Il ruolo delle emozioni di studente e insegnante nel processo di apprendimento e insegnamento linguistico

The Venetian school of language education research devotes equal attention to the objective of teaching, i.e. language(s) as communicative instrument(s), and to the subject of the learning process, the student. In EL.LE 1, 2012, we gave an epistemological basis for this idea of language education. In this issue we focus our attention on the human components of the teaching process, the teacher and the students, seen from the humanistic perspective, which assumes that human beings are governed by reason and emotion, and that both are important to understand what and why they act the way they do. The role of the students’ emotions in language acquisition has been studied for the last 20 years and has produced a considerable amount of literature, whilst the role of the teacher’s emotions has been very rarely considered – yet a teacher is a person, and he or she is an emotional being like his or her students. This dual perspective is the contribution of this essay – and of the Venetian school – to language education research. There is a second point worth mentioning: the emotional factor of both teacher and student is analyzed through the grid of factors defined by the cognitive theory of emotions, used so far only for the students’ side; yet the author goes back to the classics and assumes Plato’s classification of emotions as another grid to be considered in a discourse about the impact of emotions and their relationship to the rational side – and the classic perspective proves to be a highly productive one as far as language education is concerned.