Enhancing Foreign Language Enjoyment through Online Cooperative Learning: A Longitudinal Study of EFL Learners

Abstract

This study examines university students’ foreign language enjoyment (FLE) in an online cooperative learning (CL) context and explores, taking a positive psychology approach, how and why CL may shape FLE. To this end, 98 Chinese university students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) were assigned into experimental (n = 49) and control groups (n = 49). Both groups completed a short-form foreign language enjoyment (FLE) scale before and after a 3-month intervention. The students in the experimental group were assigned with tasks that needed to be accomplished by teamwork. Moreover, each team was also requested to reflect upon their cooperation experiences and to self-assess their performance of these tasks. The results show that the overall FLE of the experimental group increased remarkably, whereas that of the control group fluctuated considerably. Furthermore, analyses of experimental group students’ self-appraisal comments revealed that students with pleasant cooperation experiences usually experience high FLE, give satisfactory marks on their performance, and feel confident about achieving better FL performance in the future. The findings and implications provide meaningful insights into how online FLE can be boosted through CL so as to promote positive mental health of students in a technology-assisted language learning (TALL) context.