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Stimulating Student Interest in Language Learning pp 13–26Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

‘Interest’ and Other Similar Terms

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Abstract

‘Interest’ has been used in association with many similar terms: ‘affect’, ‘emotion’, ‘enjoyment’, ‘curiosity’, and ‘motivation’. Interest is listed as an important category of positive ‘affect’ which promotes successful language learning. Interest also appears as one of the four basic ‘emotions’ required for human psychological well-being. However, unlike other positive emotions such as ‘enjoyment’, only interest can instigate knowledge-seeking behaviour. Although interest has similar meaning to ‘curiosity’, interest is a more frequent term used among language teaching practitioners and researchers, and thus may have acquired other emergent properties. Finally, interest is a unique motivational variable with a difference. Although ‘motivation’ refers to general learning behaviour, interest is a content- and context-specific term which can explain complex language learning behaviour in more specific local terms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ‘Interest’ arises after two consecutive, subjective, appraisals of a specific learning object. The first primary appraisal involves assessing the object in terms its ‘novelty-complexity’—that is, it is sufficiently novel/complex and not too predictable. The second appraisal involves assessing the ‘comprehensibility’ of the object—that is, the individual has the required coping potential such as prior knowledge and available resources to understand the novel/complex phenomenon. If an object is appraised as ‘novel/complex’ but at the second stage is evaluated as ‘incomprehensible’, a different emotion such as ‘frustration’ rather than ‘interest’ will occur (e.g. see van der Sluis 2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Tan Bee Tin

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  1. Tan Bee Tin
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Tin, T.B. (2016). ‘Interest’ and Other Similar Terms. In: Stimulating Student Interest in Language Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-34042-9_2

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