A Study On The Relationships Among Senior High EFL Learners’ Perceived Teacher Support,Foreign Language Enjoyment,and Learning Engagement

Recently,with the establishment and development of Positive Psychology,Learning Engagement(LE)and Foreign Language Enjoyment(FLE)of EFL learners have become topical issues in the field of Second Language Acquisition(SLA).LE and FLE are identified to have significant impact on EFL learners’ academic achievement.Besides,regarding China’s latest English version of curriculum standards: “General Senior High School Curriculum Standards for English(2017 edition)”,EFL learners are required to master affective and cognitive learning strategies,and FLE and LE are highly related properties to the learning strategies aforementioned.In addition,Learning Engagement and Foreign Language Enjoyment are internal influencing factors of EFL learners’ academic achievements,and EFL learners can also be influenced by some external factors.For instance,Teacher Support(TS)is identified highly related external factor on both FLE and LE.Prior studies have examined that TS can significantly enhance EFL learners’ LE.TS and FLE are both crucial predictors to LE.Hence,it is necessary to investigate the current situation of senior high EFL learners’ FLE,LE and TS,their relationships and the underlying mechanism through which LE is affected by perceived TS among senior high EFL learners to contribute to a system of efficient English learning experiences and enhance students’ academic performance.In the present study,194 senior high EFL learners are conveniently sampled as participants and asked to finish a three-subscale questionnaire,and eight of them are interviewed separately.SPSS 27 is employed to conduct descriptive,correlative,regressive analyses and independent samples t-tests,and Amos 28 is used to testify the feasibility of structural equation model(SEM): “TS-(FLE)-LE”.In the end,the study aims to respond to the following three research questions:1.What is the status quo of Foreign Language Enjoyment,Learning Engagement and Perceived Teacher Support among senior high EFL learners?2.Are there any significant individual differences in Foreign Language Enjoyment,Learning Engagement,and Perceived Teacher Support among Chinese high school EFL learners?3.What is the relationship among Foreign Language Enjoyment,Learning Engagement and Perceived Teacher Support? Dose Foreign Language Enjoyment have a mediating effect between Learning Engagement and Perceived Teacher Support?Major findings of the current study are presented below:1.The overall status quo of FLE,LE and TS among senior high EFL learners have reached a high level and they experience TS the most.2.The first senior EFL graders statistically significantly experience a higher level of FLE,LE and perceived TS,and gender differences among FLE,LE and TS are statistically significant with an exception of one dimension from FLE: FLE-Atmosphere.3.All variables are significantly correlated(p<0.01)and FLE and LE among senior high EFL learners are highly significantly correlated(r=0.751)and so are LE and TS(r=0.739).In addition,FLE,LE,and TS are positive predictors to each other.Besides,FLE acts as a full mediation in the “TS-(FLE)-LE” SEM,which means senior high EFL learners’ Learning Engagement can be affected by perceived Teacher Support through the mediating role of Foreign Language Enjoyment.Finally,based on the aforementioned findings,they study provides pedagogical implications for EFL teachers,school administrators,and curriculum makers and lists the limitations of this study.