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.

Guided by a revised version of Cross and Hong’s framework based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system theory, the present study adopted a mixed-methods approach to explore teacher emotions in an EFL context. It aims to better understand teacher emotions and the influencing factors of these emotions in the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem of the above-mentioned framework. A total of 109 university EFL teachers completed an online questionnaire survey, and seven of them participated in the follow-up semi-structured interviews. The quantitative analysis of the questionnaire data revealed that the participants demonstrated different levels of the five focal emotions (joy, love, anger, fear, and sadness), and joy was the most frequently experienced emotion. Results also suggested that interactions with students, colleagues, leaders and family (from the microsystem), struggle with work-family balance (from the mesosystem), the performance evaluation system (from the exosystem) and the curriculum reform (from the macrosystem) emerged as important influencing factors of teacher emotions. Implications were discussed, and suggestions concerning emotion regulation were offered to EFL teachers working in tertiary institutions within China and similar contexts.

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.

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.

This study addresses the prevalent challenges in curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness education specifically focusing on the issues of insufficient understanding and exploration of curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness elements by Chinese college teachers in the use of second language writing textbooks, as well as the monotonous teaching activities and content models. In response to these challenges, a two-cycle action research was conducted to integrate second language writing teaching into curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness education within the framework of Activity Theory. Through teacher observations, interviews, and reflections from both teachers and students, findings were found that: 1) teachers should pay attention to practicing the compilation principles and concepts of textbook compilers, and deeply explore the ideological and political elements of unit themes and contents according to their principles and concepts; 2) the construction of curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness community for similar courses, especially the construction of virtual community, is the urgent need for teachers, and is also an effective way to select ideological and political materials; 3) the construction of curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness courses should be implemented in all dimensions of professional teaching with planning, forming a systematic teaching mode of curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness courses. The findings of this research offer valuable insights into the integration of foreign language education and curriculum-based ideology and virtuous awareness education, with the overarching goal of fostering value shaping, ability building, and knowledge imparting.