A Study On The Influence Of Senior High School Students’ Foreign Language Enjoyment On Student Engagement

In the context of the development of Positive Psychology,it is worth noting that more and more studies are concerning about students’ foreign language enjoyment and student engagement at home and abroad.Relevant studies show that positive academic emotions can help improve student engagement,thus influencing the efficiency and effectiveness of foreign language learning.Although the relevant research on foreign language enjoyment and student engagement in foreign language have been accumulating in various fields,little attention has been paid to the relationship between them,which is more obvious in senior high school students.To fill up the research gap,this study aimed to explore the current situation of senior high school students’ foreign language enjoyment and student engagement and the relationship between them in order to provide enlightenment for improving senior high school students’ foreign language enjoyment and student engagement in foreign language.162 senior high school students from a key secondary school took part in this research.Questionnaires and interviews were applied as part of a mixed research method.Three research questions of this study will be presented as follows:1.What is the status quo of foreign language enjoyment and student engagement of senior high school English learners?2.Is there a correlation between foreign language enjoyment and student engagement of senior high school student? If yes,what is the correlation between them?3.Do different dimensions of foreign language enjoyment of senior high school student have impacts on student engagement respectively? If so,what are their impacts?The following are major findings:Senior high school students’ overall foreign language enjoyment was at a relatively high level.Among the three dimensions of FLE,enjoyment of teacher support got the highest score,followed by enjoyment of student support and enjoyment of English learning.With respect to two dimensions of student engagement,the level of emotional and cognitive engagement was higher than that of behavioral engagement.Besides,there was significant gender difference and grade difference on FLE.There was no significant gender difference on student engagement while there was significant grade difference.Specifically,senior 3 students’ status quo of foreign language enjoyment and student engagement were the highest,followed by senior 1and senior 2 students.Furthermore,there were significant differences on foreign language and student engagement both between senior 1 and senior 2 students,and between senior 3 and senior 2.However,there were no significant differences on overall foreign language enjoyment and student engagement between senior 1 and senior 3 students.There was a positive correlation between foreign language enjoyment and their student engagement of senior high school students.They were highly correlated.To be specific,students’ enjoyment of English learning was highly correlated with behavioral engagement and moderately correlated with emotional and cognitive engagement.Enjoyment of teacher support and enjoyment of student support had low correlation with the two dimensions of student engagement.Senior high school students’ enjoyment of teacher support could not predict student engagement.However,enjoyment of English learning could explain 58.5% of the variance in student engagement and only 1.8% of the variance in student engagement could be explained by enjoyment of student support.Further implications for senior high school learners,EFL teachers,and schools are provided by this study based on the above findings,calling for collective efforts to develop senior high school students’ foreign language enjoyment and student engagement.