Profiles of Chinese primary School Students’ Enjoyment and Anxiety in Foreign Language Learning: Combining Variable- and Person-Centered Analyses

This study adopted both variable- and person-centered methods to investigate Chinese primary school students’ foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) as well as factors associated with these emotions, such as language proficiency, gender, grade level, school type, access to foreign teachers and after-school tutoring. Data were collected from 381 students in the fourth and sixth grades of two primary schools in China. Descriptive statistics and latent profile analysis were applied to assess participants’ FLCA and FLE, while one-way ANOVAs and multinomial logistic regression were run to examine the association of various learner-internal and learner-external factors with FLE and FLCA. The participants reported a medium level of FLE and a relatively low level of FLCA, leading to the identification of three distinct profiles: “intense-enjoyment and scant-anxiety” (44%), “medium-enjoyment and medium-anxiety” (54%), and “scant-enjoyment and intense-anxiety” (2%). Our findings indicated that students’ language proficiency, grade level, school type, and after-school tutoring were significantly correlated with their FLE and FLCA levels, as well as their profile membership. However, the study yielded mixed results regarding the impact of access to foreign teachers and the frequency of English lessons per week. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the emotional experiences of young learners in foreign language learning contexts and provide pedagogical implications for developing more tailored instructional strategies to address the diverse emotional needs of students.