Motivational drivers and emotions that students experience play an important role in the process of learning a new language (L2). This has been recognised by researchers and educators, and extensive research has been conducted in recent decades to examine the psychological and emotional factors involved in L2 learning. However, two ubiquitous…

Collaborative problem solving (CPS), as a twenty-first century skill, is critically important for both living and life-long learning. Motivation in CPS equates to students' needs to recognize their efforts in collaboration. Given the complexity of CPS contexts, the intertwined relationship among different types of motivations was investigated…

Gamification is gaining popularity in education because of its positive effects on learning motivation and engagement. However, several studies have doubted the long-term sustainable effects of gamification pedagogy, arguing that it provides only short-term benefits. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to explore the sustainability of…

Chinese students represent a substantial portion of the UK university student population, with most of them being postgraduates. However, whilst the UK remains a top choice for Chinese students seeking to complete a higher degree programme, competition within the global Higher Education (HE) landscape is intensifying. Consequently, popular HE…

The relationship between peer support and academic engagement has been widely explored. However, scarce research examined this relationship for college students, and little was known about the underlying mechanism under this relationship. This study aimed to examine the effect of peer support on academic via the mediation of academic motivation…

Task motivation is critical to learners' task performance. However, scant studies have examined learners' task motivation in the translation continuation task based on the "xu"-argument, an emerging view on language acquisition. This exploratory study examined how Chinese English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners' task motivation…

The relationship among three writing motivation and affective constructs (writing self-efficacy, perceived value of writing, and writing apprehension) and writing performance was examined among 273 Chinese fourth graders. The structural equation modelling results showed that the direct path from writing apprehension to writing performance was…

The aim of this study is to gain insight into the interplay between attitudes, motivation, learning engagement, and perceived learning outcomes in massive open online courses (MOOCs). An online survey was administered to 232 MOOC learners. This study provided comprehensive explanations for individual differences in learning engagement and…

From the perspective of comparative education, it has often been stressed that Chinese families hold high expectations on school achievement and believe in the pay-off of effort. However, the literature on the relationship between effort and academic achievement is limited. Individual effort is not widely considered a significant cause of…

Praise and criticism have long been reported as central feedback designs in academic writing, yet their relative influences on students' reception have not been fully investigated. This study employed six feedback statements (2 valences * 3 writing areas) and collected students' (N = 56) ratings of each statement's perceived comprehension and…

The exploration of factors influencing the output of doctoral research results is meaningful for higher education management. This study's purpose lay in investigating the influence of motivation and training environment on doctoral students' research outcomes in the Chinese province of Sichuan. The study aimed to explore whether environment…

Due to its outstanding advantages of openness, unrestraint and low cost, MOOCs have been growing rapidly in recent years. However, this new self-directed online learning model faces the challenge of the low course completion rate. Based on self-determination theory, this paper combines learners' intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation, and…

In recent years, distance education has become very popular around the world. Innovative pedagogical methods and strategies helped to shift full-time education to online learning. The research purpose is to introduce online piano learning, ensure assessment of academic performance and evaluate the respondents' motivation. The experiment involved…

Perfectionism is widely recognised as a key factor in students' learning experiences, but such evidence is primarily derived from cross-sectional studies testing unidirectional links. To fill in the gap, our study used a longitudinal design and made the initial attempt to examine the bi-directional links between two types of perfectionism…

The affective turn in the second language (L2) acquisition literature has witnessed a shift from the periphery to a clear focus on emotions. Nevertheless, this shift tends to examine emotion separately from cognition. Vygotsky's "perezhivanie" provides a theoretical lens to explore the inextricable interconnectedness of emotion and…