Think about a relationship you have with somebody in your class or workplace. Your initial relationship might be built upon what you know about that person, your shared values and common beliefs – maybe even their personal appearance. The strength of that relationship will change as soon as you start to interact with them. A friendly smile, cheerful greeting and some positive small talk will probably make you think that you might want to get to know this person a little more. Conversely, if you feel ignored, disliked or realise that you value different things, you will probably avoid them in the future. This is what we refer to in this text as student engagement – the relationship that is formed and reformed between students and education.

Affect has been one of the most neglected areas in L2 research with the possible exception of language anxiety. This overall lack of scholarly attention to affect appears to be even more evident in corrective feedback (CF) research. This chapter discusses this relatively under-explored area, describing empirical research conducted so far in relation to the role of affective variables in CF-driven L2 learning. Given the scarcity of relevant research and a space limit, the chapter focuses mainly on language anxiety, learner beliefs/attitudes, emotions, and other related issues (e.g., motivation, self-efficacy). The brief overview of research illustrated in this chapter suggests that affect mediates L2 learning processes involving CF, and that learners’ affective states are often influenced by teacher feedback. Findings also indicate that L2 learners experience changes in affective domains, which in turn lead to varying degrees of intra-individual variability in their perceptions of CF. Nevertheless, the current state of affairs does not offer more than a potential link between CF and affective variables, and, of course, is inconclusive in terms of the extent to which these seemingly important affective variables influence the way CF contributes to L2 learning process and overall development.

The nature and consequences of readers’ affective engagement with literature has, in recent years, captured the attention of experimental psychologists and philosophers alike. Psychological studies have focused principally on the causal mechanisms explaining our affective interactions with fictions, prescinding from questions concerning their rational justifiability. Transportation Theory, for instance, has sought to map out the mechanisms the reader tracks the narrative experientially, mirroring its descriptions through first-personal perceptual imaginings, affective and motor responses and even evaluative beliefs. Analytical philosophers, by contrast, have largely focussed on the problems fiction poses for traditional theories of rationality (as in the ‘Paradox of Fiction), challenging fiction’s wider epistemic value. The result has been a theoretical impasse in which the power of fiction to affectively ‘transport’ a reader is at once often lauded (by psychologists) as a privileged route to interpersonal understanding, and condemned (by philosophers) as an abdication of the authority of reason. This chapter surveys some of the central claims on both sides, tracing the source of the debate to competing conceptions of rationality.