Jing Wang

Although the importance of language learning across the lifespan has been acknowledged in applied linguistics (e.g., Darnault et al., 2024; Wei, 2020), research has traditionally focused on childre...

In Chinese Universities of the Third Age, systematic inquiry into the well-being of older adults who are English learners in English for Leisure and Specific Purposes programs remains scarce. Using an elicited metaphor analysis, this study explored the well-being of older adult learners in English courses at a University of the Third Age. Participants produced metaphors such as “immersion in nature” and “youth renewal”. These metaphors revealed five core dimensions of well-being in accordance with Seligman's PERMA model: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. These results suggest that educators focus on teaching and learning activities that promote enjoyment, purpose, social connection, and progress, and enact policies to support seniors' overall well-being in older adult education.

With increasing attention paid to the effects of learning a foreign language (FL) on older adults in the currently ageing world, psychological individual difference (ID) variables (e.g. learning motivation) remain much under-investigated, compared with cognitive IDs. This exploratory study examined older adults’ English learning motivation in the Chinese context of English as a foreign language (EFL) by conducting a web-based survey ( n = 510) and semi-structured interviews ( n = 21). Results showed that (1) the selected sociobiographical variables influenced older adults’ English learning motivation to different degrees, among which education, use frequency of English and socioeconomic status (SES) emerged as very important predictors; and (2) four motivators for English learning by older adults emerged as traveling or visiting relatives abroad, keeping the brain in shape, supporting inter-generational communication, and having general interest in the target FL. As one of the first systematic attempts to explore English learning motivation among Chinese older adults, the present study (1) contributes to a further understanding of English learning motivation among older adults in the Chinese EFL context, and (2) provides pedagogical and policy implications for English language teaching targeting older adults.

Academic writing not only conveys academic content but also represents the authorial identity, serving as a means of presenting one’s identity. Writers utilize various linguistic resources to present different possibilities of self, such as intertextuality, thereby constructing their authorial identity. This study examines the Chinese EFL learners’ construction of authorial identity in academic writing from an intertextuality perspective. This study adopts a mixed method, utilizing interviews and written texts as data sources. Results were found that novice writers primarily construct their identities through the practices of direct intertextuality during the initial stages of identity construction. As novice writers gain more experience through extensive reading and writing practices, as well as academic writing courses, their intertextuality practices undergo a transformation. They begin to shift from direct intertextuality to indirect intertextuality, aiming to express their own conceptions, attempting to be like a “scholar” through indirect intertextuality. The study highlights the importance of intertextuality in the construction of academic writing identity for EFL learners. By understanding the interplay between intertextuality and authorial identity, educators can better assist EFL learners in achieving success in their academic writing endeavors.

In applied linguistics generally and bilingualism research in particular, psychological variables remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences compared with cognitive ones. To better understand the under-researched psychological effects of bilingualism, this study investigated well-being, a psychological construct, based on a big-data survey. Drawing upon a national survey (N = 12,582), we examined the influence of bilingualism (operationalised as foreign language (FL) proficiency) and 13 sociobiographical variables (e.g., socio-economic status, SES) on well-being. Among these 14 initial independent variables, perceived social fairness, SES, and health emerged as important predictors for well-being, with FL proficiency and national language (NL) proficiency as potentially important predictors; crucially, FL proficiency was more important than NL proficiency. As the first systematic attempt to link bilingualism with well-being, our study advocates (1) a more holistic perspective towards language (including NL and FL(s)) in any bilingual context and (2) fuller use of effect sizes.

This study was one (partial) replication of the first study focusing on FL teacher enjoyment with the Foreign Language Teaching Enjoyment (FLTE) Scale. The influence of well-being, resilience, and some selected socio-biographical variables on FLTE was examined with a more refined data analysis approach based on hierarchical regression (i.e., offering a range of effect sizes for each predictor). Results showed that resilience (ΔR ² = 11.7 %–38.9 %) and well-being (ΔR ² = 3.6 %–30.9 %) were important factors statistically significantly predicting FLTE for Chinese EFL teachers, whereas length of teaching experience (ΔR ² = 0.1 %–2.2 %) was not regarded as an important predictor and gender (ΔR ² = 0.02 %–0.13 %) was deemed unimportant. This replication study has (1) confirmed that well-being and resilience predict FLTE, (2) reaffirmed the value of the above-mentioned more refined approach, and (3) underscored the benefit for including at least one socio-biographical variable together with the researchers’ focal factors as predictors in hierarchical regression, which will provide useful reference for the relative importance of each predictor. Some practical implications are also discussed.