Exploring the Impact of Teachers’ Verbal Immediacy as an Emotion Mediating Factor on Adult E-learners’ Language Learning

Abstract

This study tries to examine the impact of teachers’ verbal immediacy on e-learners’ emotional states and hence explore the influence of emotions on their language learning performance. Sixty e-learners from a cyber-education college were selected as the participants and were randomly assigned to two groups, with 30 members in each. One group (the experimental group) received the positive emotion induction treatment (the teacher’s verbal immediacy behaviors) and the other one (the control group) received the neutral emotion treatment (lacking the teacher’s verbal immediacy behaviors). Data were collected through a pretest, a posttest, a questionnaire survey and also the simultaneous recording of the synchronous lecturing. The findings show that positive emotions could be generated on the e-learners through the teacher’s verbal immediacy behaviors and the two emotion induction procedures could influence the e-learners’ learning. The result of the posttest shows that the positive emotion induction procedures had produced a better learning outcome in the e-learning environment. The result also indicates that the teacher’s verbal immediacy behaviors may also bring about some side effects on learning.