A Longitudinal Study of Students’ Emotional Engagement in Task-Based Efl Reading Lessons

This study investigates how English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students’ emotional engagement develops over time across task-based reading lessons. Adopting a short-term longitudinal mixed-methods design, the data were collected from 66 Vietnamese EFL students over five task-based reading lessons within half a semester. The quantitative data were collected via repeated questionnaires administered after each reading task, while the qualitative data were obtained from follow-up interviews with ten selected students. The quantitative results revealed a significant change in emotional engagement across tasks, with engagement increasing after the initial task, peaking midway through the sequence, and declining slightly in the final task. The qualitative findings further showed that students’ emotional engagement was characterized by evolving patterns of enjoyment, enthusiasm, curiosity, and limited boredom, which were closely related to task design, topic relevance, interaction, and novelty. The findings indicate that emotional engagement in task-based reading lessons is dynamic and task-sensitive rather than stable over time. The study highlights the importance of sequencing and designing reading tasks that sustain positive emotional engagement throughout a task sequence in EFL classrooms.

Longitudinal data · Longitudinal study · Qualitative research · Reading (process) · Task (project management) · Vietnamese · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Mind wandering and attention · Second Language Acquisition and Learning