Evaluación formativa móvil y variables afectivas en estudiantes universitarios italianos de español / Mobile formative assessment and affective factors in Italian university students of Spanish

Despite the wide research interest in how formative assessment, affective factors and mobile technology affect second language learning (L2), the number of studies devoted to the combination of these three domains and their reciprocal relationships is still very limited. Furthermore, these works are focused almost exclusively on certain contexts and/or language pairs where English is either L1 or L2. Thus, both the existing theories along with the empirical data and the scientific results suffer from a marked bias. Since currently there are no theoretical or empirical studies on this matter, this paper aims at investigating how mobile formative assessment (MFA) impacts affective factors, in particular motivation and anxiety, in Italian university students learning Spanish as an L2. The research adopts a qualitative approach. Data presented here derive mainly from the percep- tions and opinions on the MFA procedure of a total of 62 Italian university students attending the first-year Spanish Language and Linguistics classes in four different academic years. The research is situated within a dynamic perspective and particular attention has been given to context together with the interconnections among its diverse variables and agents, as well as to the active involvement of students in all phases of the investigation. Findings seem to point out a butterfly effect: a ‘minimal’ change in the assessment procedure can have a strong immediate impact on the affective sphere, as well as other effects not always predictable. It would be necessary, therefore, to expand the research in order to study other contexts and the correlation among the different phenomena observed.