The Relative Importance of Enjoyment, Peace of Mind and Boredom in Promoting Chinese L2 English Learners’ Willingness to Communicate
第二語言教育 ; 外語愉悅 ; 外語無聊 ; 外語平和心態 ; 外語交流意願
Second language education ; foreign language enjoyment ; foreign language peace of mind ; foreign language boredom ; foreign language willing to communicate
English Language Curriculum Standards for Senior Secondary Schools (2017 edition, 2020 revision) emphasizes the importance of integrating nurturing values into subject instruction, highlighting the need to foster proper values and positive emotional dispositions during English language acquisition, while also enhancing students' capacity to manage their emotional states. A comprehensive review of existing literature indicates that both enjoyment and boredom are commonly experienced in the context of foreign language education and exert a significant influence on the learning process. significant impacts, which has become a new hotspot in the study of second-language emotions, whereas foreign language peace of mind, as a kind of learner's emotional conception developed in collectivist societies and educational contexts, has not received much attention at the moment, and few scholars have explored the joint impacts of positive emotions and negative emotions on English learning. Therefore, this study intends to investigate Chinese high school students' foreign language classroom emotional experiences, including foreign language enjoyment, peace of mind, and boredom, with the aim of revealing whether or to what extent these emotions affect second language willing to communicate, and their relative importance in influencing communicative willingness. In this study, the Chinese version of the Foreign Language enjoyment Scale, the Foreign Language Peace of Mind Scale, the Foreign Language Boredom Scale, and the English willing to communicate Scale were used in a questionnaire survey of 254 students in a high school in Ningde City, Fujian Province, China.
Through the results of the questionnaire, this study analyzed and found that:
One, the level of foreign language enjoyment is moderately high (3.4 < M = 4.52 < 5.0), the level of foreign language peace of mind is at a moderate level (M = 4.50 > 3.5), the level of foreign language boredom is moderately low (M = 3.63 < 2.4), and the willing to communicate in the classroom shows a moderate level (3.4 < M = 3.43 < 5.0).
Second, The study revealed significant interrelationships among the three affective variables in the context of foreign language acquisition. Specifically, foreign language enjoyment demonstrated a strong positive association with foreign language peace of mind (r = .862**), while exhibiting a substantial inverse relationship with foreign language boredom (r = -.360**). Furthermore, the analysis indicated that foreign language peace of mind maintained a pronounced negative correlation with foreign language boredom. (r = -.376**). In addition to this, there is a significant correlation between foreign language learning emotions and willing to communicate in English classroom.
Among them, a significant and highly positive correlation exists between foreign language enjoyment and willing to communicate in class (r = .542**), there is a significant and highly positive correlation between foreign language peace of mind and willing to communicate in class (r = .580**), and There is a significant and highly negative correlation between foreign language boredom and willing to communicate in English class (r = -.175**).
Third, all three emotions have important individual predictive properties on classroom willing to communicate, foreign language peace of mind has significant positive predictive effects on classroom willing to communicate, while foreign language enjoyment and foreign language boredom inhibit predictability effects on classroom willing to communicate and do not have significant predictive effects on willing to communicate. Based on the above findings, this study offers the following recommendations to reduce students' maladaptive behaviors during the learning process. L2 boredom, increase L2 enjoyment, and foreign language peace of mind in the hope of helping students to reasonably regulate their emotional state and boosting their willing to communicate in English.
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