An Investigation of the Relationship Between Iraqi EFL Learners’ Conceptions of Feedback, Class-related Emotions, and L2 Achievement

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the interrelationship among the learners’ conceptions of feedback, academic emotions, and language achievement variables within the Iraqi EFL learning context. In so doing, a sample of 150 Iraqi EFL learners at an intermediate level of language proficiency participated to complete students’ conception of feedback inventory and achievement emotions questionnaire. Their final examination scores were also included as an index for their L2 achievement. To analyze the data, first, the descriptive statistics were checked, and second, Pearson correlation coefficient test was used to explore the association among the variables. The results revealed that there were positive correlations between comments for improvement and positive emotions, with higher level of enjoyment, hope, and pride being related to higher extent of agreement with comments for improvement. On the contrary, negative emotions showed to be negatively associated with perceived comments for improvement with higher levels of anger, anxiety, hopelessness, and boredom being related to lower consideration of comments for improvement. Besides, negative emotions demonstrated to be positively correlated to negative feedback and negatively correlated with interpersonal feedback, while positive emotions were positively related to interpersonal feedback and negatively associated with negative feedback.