Emotional Roller Coaster: Phenomenological Lived Experiences of EFL Students’ Emotional Reminiscence and Trajectory in Writing Class

Abstract

Indonesian EFL university students experiencing as well as regulating emotions in EFL writing tasks are the topic of this phenomenological study. Although language education traditionally highlights cognitive and linguistic aspects, the emotional struggle in EFL writing e.g., anxiety, frustration, and burnout, has received less attention, partly because this work might not translate in non-Western contexts and because cultural attitudes to emotion expression or emotion regulation might vary. Using reflective journals, which consisted of two stages, i.e., pre- or before writing and during or drafting process, seven Indonesian students from different academic levels reported negative emotional reactions at the beginning of writing, emotional fluctuation from negative to positive, positive to negative, negative to positive like an emotional roller coaster, and direct emotional alteration from negative to positive during the drafting process. Furthermore, there were efforts done by students to solve their negative emotional experiences indicated after the students expressed their emotional experiences. Therefore, this implies that further research on students’ emotion regulation strategies has potential to be explored in the future. Sequential instructions, from the simple to complex task is recommended to by apply in the teaching and learning of writing since it will also have direct effect on the students’ emotions.