ABSTRACT
Our understanding of why people differ so greatly in how fast, how well and by what means they learn a second language would be incomplete if we did not consider affect and the multiple roles it plays in L2 learning. Let us return briefly to our French learners from Chapter 7. The most pervasive and startling difference in the two experiences recounted in their books resides with the affective relationship Watson and Kaplan appear to have developed towards the L2. As Table 9.1 illustrates, for Watson learning French felt like an assault to his own self (‘alien influences seeping down from above’), whereas for Kaplan French felt like nourishing and welcome transformation of the self (‘I was full of French, it was holding me up, running through me’).
