An appraisal‐based examination of language teacher emotions in anxiety‐provoking classroom situations using vignette methodology

Abstract Despite emerging evidence for the link between teacher emotions and student outcomes, research on language teachers’ classroom emotions is still scarce. This study adopts a framework rooted in appraisal‐based emotion theory to explore the complexity of teachers’ emotional lives and the nature of language teacher emotions in the classroom, using anxiety as a starting point and drawing on vignette methodology for emotion elicitation. A total of 272 foreign and second language teachers from North America, Asia, and Europe completed an online version of the Foreign Language Teacher Emotion Questionnaire. Each teacher evaluated two vignettes of anxiety‐provoking classroom scenarios along six appraisal dimensions and reported their emotions. Results indicate great levels of emotional complexity, revealing both the frequent presence of multiple positive emotions and the rare experience of anxiety as the sole emotion in anxiety‐provoking classroom scenarios. At the same time, regression analyses found that anxiety's appraisal pattern explains between 16% and 48% of the variance in anxiety across all vignettes. Implications for adopting appraisal‐based emotion theories and vignette methodology in language teachers’ classroom emotion research in second language acquisition are discussed.