Profiling EFL Students’ Motivation and Anxiety in Collaborative Learning: Associations With Teachers’ Support, Self‐Regulated Learning, and Achievement

ABSTRACT Previous research has established the relationships between motivation, anxiety, teachers’ support, and self‐regulated learning (SRL) in English‐as‐a‐foreign‐language (EFL) learning. Most of the studies, however, have taken a variable‐centered approach in addressing the variable correlations, while learners’ characteristics and variable links among distinct subgroups have been largely overlooked. Besides, the interplay of these variables remains underexplored in the collaborative learning (CL) context. To address these gaps, we examined the configurations of motivation and anxiety in collaborative learning settings and how they are associated with teachers’ support, students' demographic factors, SRL strategy use, and EFL achievement. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted to identify the motivation and anxiety profiles in CL among 532 Hong Kong primary school students, categorizing the students into four profiles: “Highly Motivated and Highly Anxious” (HH), “Motivated and Non‐anxious” (MN), “Slightly Motivated and Slightly Anxious” (SS), and “Demotivated and Non‐anxious” (DN). The results revealed teachers’ support, gender, and the mother language as significant predictors of the profile membership. HH learners exhibited the most frequent SRL strategy use, followed by MN, SS, and DN learners. Notably, HH and MN learners significantly outperformed SS and DN learners in EFL achievement, but no significant differences were found between HH and MN learners or between SS and DN learners. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications for EFL education.