An Investigation into the Role of Emotional Literacy in Online Language Learning

by Philip Brown

In 2022, I conducted a small-scale exploratory case study at the Centre for Academic Language and Development (CALD) as part of an MA Dissertation into the role of emotional literacy in online language learning. Dissertations are fairly long reads; therefore, the purpose of this blog is to describe the study and its outcomes in a more condensed form and a less formal style which should provide a more accessible and engaging read. I hope to find others with similar interests with whom to interact and collaborate on future studies.

Challenging Times and a Rewarding Teaching Experience 

Editor’s Note: Near the end of the 2019/20 academic year, the higher education sector needed to respond to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) threat. At the University of Bristol, for instance, the end of the teaching term was brought forward a week and a half, which was a couple of working days ahead of the PM announcing the first UK lockdown on 23 March. Most international students returned to their home countries. After the three-week spring vacation (30 March to 17 April), the University moved from face-to-face to online learning and teaching for Weeks 22, 23 and 24. During this period, Phil was working at the University for the Creative Arts. He joined CALD in 2021.

In the spring of 2020 in what later become known as Lockdown 1, many teachers (myself included) were engaged in an almost frenzied transition to emergency online teaching. Since I had almost no experience of teaching online and with very little time to prepare for the onset of online teaching, I scrambled to ‘swot up’ on online delivery models and how to make these successful.

One of the most accessible resources came via Gilly Salmon, who quickly emerged as an authority on the subject and whose website (gillysalmon.com) offered clear frameworks and practical suggestions, based on her research. One crucial success factor in her staged model of online delivery is the early online experience, including access to the online tools, online socialisation and student ‘comfort’ (see figure 1). A quotation from her book that I later became fixated on and which set the direction for my dissertation research was:

“Research supports exploring feelings along with reflection … In other words, e-moderators should try to promote emotional literacy as well as information technology literacy.”

(Salmon, 2011:41)  

Finishing off a few classes with in-sessional students (whom I knew well from traditional in-person classes) allowed me a more comfortable training ground in which to become more ‘expert’ using the available technology (in this case, the infamous Zoom). The students were already ‘socialised’, having studied together in physical classroom environments for some time. However, the upcoming pre-sessional courses were much more daunting, since the students would be entirely new to me, the university, the teaching style, the online platform and the tools. I therefore determined to implement the Salmon model of early online experience and socialisation in a rather desperate attempt to ‘make things work’.

 

I realised that this would require a level of patience for which I am not generally known. There would inevitably be teething problems with students’ connectivity in China and these would need to be followed up with IT swiftly in order to satisfy the first stage of the model. Some students might not engage online at first. According to Salmon, this is to be expected and a certain degree of tolerance with ‘lurkers’ is required (Salmon, 2011:40). I must admit that the legitimation of this trait through nomenclature did help me to find that ‘critical patience’.  As predicted, there were issues; some students were initially reluctant to turn on their cameras or engage in communicative activities, while others experienced connectivity problems when entering breakout rooms. However, by ‘jollying things along’ during the lesson, following up on connectivity and engagement issues individually after class, and by continually sharing my screen to show them how to use the online tools available on the Zoom platform, things quickly turned around. After just a day or two, some students were able to share their screens in order to show others how to use certain tools, such as writing on the whiteboard, and I believe this contributed to a shared sense of community. Things were going well, and I secretly thanked my new guru, Gilly Salmon, who seemed to have quite accurately predicted all these initial barriers as well as teaching me how to address them.

Salmon (2011: 36-41) suggests that online socialisation is a crucial early stage in the process leading to successful online learning and that this involves breaking down barriers and getting to know one another on a more personal level. Therefore, every day I dutifully started the lesson by asking students to share how they were feeling. This led to the sharing of personal information, which seemed to promote the process of online socialisation. It was clear that the expectation of emotional expression, especially in an educational context, was rather alien to the students, all of whom were from China, but they were open to the notion that happier learners are likely to learn better and that ‘finding solutions’ to educational issues could be triggered by identifying negative feelings. As time went on, I realised that I was feeding in bits of language that would allow students to express their feelings more fluently and accurately, and that discussing their feelings was becoming ‘normalised’ to an extent. My feeling was that, overall, ‘emotional literacy’ had improved, while acknowledging individual abilities and traits.

Despite my initial trepidation, teaching this online course turned out to be a very positive experience, with a high level of student engagement and participation. Students seemed positive and willing to communicate, with cameras turned on.

By the time the course ended, I was convinced (anecdotally) that my initial efforts to promote accessibility to technology and online socialisation combined with an ongoing focus on discussing emotions and (collaboratively) considering ways of managing these had contributed to the success of the course.

I marvelled at how Salmon’s model of online delivery simply ‘worked’, but I also had questions about the process and, as previously mentioned, had become fixated on her comment that “e-moderators should try to promote emotional literacy”, since this resonated with my experience and my new-found convictions.

I wondered

• To what extent is emotional literacy a factor in language learning and is this different in online contexts?

• Can emotional literacy be developed in students and if so, how?

• Should this somehow be incorporated into online pre-sessional courses, if it somehow enhances the learning experience?

