An Exploratory Study of Chinese College Students’ Foreign Language Learning Boredom in Mobile-assisted Language Learning

With the introduction of psychology into the foreign language education domain, foreign language learning boredom has gradually become a research focus in recent years. It is a common inhibitory negative emotion, which seriously hinders students’ foreign language learning. Previous studies examined this language learning emotion in the traditional English classroom and online courses. However, to the best of the author’s knowledge, few studies investigate the existence of boredom within the mobile-assisted education circumstance. Through analyzing the collected sample of 268 quantitative data on two occasions with one-month interval, this study attempts to explore Chinese college students’ foreign language learning boredom in mobile-assisted language learning contexts and its changes. There are three major findings in this exploratory study. First, the existed foreign language boredom scale does not fit for the mobile-assisted language learning context. Second, using the modified foreign language boredom scale for mobile-assisted language learning, we found that Chinese college students’ overall foreign language learning boredom in mobile-assisted context is at a medium level. Third, the foreign language learning boredom emotion has slightly changed but remains the same level in two occasions. This quantitative study intends to extend the existing understanding of both foreign language learning boredom and mobile-assisted foreign language education.