Effects of Learning Multiple Foreign Languages on Learners’ Social Emotional Competence Development

This paper reports on a study that investigates the impact of learning multiple foreign languages on learners’ social emotional competence development as mediated by the number of foreign languages and the recency of the learning experience. A questionnaire survey that involved 465 Chinese learners of foreign languages was administered that elicited their self-evaluation reports on how their foreign language learning experiences impacted on the 12 components of social emotional competence development which covered the five major dimensions of social emotional learning. Results demonstrate a delayed effect of multiple foreign language learning on social emotional competence development, that is, while learner’s social emotional competence is significantly influenced by their previous foreign language learning experience, their on-going multiple foreign language learning does not seem to constitute an overall influence, which is confined to only a few social emotional competence components. The results also demonstrate that the components which are significantly influenced by the number of foreign languages are mostly related to the cognitive aspects of social emotional competence, while the components which do not seem to be significantly influenced tend to be related to the behavioral aspects.