At CALD two years later (2021), putting together my dissertation research proposal, these questions were still at the forefront of my mind, and my interest in the wider concepts of positive psychology in language learning had been well and truly piqued.

Research Process

When I first started researching positive psychology, I found that a great deal had been written about this in physical classroom situations, but much less about online contexts. Despite this, there was a growing interest in online learning, fuelled by the pandemic, but also sustained by the continuing popularity of online pre-sessional courses, which are often more convenient for international students. It is also cheaper to stay home with parents than to rent in Bristol.

At the same time, there was an opportunity at CALD to do some research with the online pre-sessional courses, so I decided to create a set of materials (the artefact – see below) designed to promote emotional literacy with students and investigate any perceived impacts through student and tutor surveys and focus groups (qualitative research).

Informing the Artefact

Prior to creating the artefact, I did quite a bit of reading on the subject of positive psychology, student anxiety, emotional check-ins and managing online language learning, but I also wanted to find out what CALD tutors thought about these things, so I created a survey to gauge tutors’ opinions. The artefact (set of materials) was ultimately informed by the findings of the literature review and the tutor beliefs survey.

Tutor Beliefs about the Role of Emotions in Online Language Learning

Ten online pre-sessional tutors completed an extensive questionnaire. All agreed that emotional literacy is a factor in successful language learning and that tutors should try to foster emotional literacy with students in order to enhance learning.

Most tutors agreed that, to some extent, online students face greater challenges than those studying in physical classrooms, with some suggesting that online students may face a different set of challenges, mostly connected to the theme of isolation.

The notion that students studying online may have less opportunity to discuss emotional challenges came through clearly in tutors’ comments. It was suggested that the lack of non-verbal clues may be a barrier to communication and identification of students’ emotions.

The majority of tutors tend to conduct an emotional check-in with their online students once a lesson to establish rapport and identify issues. Several comments pointed out the difficulty in reading body language in online contexts, suggesting that asking students how they are feeling in an online classroom may be more important than in a physical classroom. Classroom discussion was seen as a way of addressing any issues identified by emotional check-ins.

Tutors were cautious about identifying issues related to emotional wellbeing and implementing consequent interventions, reserving the latter only for when there was a clear lack of student engagement or change in behaviour which could endanger student outcomes. There was an overall consensus that any interventions should be gentle, with student comfort and wellbeing being a priority.

Use of cameras by online students was (perhaps surprisingly) not seen as a factor in successful learning outcomes on the pre-sessional course, as long as participation was evident in other ways.

The Artefact

The artefact, ultimately informed by a literature review and the tutors’ beliefs around emotional literacy, consisted of a set of supplementary materials that online pre-sessional tutors could use or adapt on a voluntary basis (see examples in figures 2-4). The aim of these materials was to raise awareness and encourage expression of emotions in the online synchronous sessions through short activities that could be used as warmers, coolers or fillers. The complete set of activities (the artefact) can be viewed in the Appendix at the end of this blog post.

The Case Study 

This exploratory case study involved one group of online pre-sessional students and their two tutors, who agreed to use the materials on an ad hoc basis. In addition to surveys and focus groups, the tutors agreed to keep a reflexive journal, recording which activities they used and their perceptions of how these impacted on the students and the class. This journal turned out to be a rich source of data and insightful information about the themes that were being investigated.

Main Outcomes of the Case Study

There were several outcomes from this study, but I shall only outline the most significant ones here:

1. Tutors who were surveyed believed that emotional literacy was an important factor in successful language learning but were less confident about how to promote this in class. This may suggest the need for further discussion around the concept or training in techniques which can be used to encourage emotional literacy in online classes.
2. Tutors who took part in the case study adapted and used the emotional check-in slides and language input slides on a regular basis (more than other materials provided in the artefact). The rationale was that these were seen as the quickest and easiest to use, and of the most benefit to students. As a result, opportunities for students to monitor and express their feelings about specific tasks and aspects of the course were provided (see figures 5-7).
3. It is unlikely that emotional literacy can be significantly developed during a 6-week pre-sessional course, However, tutors and students who took part in the case study felt that the regular focus on emotions through short activities had a positive effect on teaching and learning.
4. Emotional check-ins which identified student anxiety were usually followed up by classroom discussions, allowing students to address issues collaboratively, and helped tutors to manage misunderstandings or respond to emergent student needs by adapting upcoming activities. Such interventions and the emotional check-ins from which they arose could be seen as a tool for managing student anxiety.

Conclusion

What emerged through this study were particular teaching techniques which could reduce anxiety in online classrooms. These would appear to be of interest and use to all online language teachers; hence, it would be interesting to investigate these techniques further. Indeed, affect exists in all learning contexts and therefore the scope of future study may not be limited to online contexts. One assumption that I brought to this project was that online learning may present greater challenges than those experienced in physical classrooms. This, however, was not borne out, although it is more likely that online classrooms present a different set of challenges to be addressed. Regardless of context, being cognizant of techniques which can reduce affect by early detection of issues and subsequent problem solving would be of value to both students and teachers.

 

References

Salmon, G. (2011) E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online. New York: Routledge.

Salmon, G. (n.d.) The Five Stage Model. Available at: https://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model1.html (Accessed: 06/05/2025).