Achievement goals and emotions of Chinese EFL students: A control-value theory approach

Drawing on the control-value theory, the study investigated how achievement emotions (i.e., enjoyment and anxiety) were predicted by their proximal antecedents (i.e., control appraisal, intrinsic value appraisal, and extrinsic value appraisal) and distal antecedents (i.e., achievement goals: mastery-approach goal, mastery-avoidance goal, performance-approach goal, and performance-avoidance goal) in a Chinese EFL context. A total of 2268 Chinese university students participated in a questionnaire survey. Path analyses show that enjoyment was predicted by all the above-mentioned achievement goals and appraisals, while anxiety was not predicted by extrinsic value appraisal and mastery-avoidance goal. Results also show that control-value appraisals partially mediated the relationships between three achievement goals (mastery-approach goal, mastery-avoidance goal, and performance-avoidance goal) and the two achievement emotions. These findings elucidate the mechanism underlying the instigation of emotions, instantiating the control-value theory in the specific EFL context. The findings also provide insightful pedagogical implications for L2 emotion intervention.