Motivation and anxiety in Chinese EFL students’ listening process: An idiodynamic approach

Abstract

This study pioneers the use of the idiodynamic approach to investigate the dynamic interplay between motivation and anxiety in Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) during listening tasks. Despite the acknowledged importance of understanding moment-to-moment fluctuations in language learning motivations and emotions, research has yet to explore these dynamics within listening comprehension contexts using this approach. To address this gap, the authors enlisted five Chinese EFL learners to examine how motivation and anxiety fluctuate and interact during two distinct listening activities: a multiple-choice English listening test and a listening practice task. Utilizing the Anion Variable Tester V2 software, we captured real-time changes in participants’ motivation and anxiety levels, offering a novel lens through which to view these psychological dynamics. Quantitative analysis, including Pearson correlation per task, Pearson correlation in segment, and moving correlation analysis, revealed significant variations in the relationship between motivation and anxiety across individuals and tasks and patterns of positive, negative, and non-significant correlations emerging within tasks. Qualitatively, the study identified that the factors interactively influence the fluctuations of motivation and anxiety. These findings contribute to our understanding of motivation and anxiety’s nuanced roles in language learning and underscore the value of the idiodynamic method in capturing these complex psychological processes. The implications of this research extend to developing more responsive and emotionally attuned language teaching practices.

Keywords

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST)foreign language listening idiodynamic approach motivation and anxiety

I Introduction

The ‘affective turn’ in second language acquisition (SLA) research was spurred by scholars’ recognition of the pivotal role of affective variables in every step of language learning (Aubrey, 2022; Boudreau et al., 2018; MacIntyre & Wang, 2021). Due to their significance, significant focus has been directed toward the interaction among affective variables such as motivation, enjoyment, anxiety, etc. (e.g. Dong et al., 2022; Lee & Hsieh, 2019). While a considerable number of studies have explored the correlation between motivation and anxiety in general SLA contexts (e.g. S. Chen et al., 2022; J. Li et al., 2022; Tsang, 2022), the specific dynamics of these variables during listening tasks remain underexplored, particularly in how they fluctuate moment by moment.

Among the four primary skills in SLA, listening is uniquely challenging as it requires high cognitive engagement and elicits strong emotional responses such as joy, anxiety, and discomfort. These emotions significantly impact the processes of auditory perception and meaning construction (O’Malley et al., 1989; Tsang, 2022; L. Wang & MacIntyre, 2021). Unlike reading and writing, which allow more time to process information, listening in a second language involves real-time language processing (Rost, 2011). The immediate demand to comprehend verbal communication during listening can lead to more intense and variable emotional experiences than reading and writing (Huang, 2022). Furthermore, motivation and anxiety are key affective factors that intricately interact and influence language learners’ performance during listening tasks (e.g. Bang & Hiver, 2016; Tsang, 2022). These interactions are further complicated by individual differences and situational variables, making the study of their co-occurrence during listening both relevant and necessary (Alrabai, 2022; Chow et al., 2017; Ducker, 2022). While providing valuable insights, traditional research methodologies such as questionnaires, observations and interviews often fall short of capturing these rapid, transient fluctuations in motivation and emotions, and they tend to overlook the nuances of individual experiences (Boudreau et al., 2018; Chon & Shin, 2019; Huang, 2022; MacIntyre & Serroul, 2014).

Addressing these challenges, the idiodynamic approach used in this study allows for a granular analysis of how motivation and anxiety fluctuate and interact and how specific situational factors and individual differences modulate the interplay between motivation and anxiety in real-time during listening tasks (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022). By focusing specifically on listening, we aim to fill a gap in the literature and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the emotional landscape in SLA, paving the way for developing more responsive and emotionally attuned language teaching practices that can better support learners in managing the complexities of listening in a second language (Bang & Hiver, 2016; Dong et al., 2022; Liu & Oga-Baldwin, 2022; Wu et al., 2022).

II Literature review

1 Motivation and anxiety in second language acquisition

Motivation refers to the factors that drive and sustain goal-oriented actions while shaping the direction and intensity of human behaviour (Colman, 2015). In essence, motivation is the set of reasons energizing individuals toward achieving their goals. This concept is particularly relevant in educational contexts such as second language acquisition (SLA), where these motivational forces are critical in determining learning outcomes (Dörnyei, 1998; Lena et al., 2022; O’Reilly, 2014; Yu et al., 2023). The influence of motivation on second language learning is well-explained by theoretical frameworks such as Expectancy-Value Theory (EVT) and Self-Determination Theory. EVT provides a comprehensive model that considers both internal and external factors affecting motivational dynamics (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002; Q. Wang & Xue, 2022). It suggests that students’ expectations of success and task value judgments drive their motivation and significantly influence their learning behaviour and language acquisition levels (Eccles, 1983; Nagle, 2021).

