2.1.1 Definition

    Emotion, literally , refers to one's state of mind and instinctive responses, and it is often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality,disposition, and motivation, influenced by hormones and neurotransmitters --- such as dopamine, noradrenaline,serotonin, oxytocin, cortisol and GABA--- as well as cognition, an important aspect of emotion. Those acting primarily on emotion through mental processes, particularly in the interpretation of events.

    Emotions are a complex state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes, like arousal of the nervous system with various states and strengths of arousal relating, which would influence our behavior. As the driving force behind motivation, emotion can be positive or negative, so an alternative definition of emotion is a "positive or negative experience that is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity."[12]

    Emotions have been regarded as discrete and consistent responses to internal or external events which have a particular significance for the organism. Emotions are brief in duration and consist of a coordinated set of responses, including verbal, physiological, behavioural, and neural mechanisms.

    2.1.2 Affection and Fear

    Handel and Steven (2012) classified six emotions as basic: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise.[3]

And some basic emotions can be modified to form complex emotions that could arise from cultural conditioning or association combined with the basic emotions. In other words, primary emotions could blend to form the full spectrum of human emotional experience. For example, interpersonal anger and disgust could blend to form contempt. Relationships exist between basic emotions, resulting in positive or negative influences.[9]

    Here, this paper would mainly discuss two emotions, one is affection, which I would classify it into complex emotions, and the other is the basic emotion, fear. According to Wikipedia, affection is popularly used to denote a feeling or type of love, amounting to more than goodwill or friendship, while Fear is an emotion induced by a threat perceived by living entities, which causes a change in brain and organ function and ultimately a change in behavior, such as running away, hiding or freezing from traumatic events.

    Through the second language learning, this paper would explore these two emotions’ positive or negative influences on English learning.

2.2 English Learning

    With regard to various aspects of English learning that is influenced by students’ emotion, this paper only focuses on two aspects, respectively interest and grade.