A Study Of English Academic Emotions,Control-Value Appraisals And Student Engagement In English Learning Among College Students

Student engagement is a vital predictor of students’ academic success.Research abounds in literature that explores the structural and psychological factors contributing to student engagement,among which,however,emotional factors are only beginning to attract researchers’ attention.On the other hand,concomitant with the “affective” turn in second language acquisition(SLA)research,some scholars have incorporated the control-value theory(CVT)into the emotion research in learning English as a foreign language(EFL)and investigated different antecedents of English academic emotions and their latent effects on English learning.In order to uplift Chinese college students’ engagement in English learning,this paper invokes the CVT as the theoretical basis and investigates the overall situation of Chinese college students’ English academic emotions,control-value appraisals and student engagement in English learning,and the interrelationships between the three constructs.This paper firstly gives clear definitions on academic emotions,control-value appraisals and student engagement,and then presents a comprehensive review of relevant studies to bring out the research questions of the study.In order to answer those questions,the study conducted a questionnaire survey in several colleges in two provinces in China,and successfully collected 323 valid questionnaires.The study further conducted descriptive analyses,a series of correlation and regression analyses,and mediation analysis on the questionnaire data.The results are as follows:(1)Chinese college students experienced a variety of English academic emotions,with positive emotions as more frequently experienced than negative ones.Grade differences were found to be significant in predicting English academic emotions,with freshmen experiencing more negative and less positive academic emotions than college seniors.Chinese college students had a moderate level of engagement in English learning,and grades were also found to significantly influence student engagement with freshmen less cognitively and behaviorally engaged than college seniors.Chinese college students had a moderate level of English control-value appraisals,and genders and grades were found to have significant influences.Female students had better control appraisals than male peers.Freshmen had lower control appraisals than seniors and college juniors.(2)Chinese college students’ English control-value appraisals were found to be significantly correlated with both academic emotions and student engagement.English control-value appraisals can positively predict positive academic emotions,and these two positively influence student engagement;English control-value appraisals can negatively predict negative academic emotions,which can also negatively influence student engagement.(3)The influence of English control-value appraisals on student engagement was found to be mediated by the effect of academic emotions,with positive ones positively mediating and negative ones negatively mediating between the two.This study fills the research gap on related topics,and provides relevant pedagogical implications for college English teaching.