Exploring language teachers’ emotions in the Production-Oriented Approach (POA)

Abstract

The Production-Oriented Approach (POA) prioritises language production and emphasises integrating input and production to promote language learners’ communicative competence. While the cognitive and pedagogical aspects of POA have been extensively studied, the emotional experience of teachers remains underexplored. This study investigated tertiary-level foreign language teachers’ emotional perceptions in implementing POA and the interactions between emotional, ideological, and institutional factors in this process. Participants of this study were members of a two-year online language teacher training program. The findings of this study revealed that participants in this study experienced, seemingly paradoxically, a combination of positive emotions of motivation, hope, happiness and enthusiasm, and negative emotions of anxiety and frustration. They enjoyed the change brought up by POA: transforming teaching more scientifically and systematically, stimulating and improving students’ motivation, and promoting their academic development. At the same time, they were also plagued by the clash between the high demand from POA and the lack of team and institutional support. In this conflict, teachers demonstrated their struggle to manage their emotion labour while striving for professional teaching and academic development through innovating their teaching. By focusing on foreign language teachers’ emotions in a newly developed teaching approach in a local context, this study constitutes an important part of the emotion studies and offers valuable insights into the role of emotions in shaping teaching practice and teacher development.