Bridging the Digital Divide: Multilingual Young People’s Growth Mindset and Emotions in Artificial Intelligence-Mediated Informal Digital Learning of English Engagement

The burgeoning development of artificial intelligence in language education has yet to fully address motivational and affective complexities shaping digital language learning engagement among multilingual young people in under-representative Global South contexts. Employing a structural equation modeling approach, this study surveys 369 Pakistani tertiary multilingual (Punjabi-Urdu-English) young people to explore the predictive impacts of a growth second-language mindset and second-language emotions on artificial intelligence-mediated informal digital learning of English engagement. The research findings reveal that participants’ growth second-language mindset positively and significantly predicts their sense of enjoyment, whereas their growth second-language mindset lacks predictive power over second-language anxiety and boredom. The results also demonstrate that participants’ second-language enjoyment can partially mediate the association between the growth second-language mindset and artificial intelligence-mediated informal digital learning of English engagement and simultaneously make a positive and direct impact on artificial intelligence-mediated informal digital learning of English engagement. Drawing on these quantitative insights, this study offers pedagogical implications, particularly in terms of sustaining the context-specific and multilingual young people to engage with artificial intelligence-mediated digital learning activities beyond the classroom while mobilizing affective dimensions at the crossroads of artificial intelligence technologies affordances and global English.