The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

617 / 2020-03-20 22:59:38

Positive Personalities and L2 Achievement: The Mediating Role of Positive Emotions

positive personality,positive emotions,questionnaire,structural equation modeling,mediating analysis

Psycholinguistics > Psycholinguistics

Positive psychological (PP) variables are ‘relatively unexamined constructs’ (MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Mercer, 2019, p. 262) in L2 research. Although some researchers recently have explored the links between L2 achievement and PP variables including grit (Teimouri, Tabandeh, and Plonsky, in press) and tolerance of ambiguity (TA, see Dewaele and Li, 2013), more research is needed (Wei and Hu, 2019). Echoing this call, a new line of research exploring the mediating role of Positive Emotions (PE) between PP variables and achievement variables (e.g. Zhang, Dai, and Wang, 2020) emerges. The present paper aims to contribute to it by examining one specific PE (i.e. enjoyment) as mediator between language achievement and two PP variables (grit and TA).

Based on a validated Chinese-language instrument (Liu and Wang, 2020), confirmatory Factor Analysis examined the construct validity of those variables. Structural Equation Modelling analysed the indirect effect of enjoyment between the selected PPs and language achievement variable. The total effect was re-evaluated using multiple regression in order to compare with previous research findings. A theoretical framework among PP variables, PE, and language achievement was developed. The implications for future research were also provided.