Beyond aptitudes and experiences: The unique role of mindsets in emotions in language classrooms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Achievement in foreign language (FL) classrooms depends on learners' emotional states. A key individual difference factor that is linked to these experiences is growth mindset, which helps learners make positive meaning of their endeavours. However, uncertainties remain regarding the importance of mindsets when factoring in other learner characteristics (aptitude, age of acquisition, language-use experiences, year of learning, gender). This study ( N = 342 university-level FL learners) comprehensively explores how mindsets and learner characteristics are related to multifaceted emotions (enjoyment, helplessness, frustration, boredom, anxiety), and end-of-semester performance. We found that prior language-use experience was the most notable learner characteristic in predicting emotions. Growth mindsets also incrementally predicted all learning emotions, even after controlling for learner characteristics. Although growth mindset was not directly related to performance, it indirectly predicted performance through a decrease in the feeling of helplessness. Altogether, growth mindsets matter for positive classroom experiences. This study shows that language learners' growth mindsets have incremental validity in predicting classroom emotions over other individual factors (aptitude, age of acquisition, prior foreign language [FL] learning experiences, FL use experience). Furthermore, helplessness was the emotion that was most predictive of students' later grades, with fixed mindsets appearing to be a key contributing factor through feelings of helplessness. Therefore, endorsing a growth mindset might help learners feel less helpless in class, which in turn may benefit their performance in foreign language learning. • Learner emotions are multifaceted factors and important for success in foreign language classrooms. • Prior language experience is linked to many aspects of learner emotions. • Growth mindsets contribute to emotions, even after considering learner characteristics. • Growth mindsets did not directly predict performance. • Growth mindsets incrementally predict emotions, which in turn predict performance.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".