Bridging the Gap Between L1 and L2: Enhanced Emotional Vocabulary Through Elaborative Processing in Spanish‐Speaking English Language Learners

Abstract

Foreign languages are often learnt in formal and disembodied environments which may limit the emotional resonance of their vocabulary and their pragmatic usage in real-life communication. In a context of English as a foreign language (EFL), this study examines whether elaborative processing as a teaching strategy leads to changes in the affective evaluation of English words and thus enhances the acquisition of emotional vocabulary. A pre-test/post-test designwas employed in order to assess the effect of this type of instruction. A group of 35 Spanish EFL students participated in two training sessions, with generative processing exercises that involved multiple modalities (visual and spoken language, body expression, and gestures) at production and comprehension domains and that focused on 36 English words (12 positive, 12 negative, and 12 neutral). Another set of 36 non-trained words was carefully selected andmatched to trained words across several psycholinguistic variables. Crucially, stimuli selection was based on their high emotional discrepancy between English native speakers and Spanish EFL learners, as observed in our normative study. The students rated the full set of 72 words in two emotional dimensions (valence and arousal) before and after the instruction. Results revealed the enhancement of the negative emotional connotations for negative trainedwords in EFL and an alignmentwith the affective responses reported by English native speakers. These findings confirm the effectiveness of this elaborative processing approach for the teaching of emotional vocabulary in formal contexts of EFL. The stronger impact of this instruction on negative emotional language suggests its attenuation in additional languages and underscores the importance of addressing this type of language in EFL instruction.