Abstract
The swift growth and progress of colleges and universities across China noticed a request for teaching and learning English as Foreign Language (EFL), and regarding the quality of higher education, student engagement has been at the center of attention which has a remarkable role due to the arrival of positive psychology in language learning recently. To this end, on the one hand, nurturing student engagement in EFL classes corresponds to requests from the recent national university English curriculum selected in 2015 in China. On the other hand, a bulk of studies has acknowledged difficulties that hinder the construction of a learner-centric learning situation. Moreover, there is a dearth of inquires which have focused on teachers' role in general and affective aspects namely enthusiasm, in particular. According to the literature review, the definition of these constructs, namely teacher enthusiasm and students' success and engagement are presented. In a nutshell, the implications for teachers, university administrators, teacher-trainers, and future researchers are presented, and new directions for future research are allocated.
Highlights
Since the mid-1990’s, the rapid development of the higher education system in China has caused a chain of difficulties, such as a decrease in educational expenses for each student, failing teaching circumstances, and extensive variants in teaching quality among the institutions (Wang, 2017)
Great attention has been paid to emotion in previous years due to the dominance of positive psychology in language learning, and researchers approved that learners encounter different types of emotions in language learning (Dewaele and Li, 2020), so emotions have an indispensable role in language learning process and success (Li, 2020)
The emotional scale has shifted its priority from the traditional concern in anxiety to embrace elements of positive psychology such as pleasure, enthusiasm, hope, happiness, appreciation, etc. (MacIntyre et al, 2019)
Summary
Since the mid-1990’s, the rapid development of the higher education system in China has caused a chain of difficulties, such as a decrease in educational expenses for each student, failing teaching circumstances, and extensive variants in teaching quality among the institutions (Wang, 2017). Student engagement is reflected as a flexible process powerfully influenced by the parents, school, and society, which sequentially support students’ cognition, emotion, and performance (Lam et al, 2012) Among those contextual elements such as teachers, peers, parents, and society, the teacher takes on a fundamental role in affecting student engagement and success and can enlighten many of the discrepancies frequently detected within stages of classroom engagement (Pishghadam et al, 2021). The success of the teaching is influenced by the teachers’ qualifications in controlling and implementing the system (Çevik Kiliç, 2018); to date, the role of teachers’ positive emotions on student engagement has not been scrutinized One of these constructive positive emotions is teacher enthusiasm that has been regarded as a central characteristic of an effective teacher and a predictor of student learning behavior, emotional states, and presentation (Lazarides et al, 2019). There is a request for more research on the role of English teacher enthusiasm in involving students in classrooms in a Chinese setting
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