The Predictive Effects of Gender and Academic Discipline on Foreign Language Enjoyment of Chinese High School Students.

Jian Huang,Guiying Jiang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.802152

Abstract

Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) plays a facilitative role in FL learning and its contributing factors have been the object of scholarly attention in the Positive Psychology approach to second language acquisition (SLA). The present study examined the predictive effects of gender and academic discipline on overall FLE and each of its subcomponents in a specific Chinese EFL context. Statistical analyses based on a sample of 1,718 high school students showed that: (1) female students scored significantly higher in overall FLE, FLE-Private, and FLE-Atmosphere than their male counterparts, but no significant difference was found in their FLE-Teacher; (2) students of Humanities and Social Sciences scored significantly higher in overall FLE, FLE-Teacher and FLE-Atmosphere than students of Natural Science, though no significant difference was identified for FLE-Private. Reasons for the statistical variations and their implications were also discussed.

Highlights

Emotions are intimately involved in every aspect of learning process (Schutz and Lanehart, 2002) and in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), researchers used to be predominately preoccupied with negative emotions such as anxiety (MacIntyre, 2017; Dewaele and Li, 2020)
The results showed that Humanities and Social Sciences students scored significantly higher than the Natural Science students on the global Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) scale (t (1716) = 4.2, p
The present study revealed significant gender differences in overall FLE, and its three dimensions: FLE-Private, FLE-Teacher, and FLE-Atmosphere

Summary

Introduction

Emotions are intimately involved in every aspect of learning process (Schutz and Lanehart, 2002) and in the field of SLA, researchers used to be predominately preoccupied with negative emotions such as anxiety (MacIntyre, 2017; Dewaele and Li, 2020). Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE), one of the key positive emotions, is receiving increased scholarly attention for its role in promoting FL learning and learners’ mental wellbeing (Li, 2021). Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014) have found in their international corpus of 1,746 participants that female FL learners reported small but significantly higher levels of both FLE and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) than male peers. Female participants scored significantly higher on items referring to mild forms of FLCA such as worry and lack of confidence and -among the FLE items- they

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