- Title
- Affect, engagement, and achievement in EFL learning: a study of undergraduate students in northwest China
- Creator
- Yang, Bo
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2021
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Research on affect in education gained importance with the development of humanistic psychology in the 1960s and constructivist psychology in the late 1980s. Influenced by the achievement of humanistic psychology and constructivist psychology regarding the important role of affect, language learning research has taken a great interest in learners’ affective states and the correlation between learners’ affect and their learning achievement. In addition to the analysis of learners’ achievement from the perspective of affect, some researchers have provided a new dimension to relevant research by introducing the theory of engagement into general education (Carini et al., 2006; Connell et al., 1994; Fredricks, 2011). However, there have been few studies considering the possibility that the affect and engagement of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) interact in complex ways, and that language learning achievement is a product of this interaction. Therefore, it was hypothesised that affect has an influencing relationship with achievement in which engagement plays a mediating role between the two. The conceptualisation and operationalisation of EFL learners’ affect took their attitudes, motivation, anxiety, and self-esteem into consideration, while the conceptualisation and operationalisation of engagement comprised two categories: cognitive engagement and behavioural engagement. In addition, student participants’ College English Test-Band 4 (CET-4) scores were collected as a measurement of their English learning achievement. The current study adopted a mixed-methods approach, including questionnaires, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews for both EFL teachers and EFL learners, to verify the research hypotheses. There were 624 non-English major sophomores coming from six designated universities in Northwest China who responded to a 61-item questionnaire regarding their affect, engagement, and achievement in learning English. Six English teachers and their students in six classes involved in the questionnaire survey at University 3 and University 6 were invited to participate in the classroom observation, with 30 student participants being video-recorded. Another 30 student participants were recruited from the questionnaire sample at University 3 and University 6 to partake in the students’ audio-recorded semi-structured interviews. Besides, ten English teachers from the above two designated universities were invited to participate in audio-recorded semi-structured interviews, using five questions to investigate student participants’ engagement in English classes. SPSS 25.0 and Amos 24.0 were adopted to analyse data obtained from the questionnaire, including reliability and validity tests, descriptive analysis, independent t-tests, one-way ANOVA analysis, correlation analyses, simple linear analyses, multiple regression analyses, and mediation effect analyses. Analysis of classroom observation was conducted in both the quantitative and qualitative approaches. While the quantitative technique of classroom observation focused on the frequency and relationship between participants’ particular classroom activities using constructed coding schemes, the qualitative analysis of classroom observation concerned the deep meaning of participants’ classroom lives. NVivo 12 Plus and SPSS 25.0 were employed to analyse data collected from classroom observation. Data obtained from semi-structured interviews for both EFL teachers and EFL learners were analysed with the aid of NVivo 12 Plus. Findings in this study provided statistical evidence for the mediating role of engagement in the relationship between affect and achievement. Despite the significant effects of engagement on student participants’ achievement, both classroom observation and teachers’ semi-structured interviews exposed that a lack of classroom engagement was still common in practical English classes. There was a big imbalance between student participants’ verbal and non-verbal acts in their English classes, with the latter outweighing the former, demonstrating the necessity of promoting student participants’ English communication competency. Statistics also revealed that student participants from key universities were more likely to experience higher levels of positive affect, engagement, and English learning achievement than their counterparts at non-key universities. However, gender differences and academic differences had no significant effects on student participants’ different levels of affect, engagement, and achievement. Given the diversity, variability, and complexity of EFL learners’ affect, it is necessary for EFL teachers to have relevant pedagogical training to effectively regulate learners’ affect to enhance their classroom engagement and learning achievement. Theoretically, this study uncovers the gap in the relationship between EFL learners’ affect, engagement, and achievement, and thus yields a more comprehensive understanding of this relationship. Given that engagement is a mediator of the relationship between affect and achievement, research on EFL learners’ achievement should pay attention to a combination of learners’ affect and engagement instead of neglecting one of the two variables. Methodologically, the triangulation method, including the questionnaire, classroom observation, and semi-structured interviews for both EFL teachers and EFL learners, guarantees more reliable results and enriches the research method regarding relevant studies. Practically, this study gives some implications for both EFL teachers and EFL learners to maximise learners’ positive affect and minimise their negative affect to gain more effective engagement and achievement in learning English.
- Subject
- Chinese EFL learners; affect; engagement; achievement
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1489008
- Identifier
- uon:52594
- Rights
- Copyright 2021 Bo Yang
- Language
- eng
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