Exploring factors influencing Chinese undergraduates' EFL learning interest: A connective instruction perspective

Prior work typically treats personal and contextual influences on interest as isolated variables, offering limited insight into the relational mechanisms that connect them in practice, particularly in English a foreign language (EFL) classroom. This study investigates how connective instruction, as a relational framework emphasizing emotional, social, and instructional connections, shapes Chinese undergraduates' interest in an EFL context. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 21 students, the analysis explores how internal and contextual linkages influence both situational and individual interests. Findings show that situational interest arises when external teaching practices resonate with students' personal goals and values, while individual interest emerges and develops through sustained connections among internal factors such as effort, perceived competence, and self-efficacy. By integrating interest theory with connective instruction, we specify how EFL interest is generated through substantive (content-meaning), instructional (task-learner fit), and interpersonal (teacher-student rapport) connections in class, and how interest consolidates through internal-internal coordination (effort-progress-competence). Practically, we propose designable linkage targets for instructors and outline testable hypotheses for future longitudinal and mixed-methods research on how external-internal and internal-internal linkages may differentially predict the transition from situational to individual interest.