Navigating the emotional landscape: Insights into resilience, engagement, and burnout among Chinese High School English as a Foreign Language Learners

Abstract

To explore the relationship between resilience, engagement, and burnout among Chinese senior high school students learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), this study delves into relatively lesser-examined aversive emotions in language education. It sheds light on how these learners experience and manage these emotions in the in the Chinese senior high school EFL education context. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this study acknowledges the spectrum of emotional experiences in language learning, ranging from positive states like engagement to negative states like burnout and disengagement. The rationale for combining these three variables—burnout, resilience, and engagement—lies in their interconnected nature in the emotional landscape of language learning. Through semi-structured interviews with 25 senior high school students and subsequent analysis using MAXQDA software, this study uncovers how learning environment factors, course content, teacher-student interactions, and individual motivations significantly influence these emotional states. This study not only advances our understanding of the emotional dynamics of senior high school EFL learners, but also offers practical insights for educators and policymakers, which may contribute to a comprehensive exploration of how resilience, engagement, and burnout shape the learning experiences of Chinese senior high school EFL learners.