An Investigation Of Junior 3 School Students’ Language Mindsets And Their Engagement In English Learning

With the increasing acknowledgement that learner engagement should be put into the spotlight when it comes to assessing students’ achievement and performance in school,learner engagement has become a trending research focus in education.When it comes to English learning in particular,in China,the traditional focus on final scores actually sidelines the importance of engagement.Scholars generally reach an agreement that learner engagement can be divided into three dimensions,namely,behavioural,emotional and cognitive engagement.However,research on learner engagement lacks a diachronic perspective.Meanwhile,growth language mindset refers to the fact that people believe their language ability can be developed gradually.Therefore,people’s mindset orientations will actually consciously or unconsciously influence their behaviours.However,among studies on learner engagement,those related with mindsets are scant,and also the existed studies are not lack of controversies.To bridge the current gap,from a dynamic perspective,the current study distributed questionnaires to 72 junior 3 school students in an average rural school before and after 4 weeks,conducted interviews with 8 selected students from the previous questionnaire respondents and also collected students’ exit tickets about their engagement in specific English classes during the whole process.This study tries to address the following questions:1)What characterizes Chinese junior 3 school students’ language mindsets?2)What characterizes Chinese junior 3 school students’ engagement in English learning?3)What is the relationship between students’ language mindsets and their engagement in English learning? How to explain the relationship?After analysing the data collected,the results are as follows.Firstly,in terms of language mindsets,a majority of junior 3 school students in this case hold fixed mindsets.That is to say,they believe that people’s language ability is biologically programmed,leaving little room for further changes.Nevertheless,there are still a small group of people holding growth mindsets,believing in the malleability of language ability,and in this case,this refers to the possibility of improving their English ability by effort.Secondly,in this study,students’ engagement in English learning is at uppermedium level,with cognitive engagement at the highest level and behavioural engagement at the lowest.This means that a majority of students are very engaged in English learning,however,they can be very shy to raise or answer questions actively if teachers do not ask.When it comes to students with different language mindsets,students holding growth mindsets report a higher level of engagement than those with fixed mindsets.Lastly,students’ language mindsets are significantly correlated with their engagement in English learning.The stronger students tend to hold growth mindset,the more engaged they are in English learning.Furthermore,students’ language mindsets are found to have predictive effect on their engagement based on the results from the linear regression analysis.However,when students’ change of engagement level in this4-week period is included,the correlation is weak.Among the three subcategories of engagement,the correlation is only significant between the change of students’ emotional engagement level and their language mindsets.Their language mindsets also have no predictive effect on the change of engagement level.By further analysis,student-related,teacher-related and context-related reasons are found to explain the loose connection mentioned previously.To be more specific,students’ sleepiness,affect,interest,teachers’ feedback style,the classroom atmosphere,and Zhongkao appear as the influencing factors.These findings highlight the need for teaching practitioners to pay attention to students’ engagement in English learning and their language mindsets.Both engagement and language mindsets are changeable provided that teachers take care to encourage students to engage behaviourally,cognitively and emotionally and try to convey to students positive growth-mindset messages.