Investigating the role of EFL learners’ goal orientation, task value and writing anxiety in learning strategies: a structural equation modeling approach

This article aims to explore the effects of goal orientation, task value, and writing anxiety on learning strategy usage among EFL learners. Though learners’ goal orientation, and writing anxiety have been exhaustively studied, there is a dearth of studies that have examined how they affect EFL learners’ learning strategy use along with examining the probable mediating role of any motivational factor. Therefore, a questionnaire was employed within a quantitative research framework to gather data from 109 Bangladeshi tertiary-level EFL learners. The data were analysed with a Pearson correlation using IBM SPSS. Additionally, IBM SPSS Amos was used to conduct a path analysis along with mediation analysis, examining the probable mediating role of task value. The results exhibited that learning strategy use was significantly and positively correlated with learners’ goal orientation, task value and writing anxiety. Also, the path model revealed that writing anxiety positively influenced learning strategy use. Additionally, task value appeared to mediate the relationship between learners’ goal orientation and their use of learning strategies. Apart from adding to the existing literature, the educational implications of the findings are also deliberated.