Perceived Teacher Enthusiasm and Student Engagement in Chinese EFL Classrooms: The Mediating Role of Emotions and Moderating Effect of Language Mindsets

Grounded in Control-Value Theory, this study tested a moderated mediation model to examine the interplay between perceived teacher enthusiasm, foreign language emotions (enjoyment and boredom), language mindsets, and classroom engagement. Data were collected from 1,193 Chinese university students learning English as a foreign language via questionnaires. The results, analyzed using multi-group structural equation modeling, revealed that perceived teacher enthusiasm functioned as an antecedent whose positive relationship with engagement was significantly mediated by learners’ emotions. While the promotive pathway via enjoyment dominated the model, the protective pathway via boredom mitigation was confirmed as a secondary mechanism. Furthermore, this mediation was moderated by language mindsets: growth-mindset learners appeared internally driven, showing a significantly stronger translation of enjoyment into engagement. In contrast, fixed-mindset learners were more externally regulated, relying more heavily on the teacher’s enthusiasm to sustain engagement and mitigate boredom. This study advances the field by moving from universal trends to identifying the boundary conditions of emotional contagion, demonstrating that the role of teacher enthusiasm is contingent on students’ internal belief systems.