Self-narratives in pre/post-visualization: Raising Language Learners’ Emotivation and Awareness

Self-narratives produced in pre/post-visualization by Italian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (UNIOR) in Italy during a five-year long project testify that visualizations, properly guided so as to focus on second-language acquisition (SLA), potentiate self-awareness and activate a special type of inner motivation, called Emotivation. They provoke a noteworthy change in language learning attitude which in turn raises students’ SLA awareness. They also have an impact on personal commitments nourishing self-sustained decisions to endure the study of EFL despite problematic past histories with the target language (TL). Focus is given to the relevance of self-narratives for investigations on issues related to Self-representations and to the use of guided visualizations (GVs) as tools to activate new inner mental transformative scenarios able to raise language learners’ awareness and activate Emotivation.