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Language Teaching for Young Learners: Online-First Articles

An investigation into FL children’s classroom emotions and their concurrent and longitudinal relationships with grit and growth mindset

| The Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong
The recent decade has seen an increase in attention and an upsurge in studies about emotions in the field of L2/FL teaching and learning. To expand our understanding, this study set out to investigate how young learners’ boredom and enjoyment were related, concurrently and longitudinally, to grit and growth mindsets through the lens of broaden-and-build theory. Ninety-eight primary-school EFL learners in Hong Kong participated in this longitudinal study. The findings show that all variables under investigation were intercorrelated moderately to strongly. Remarkably, the two emotions predicted around 30% to 50% of the variance in grit and growth mindsets. However, closer scrutiny via multiple regressions revealed that enjoyment was the only significant predictor of perseverance of effort (a component of grit) and growth mindsets while boredom was the only significant predictor of consistency of interest (another component of grit). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Keywords: emotions (boredom & enjoyment), grit, growth mindsets, young FL learners, longitudinal research, broaden-and-build theory
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1FL classroom emotions: Boredom and enjoyment
    • 2.2Grit
    • 2.3Growth mindsets
  • 3.The study
  • 4.Methods
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Measures: Relevant items in T1 & T2 questionnaires
      • 4.2.1FL classroom enjoyment
      • 4.2.2FL classroom boredom
      • 4.2.3FL grit: POE
      • 4.2.4FL grit: COI
      • 4.2.5FL growth mindset
    • 4.3Procedure
    • 4.4Analysis
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Descriptive statistics & correlations
    • 5.2Emotions predicting POE
    • 5.3Emotions predicting COI
    • 5.4Emotions predicting growth mindsets
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • References
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