Vietnamese EFL Teachers’ Shifting Emotions in English Speaking Over Time: A Sociocultural Perspective

A substantial body of research in applied linguistics has shown that emotions lie at the core of language teaching (Geng & Yu, 2024). For non-native speaker teachers, these emotions can be even more complex, as they experience not only the anxieties of speaking a foreign language but also those of teaching a language that is not their own. Adopting a sociocultural perspective, which views teachers’ emotions as shaped through interactions with students, administrators, colleagues, parents, as well as contextual factors such as school culture, norms, and policies, and individual variables like teaching and learning experience, the present study explores Vietnamese tertiary EFL teachers’ perceptions of the role emotions play in their English speaking and the path of evolving feelings throughout their lifelong experience of English language speaking. A qualitatively-driven mixed methods research design was employed. There were two phases of data collection using initial and exploratory questionnaires followed by semi-structured interviews and reflective journals. The quantitative data aimed to capture the range of emotions the participants experienced in speaking English over time. The qualitative data revealed the complexity and dynamism of their emotions in the process of language learning and use. The findings show that the participants experienced shifting emotions across different contexts of language learning and language use. The emotions were seen to be dynamic, and socially and contextually constructed. The results provide practical implications for emotion research and pedagogies of EFL teaching and learning.