Mündliche Kompetenz im Spiegel von Emotionen

This paper investigates how the emotion "joy" and its correlation with cognitive and motivational factors may influence learning a foreign language. After an overview of current research on emotions, with special reference to the neurobiological basis of brain activity, the paper presents an empirical study of the oral competence of adult Italian learners of German as a third language in a classroom setting at the Goethe-Institut Palermo. The case example shows how differently joy can appear: in a spoken utterance, in body movements or facial expressions, and how all kinds of its manifestations contribute to classroom communication at various levels. This has far-researching consequences on classroom discourse, particulary between instructor and learner, and also direct implications for the organization of the lesson, on which a considerable part of the success in learning the target language depends.