A Study On The Relationship Between Foreign Language Enjoyment And Academic Engagement Of Senior High School Students

The National English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schools(2017 Edition 2020Revision)points out that students’ academic engagement in the learning process should be emphasized.Academic engagement is the degree of students’ efforts to participate in learning activities in the learning process,which is an effective indicator to predict students’ academic achievement and will be affected by many factors such as self-efficacy and foreign language enjoyment.The literature shows that domestic and foreign scholars have studied the relationship between foreign language enjoyment and academic engagement,self-efficacy and academic engagement,but there are few studies on the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between high school students’ foreign language enjoyment and academic engagement.Therefore,this study takes self-efficacy as a mediating variable to explore how high school students’ foreign language enjoyment and self-efficacy jointly affect English academic engagement,so as to explore the main factors affecting high school students’ English academic engagement and provide a factual basis for English teaching reform in senior high school.Selecting 261 senior high students from a middle school in Zhangzhou,Fujian Province as research participants,taking the English classroom enjoyment scale,the English classroom academic engagement scale and the academic self-efficacy scale as the main research tools,this research aim to explore the following three questions through questionnaire survey and interview method.1.What is the level of senior high school students’ foreign language enjoyment,academic engagement and self-efficacy ?2.Are there significant differences in foreign language enjoyment and self-efficacy between students with high score of academic engagement and those with low score?3.Does senior high school students’ self-efficacy have a mediating effect between foreign language enjoyment and academic engagement ?Through analysis on questionnaires and interview data,the results indicate that:1.Firstly,the foreign language enjoyment of senior high school students is generally at a medium level(m=3.346),of which the enjoyment of teacher support is the strongest(m=3.669),and the enjoyment of English learning is the weakest(m=3.103).Secondly,The academic engagement of senior high school students is generally at a medium level(m=3.246),of which the academic development is the highest(m=3.467),and the behavioral engagement is the lowest(m=3.131).Furthermore,the self-efficacy of senior high school students is also at a medium level(m=2.961).Among them,the self-efficacy of learning behavior(m=2.992)is higher than the self-efficacy of learning ability(m=2.930).2.There are significant differences in the overall foreign language enjoyment and its sub-dimensions,including the enjoyment of English learning,the enjoyment of teacher support and the enjoyment of peer support between students with high score of academic engagement and those with low score(p<0.05).In addition,there are also significant differences in the overall self-efficacy and its sub-dimensions,including the self-efficacy of learning ability and the self-efficacy of learning behavior between students with high score of academic engagement and those with low score(p<0.05).3.Senior high school students’ self-efficacy has a complete mediating effect on the relationship between foreign language enjoyment and academic engagement.Among them,the direct effect value of foreign language enjoyment on academic engagement is 0.130(p>0.05),the indirect effect value is 0.279(p<0.05),and the total effect value is 0.409(p<0.05).Based on the above research results,some relevant teaching proposals are put forward from the aspects of cultivating positive emotional experience,developing good learning habits,and establishing strong learning self-confidence,so as to cultivate students’ foreign language enjoyment,improve self-efficacy,and enhance English academic engagement.