Unpacking the Mediating Role of Burnout on the Relationship Between Resilience and Engagement in Chinese Senior High School Students’ English Learning

Resilience, burnout and engagement are critical emotional factors influencing language learning, yet existing studies often overlook their combined effects and the interaction between them. This study aimed to explore the relationships among resilience, burnout, and engagement in English learning among senior high school students. A sample of 637 senior high school students from southeastern China completed validated questionnaires, and ten participants were subsequently recruited for semi-structured interviews. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 26 and Mplus 8.3, while interview transcripts were subjected to thematic analysis. The results indicated that participants demonstrated relatively high levels of resilience and engagement alongside low levels of burnout. Structural equation modeling revealed that resilience positively predicted engagement and negatively predicted burnout. Critically, of the two dimensions of burnout, only demotivation exerted a significant negative predictive effect on engagement and served as a partial mediator between resilience and engagement, whereas exhaustion played no significant mediating role. Qualitative findings corroborated these quantitative patterns, illustrating that resilient learners sustained engagement by counteracting motivational decline. These findings yield pedagogical implications for emotion regulation in examination-oriented EFL contexts.