| With the turn of emotion in foreign language learning research,boredom,as one of the most frequently occurring but easily ignored negative learning emotions among foreign language learners,has been receiving much more attention gradually.It will not only be influenced by many antecedents but also have a negative impact on students’ performances and learning achievements.On the one hand,online learning is a very good media for knowledge transmission and obtaining,and online teaching is used more frequently especially in the pandemic period.Although online teaching and learning has advantages in its application to foreign language learning,there exist too many limitations and inconveniences including insufficient teacher-student interaction,undetectable students’ performances,unstable online learning environments,and the like so that students will get bored more easily in online English learning.To make things worse,junior high school students are in a critical period of English learning,and undertake greater pressure in recent years because of the new “shunting” policy according to which only half of them can be enrolled into senior high schools and the other half will be enrolled into vocational high schools after the senior high school entrance examination.In this context,boredom can be easily identified alongside with anxiety among many junior high school students.Therefore,based on Affective Filter Hypothesis and Control-Value Theory,the study is designed to investigate the current situations and explore the prominent antecedents of junior high school students’ online foreign language learning boredom(FLLB)as well as its predictive effects on their English learning achievements;and then implement stratified homework specific to homework boredom,one of the prominent antecedents of junior high school students’ online FLLB,with an aim to test its effectiveness on reducing students’ online FLLB and improving their English learning achievements.The research questions are as follows:(1)What are the current situations of junior high school students’ online FLLB? And what are the prominent antecedents of their online FLLB?(2)What are the effects of junior high school students’ online FLLB on their English learning achievements?(3)What kind of pedagogical measure can be taken to reduce junior high school students’ homework boredom? And how effective is the measure in practical teaching?Taking eighth graders in B City,Inner Mongolia as subjects,this study used a mixed-method approach including questionnaires,semi-structured interviews,and a teaching experiment.Using Online Foreign Language Learning Boredom Scale(OFLLBS)with the English learning achievement collection,the study firstly investigated the current situations of online FLLB as well as its effects on English learning achievements among eighth graders in seven middle schools selected through convenience sampling method,and then further explored prominent antecedents by semi-structured interviews to voluntary students.Secondly,the study identified stratified homework as the variable to intervene in junior high school students’ homework boredom in two parallel classes taught by the same teacher in a certain middle school.After the 6-week experiment,the subjects completed Homework Boredom Scale(HBS)(one of the subscales of OFLLBS)with another English learning achievement collection,and then these collected data were compared with the questionnaire data before the experiment to test the effectiveness of stratified homework on reducing their online FLLB and improving English learning achievements.Quantitative data were analyzed by Amos 26.0 and SPSS 27.0 after being collected by SOJUMP and organized by Excel while qualitative data were collected,transcribed and analyzed manually.From the above study,three main research findings were obtained as follows:First,the general online FLLB of junior high school students is at a middle level.Among the seven dimensions of online FLLB,Power Point presentation boredom(PPB)and homework boredom(HB)are at middle levels;over-challenging or meaningless task boredom(OMTB),foreign language class boredom(FLCB),and under-challenging task boredom(UTB)are at lower middle levels;teacher-dislike boredom(TB)and general learning trait boredom(GLTB)are at low levels.There is a significant difference in online FLLB among junior high school students with different English learning achievements while there is no difference in that among those with different English learning duration.Online FLCB,PPB,and HB influence their online FLLB prominently through further investigation.Second,junior high school students’ online FLLB and English learning achievements are negatively correlated at a medium level,and online FLLB has a significantly negative impact on English learning achievements.The correlations between the seven dimensions of online FLLB and English learning achievements are significant and negative at different levels,in which three of them including online FLCB,UTB and HB have relatively strong negative predictive effects while two of them including PPB and TB have very slight impacts on English learning achievements.Third,only HB has been identified as the anchor point which need and could be improved speedily even though online FLCB,PPB and HB all could influence students’ FLLB because PPB has a very slight impact on English learning achievements and online FLCB,as one kind of trait boredom,is too difficult to reduce in a short time.So the study only contraposed students’ HB and implement stratified homework as the targeted pedagogical intervention measure.The experimental results show that stratified homework could theoretically and practically reduce junior high school students’ homework boredom and improve their English learning achievements.The study could help English teachers and learners to pay more attention to FLLB as well as further reduce students’ FLLB and improve their English learning achievement through teachers’ teaching measures and students’ self-regulation in both online and offline English learning. |
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