Esl learners’ performance in recalling emotion words

Abstract

Studies have shown that individuals may be able to express themselves better in their first language than in their second language due to their greater emotional attachment to their first language. Although students in Malaysia are typically exposed to the English language as early as they reach 7 years of age, not all of them are able to express their feelings and emotions well in the language. This paper presents a study conducted via an online survey on how 114 Malay and English emotion words are rated by 30 English Language Studies undergraduates of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia who are native speakers of Malay. The questionnaire was also designed to investigate the participants’ emotional strengths towards the two languages and how the age of acquisition would affect the recall of emotion words. Results show that majority of the participants who acquire the English language after the age of seven recalled English emotion words better than they recalled Malay emotion words. This suggests that emotion effects in the second language is present despite the age participants started to acquire the English language.