxiety arousal in speaking may degrade three key indices of oral proficiency, that is, fluency, complexity, and accuracy. In addition to the verbal dimension of communication, Gregersen (2005) documented that anxious learners manifested differences in non-verbal behavior, including limited facial actions and brow behaviors but more eye-blink, than their more relaxed counterparts. Furthermore, the anxious learners smiled less often, maintained less eye contact with the teacher, exhibited a more rigid and closed body position, and used their hands less often for illustrative and regulatory speechrelated purposes (e.g., adjusting clothing). In general, the findings support that communicative behaviors are restrained and rigid when anxiety arises and that elevated anxiety suppresses facial displays (Gregersen, 2005, p. 393).

If the effects of FL anxiety are complex, so too are its antecedents, which include a myriad of learner-internal and learner-external variables (Dewaele, 2017). MacIntyre (1999) and Dewaele (2013) reported that students who are predisposed to be anxious (i.e., trait anxiety) may transfer more anxiety into FL learning contexts. MacIntyre and Charos (1996) and Dewaele (2002, 2013) revealed that extroverts tend to have lower anxiety than introverts, although both extroverts and introverts have their unique strengths and weaknesses in developing language ability. In addition, dispositional positive orientation also

predicts anxiety levels; students with higher positive orientation tend to hold a more positive conceptualization of self and others, and to perceive more social support, lowering FL anxiety levels (Jin and Dewaele, 2018). The role of positive attitudes toward self and others in lowering FL anxiety was further attested by Dewaele et al. (2018), who found that perceived FL competence and attitudes toward FL and FL teachers significantly negatively predicted students' anxiety levels in learning the FL.

The complexity and pervasiveness of the sources and effects of FL anxiety, along with its rapid onset and marshaling of physiological processes, suggest that rather than eliminating it, the preferred goal of educators might be to ameliorate anxiety and reduce it to manageable levels (Dewaele and Al-Saraj, 2015). Many strategies have been tested by researchers for reducing learners' FL anxiety levels. Nagahashi (2007) found that engaging in pair and group work in 12 classes taught by the researcher significantly decreased Japanesefirst-language university students' English classroom anxiety, suggesting that cooperative learning has an affective component (Early and Marshall, 2008). In addition, Dolean (2016) found that teaching songs in the classroom significantly reduced the anxiety level for one of the experimental groups. Galante (2018) reported a decrease of English classroom anxiety in 13 Brazilian adolescents after implementing a 4-month drama program. Thus, interventions that lead learners to approach language tasks in new ways or that produce alternative behavioral responses seem to carry the potential to reduce FL anxiety.