Abstract：Teaching is an emotional practice. Teacher emotion research is of great importance for improving teachers’ classroom performance, facilitating their professional development and promoting their physical as well as mental well-being. After presenting the necessity of carrying out teacher emotion research, this paper reviews the theoretical perspectives adopted by teacher emotion researchers and four different lines of empirical research in this field. The author goes on to put forward several suggestions for future research and concludes the paper with important implications for research on foreign language teachers’ professional development.
