Exploring the relationships among emotions, willingness to communicate and flow experience in Chinese EFL learners: a structural equation modelling approach

Willingness to communicate (WTC) in second language (L2) is an individual difference factor affected by various learner-internal and learner-external variables. There has been increasing research attention on the examination of WTC with positive emotions, particularly enjoyment, and other Positive Psychology (PP) constructs. However, flow, as a fundamental concept of PP, hasn't gained enough research attention yet. Little is known about how learner emotions (both negative and positive), WTC and flow interplay with each other in L2 learning. The current study intended to fill this gap by exploring the interrelationships among foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language anxiety (FLA), WTC and flow through responses from 378 Chinese college EFL learners using structural equation modelling. The results indicated that FLE was a strong predictor of both flow and WTC. FLA had a significantly negative predictive power on WTC while the negative impact of FLA on flow was weak and not statistically significant. WTC exerted a significant positive effect on flow, justifying the plausibility of WTC as a contributor to flow in L2 learning. An indirect positive effect of FLE on flow through WTC was found weak yet statistically significant.