Teacher Support and Chinese EFL Students’ Intention to Continue Online Learning: The Mediating Role of Negative Emotions

Yuanyuan Zuo

Teacher Support and Chinese EFL Students’ Intention to Continue Online Learning: The Mediating Role of Negative Emotions

Modern English Education
Abbr : MEESO
2023, 24(), pp.238-252
Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching
Received : October 14, 2023
Accepted : November 17, 2023
Published : November 20, 2023

Yuanyuan Zuo ¹

¹경희대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This survey research examines the direct and indirect relationships between teacher support, negative L2 learner emotions (i.e., anxiety and boredom) and students' intention to continue online learning in the post-pandemic era. A total of 413 Chinese non-English majors participated in the questionnaire survey and reported their primary challenges and suggestions for future online teaching. Using SPSS 26 and PROCESS v4.2 for quantitative data analysis, the results revealed significant correlations between teacher support, negative emotions, and continuance intention in the context of online learning, with the effect sizes ranging from medium to large. Notably, both anxiety and boredom were identified as mediators between teacher support and students’ continuance intention in parallel, with boredom playing a more significant mediating role. In addition, diminished motivation, absence of teacher presence, and unsatisfactory class atmosphere emerged from qualitative data analysis as three obstacles that hindered students’ continuance intention. Five suggestions were accordingly proposed, including increasing teacher-student interaction, incorporating engaging teaching content, improving teacher evaluation and supervision, fostering peer mutual aid and supervision, balancing online and offline teaching, and developing cross-platform software. Pedagogical implications gleaned from these quantitative and qualitative findings brought valuable insights for the advancement of EFL online education.

KEYWORDS

Anxiety, boredom, continuance intention, online learning, teacher support

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

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