A Theoretical Review on the Impact of EFL/ESL Students’ Self-Sabotaging Behaviors on Their Self-Esteem and Academic Engagement

Summary & key facts

This paper is a careful review of research about students who act in ways that hurt their own success in English-as-a-foreign-language or English-as-a-second-language classes. The authors looked at how those self-sabotaging behaviors relate to students' self-esteem and how much they take part in class. They found that while researchers pay a lot of attention to positive feelings, negative feelings like self-sabotage have been mostly ignored. The review explains different kinds of self-sabotage, sums up what studies have shown so far, points out gaps in knowledge, and offers practical ideas for teachers, students, trainers, and researchers to notice and handle learner emotions better.

Key facts:

• This article is a theoretical review, not a new study with new data; it summarizes earlier work about self-sabotage, self-esteem, and academic engagement in EFL/ESL classrooms.
• The authors say that research on language learning has focused more on positive emotions and has mostly overlooked negative emotions like self-sabotage.
• The review explains what self-sabotaging behaviors are, describes different types and dimensions of those behaviors, and looks at related studies that examine links with self-esteem and classroom engagement.
• The paper points out clear gaps in existing research and calls for more studies that directly examine how self-sabotage and other negative emotions affect learners over time.
• The authors offer practical implications—suggestions for teachers, students, teacher trainers, and researchers—to raise awareness about learner emotions and their role in language teaching and learning.

Abstract

Learner emotions have been considerably emphasized in SLA research and practice with the advent of positive psychology. This has led to a surge of scholarly interest in this strand of research over the past years all around the world. However, the impact of students' negative emotions such as self-sabotage that actually occur in english as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms on the construction and development of positive learner emotions like self-esteem and academic engagement has been mostly overlooked by second/foreign language researchers. Against this shortcoming, the present review article presented the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of these three crucial variables in SLA focusing on their conceptualizations, dimensions, typologies, related studies, and research gaps. Finally, the study offers a number of practical implications to [EFL/english as a second language (ESL)] teachers, students, teacher trainers, and SLA researchers in order to increase their awareness of learner emotions and the power of such feelings in language teaching and learning processes.

Topics

Educational and Psychological Assessments EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning Emotional Intelligence and Performance

Categories

Psychology Social Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Empirical research English as a foreign language English language Epistemology Feeling Foreign language Linguistics Mathematics education Pedagogy Philosophy Psychology Second language Self-esteem Social psychology

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety or worry Difficulty focusing Lack of energy or motivation