The interplay between foreign language enjoyment and willingness to communicate among tertiary CSL learners: The mediating roles of growth language mindset and classroom environment

Grounded in Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi’s Three Pillars Theory, this study investigated the influence of foreign language enjoyment, growth language mindset, and classroom environment on the willingness to communicate in the context of learning Chinese as a second language (CSL). Despite the rapid global growth of Chinese learning communities in recent decades, the effect of these positive individual and contextual factors within CSL settings remains largely underexplored. To bridge this gap, the study conducted path analysis on data collected from 207 linguistically and culturally diverse CSL learners in China. The results showed that foreign language enjoyment not only directly enhanced students’ willingness to communicate in Chinese, but also exerted an indirect effect through the chain mediating process of growth language mindset and classroom environment. Specifically, foreign language enjoyment fostered a growth language mindset, which in turn promoted a positive classroom environment and then boosted the students’ willingness to communicate in Chinese. These results validated the application of the Three Pillars Theory and extended Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory to the CSL context, shedding light on the mechanisms linking these factors. The study concluded with some pedagogical implications for CSL education.