Written Feedback and Emotion Regulation: An Exploration of L2 Doctoral Students' Experiences

This dissertation study investigated how L2 doctoral students regulate their emotions upon receiving written feedback from their mentors. The study took a multiple-case-study approach that entailed stimulated recall of the feedback-reading and revision process. Three international doctoral students who were engaged in high-stakes writing in the third and fourth years of their doctoral program participated in the study. The data from the stimulated-recall and interview talks were analyzed and coded for emotion-regulation strategies and how they were used in the participants’ revision process. The results show that the participants, while processing feedback, experienced a variety of emotions—both positive and negative—that stemmed from the challenges of working in an academic setting, life as a scholar, and social relationships. They also regulated their emotional reactions by suppressing immediate emotional responses or by reappraising their thoughts to proactively reduce the emotional impact. The results also show that one of the key functions of emotion regulations in the writing process may be to prevent writer’s block. These findings, unlike previous studies, provide an understanding of how individual variations of emotion regulation strategies are exercised and how regulation impacts the process of writing in a naturalistic context. In addition, the findings suggest the need for future studies to identify the necessity and efficiency of emotion regulation strategies within the L2 writing context and establish an inventory of emotion regulation strategies that allow researchers, teachers, and writers to recognize ways to sustain an effective writing process.