The impact of emotions on the memorization of new Chinese vocabulary words in online learning

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of positive and negative emotions on memorization of new vocabulary words in adults who learn Chinese online at the beginner’s level. This study aims to determine whether emotionally colored words are better memorized than emotionally neutral words and also whether words related to negative emotions are memorized better than words related to positive emotions. 43 volunteers, who started to learn Chinese recently, were divided into three groups: two experimental groups (N=15 and N=15) and one control group (N=13). Every group was given an assignment to learn 20 new simple Chinese words in one week. According to their instructions, the participants of Experimental group 1 and Experimental group 2 had to memorize words, building a relation with a word from the list and a prescribed emotion. The participants of the control group were given the instruction to memorize the same 20 Chinese words using ordinary methods taken at their school or course. The results showed that the words associated with the emotion "fear" are the most remembered. Among four investigated emotions, anger is at the second place with results, followed by interest, and joy is at the last place. Emotionally neutral words have a lower level of memorization than emotionally colored ones. Recommendations for online courses or language learning applications or game developers are also provided.