Understanding the roles of grit and well-being in L2 achievement among Chinese university english learners.

BACKGROUND

In recent years, the role of grit in second language (L2) acquisition has begun to attract scholarly interest, but the results of previous studies have been inconsistent. Moreover, with the rapid flowering of positive psychology, the well-being of L2 students and its effect on L2 learning have also come under scrutiny, but existing research has been fragmentary, especially lacking in studies on the effect of well-being on L2 achievement.

METHOD

Based on a questionnaire survey among 343 English major freshmen in a Chinese university, this study explored the predictive effect of “perseverance of effort” (PE) and “consistency of interest”(CI) ‒ the two dimensions of grit ‒ on the learners’ L2 achievement, and the possible mediating roles of the five elements of well-being (i.e., positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment) in the relationship between the two dimensions of grit and L2 achievement.

RESULTS

The findings revealed that PE had no predictive effect on learners’ L2 achievement while CI had significant and positive predictive effect on the latter, and that the mediating effect of well-being was statistically non-significant.

CONCLUSION

The results indicated that L2 students’ consistent interest in and enthusiasm toward L2 learning should be cultivated, and that an L2-specific well-being scale should be developed in order to better reveal the relationships between grit, well-being and L2 achievement.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-025-02933-4.