The mediating roles of resilience and motivation in the relationship between students’ English learning burnout and engagement: a conservation-of-resources perspective

Abstract Language learning is a dynamic process involving fluctuating resources (e.g. resilience, motivation, and engagement) and stressors (e.g. burnout). With the guidance of Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources Theory, the current study explored the mediating roles of resilience and motivation between burnout and engagement among 640 Chinese senior high school students. The results show that English learning burnout as a psychological stressor significantly and negatively predicted the psychological resources of engagement; resilience and motivation both mediated the relationship between burnout and engagement; and resilience and motivation jointly mediated the chain between burnout and engagement. Indeed, the mediating process could be deemed a process by which students’ psychological resources fluctuate. In this mediating process, students suffering from stress rely on their resource caravans and employ the resources they possess to avoid the psychological stressor’s consequences and replenish what has been lost.