Investigating the contribution of student engagement and foreign language enjoyment to English majors’ TEM4-related positive emotions: A positive reinforcement perspective

Abstract

With the rise of Positive Psychology, there have been abundant studies concerning positive emotions in English teaching and learning. However, the attention paid to positive emotions related to large-scale English tests as well as the influential factors of such emotions has been scarce. To this end, the present study, from the perspective of Positive Reinforcement, investigated to what extent Student Engagement (SE) and Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE), as reinforcers, contribute to positive emotions related to Test for English Majors-Band 4 (TEM4). Altogether 580 English majors from universities across China were invited to complete three questionnaires as research instruments. Confirmative Factor Analysis was conducted with AMOS 24.0 to guarantee the construct, discriminant and convergent validity of each instrument, after which structural equation modeling and regression analysis were conducted to explore the contribution of SE and FLE to English majors’ TEM4-related positive emotions. The results of structural equation modeling indicated that both SE and FLE contribute significantly to TEM4-related positive emotions, respectively explaining 44.8 % and 51.8 % of the variance. The results of the present study were discussed, and some implications were offered at the end, concerning efforts that need to be made to promote SE and FLE, which ultimately foster English majors’ TEM4-related positive emotions.