Vietnamese EFL Students’ Use of Emotion Regulation Strategies

Abstract

This study was conducted to find out Vietnamese EFL students’ emotion regulation strategies (ERSs) in English language learning. The research was carried out with the participation of 155 English majors studying at a university in Vietnam. Two main instruments i.e. questionnaire and semi-structured interview were employed. The findings revealed that students employed various ERSs to regulate and manage their emotions throughout the learning process. Students tended to use cognitive reappraisal strategies, particularly effort-oriented decision, situation selection/modification strategies, particularly task management, and attentional deployment strategies, particularly task focus and goal-orientation. Among the strategies examined, effort-oriented decision, task management, and task focus had the highest mean scores, at 3.81, 3.80, and 3.79, respectively. The qualitative findings further indicated that students tended to increase their learning efforts, manage their study time, and focus on learning goals when experiencing negative emotions. The findings have pedagogical implications for university EFL instruction by highlighting the need for teachers to attend to students’ emotional experiences, support the development of constructive emotion regulation strategies, and create a supportive classroom environment. Teachers may also guide students to appropriately manage both positive and negative emotions to support their engagement and learning processes