Self-Determination Theory categorizes motivation into autonomous and controlled types, each with distinct effects on learners’ motivation (Deci & Ryan, 2002). Autonomous motivation encompasses types of motivation that involve a high degree of autonomy (Umemoto & Inagaki, 2024). It occurs when activities are pursued for intrinsic satisfaction (Stone et al., 2009). Research has established a strong link between autonomous motivation and increased active participation in learning and academic success (Reeve, 2013; Vansteenkiste et al., 2009). Conversely, controlled motivation is driven by external factors, such as the desire for rewards or the fear of feeling guilty (Ryan & Deci, 2020). It occurs when actions are taken primarily to meet external demands or to avoid negative consequences (Umemoto & Inagaki, 2024). Many studies have demonstrated that autonomous motivation positively correlates with the intention to participate, whereas controlled motivation typically shows a significant negative correlation (Pelletier & Rocchi, 2016). However, the effects of motivation can vary depending on the cultural context (Ryan & Deci, 2020). For instance, research by J. Li et al. (2022) indicates that controlled motivation may still support effective learning among students from collectivist cultures like China.

While motivation is a pivotal factor in shaping second language acquisition outcomes, it is closely interlinked with emotional elements. Negative emotions usually restrict a learner’s focus, while positive emotions enhance learners’ attention and awareness (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012). Within this context, language anxiety is the most thoroughly examined emotion in the field of SLA (Arslan, 2017; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2016; L. Wang & MacIntyre, 2021). Foreign language anxiety often stems from potential threats, self-doubt, frustration, and fears of failure (Chastain, 1988; Z. Chen, 2024; Elkhafaifi, 2005). It shows as ‘worry and other negative emotional reactions aroused when learning or using a second language’ (MacIntyre, 1999, p. 27). Previous research has viewed anxiety either as a stable trait or as a state, while Horwitz (2017) claims that Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) has both state and trait characteristics. The State Anxieties, defined as ‘the onset of anxiety at particular moments’, is suitable for examining its fluctuation in a short time scale (Horwitz, 2017, p. 32).

Research consistently reveals that anxiety is debilitative (Liu & Xiangming, 2019; MacIntyre, 2017; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994). However, various studies indicate that the impact of anxiety is not entirely negative. Educational psychologists have categorized anxiety into two types: facilitating and debilitative (MacIntyre, 2017; Z. Zhou & Ying, 2011; Zhao & Xie, 2013). While debilitative anxiety negatively affects the academic process, facilitating anxiety may enhance motivation and focus (Kader, 2016; Strack & Esteves, 2015). When facilitating anxiety exceeds debilitative anxiety, the overall effect on performance is generally positive and vice versa (Luo et al., 2020). Echoing this perspective, Scovel (1978) argued that a moderate level of anxiety could boost awareness and effort. This assertion is supported by studies that have found moderate levels of foreign language learning anxiety can positively influence students’ learning engagement (Hewitt & Stephenson, 2012).

Research on motivation and anxiety has advanced significantly, shifting from single-variable studies to exploring their interactions with other factors (Abbott & Lee, 2023; Ji et al., 2022; Lan et al., 2023; MacIntyre & Blackie, 2012; Tsang, 2022; Wu et al., 2022; M. Zhou, 2016). For instance, Mendez and Fabela (2014) found that negative emotions can unexpectedly increase motivation due to the moral obligations felt by Mexican students. Specifically, goal-pursuit anxiety can be a motivational force (Papi & Khajavy, 2023). Further, diverse individual profiles have shown that demographic and other affective factors also significantly impact the relationship between motivation and anxiety (Li et al., 2022). Regarding the relationship between motivation and anxiety, Liu and Oga-Baldwin (2022) identified a moderately negative correlation between motivation and anxiety in general language learning tasks, suggesting that higher anxiety may dampen motivation. Conversely, S. Chen et al. (2022) observed that while Spanish students exhibited a correlation between reading motivation and anxiety, this pattern was absent among Chinese learners, pointing to significant cultural variations in how these affective factors interact. This extensive exploration into the dynamics of motivation and anxiety sets the stage for a deeper examination of their roles within the listening process.

2 Motivation and anxiety in second or foreign language listening process

Elkhafaifi (2005) defined listening comprehension anxiety as feeling nervous or frustrated when listening to a foreign language, which may be induced by unfamiliar phonological systems and the foreign cultural contexts of a second language (L2). Compared to other receptive skills, L2 listening can be more anxiety-inducing due to the limited control listeners have over the pace of L2 input (L. Wang & MacIntyre, 2021). Anxious language learners often exhibit lower achievement levels and diminished linguistic self-confidence (Liu & Jackson, 2008; MacIntyre, 2017). However, recent research has found that a moderate level of anxiety can sometimes lead to optimal efficiency (Ji et al., 2022; Karakus Taysi, 2019). This finding highlights the complex interplay between emotional and cognitive factors jointly contributing to the understanding and processing of language in learning environments.

Second language listening motivation is a crucial cognitive factor that drives learners of English as a foreign language to engage in listening activities (Xu & Qiu, 2023). As listening motivation is neglected in the SLA field, studies investigating listening motivation adopt the Self-Determination Theory as a theoretical basis (Lau, 2017; Qiu & Xu, 2023; Tsang, 2022). According to research by Tsang (2022) and Q. Wang et al. (2021), this motivation is influenced by individual traits such as self-confidence and external factors like task difficulty. The complex interaction between listening motivation and anxiety has been explored in various studies. For instance, Bang and Hiver (2016) found an indirect association between intrinsic motivation and anxiety in L2 listening, suggesting that deeper motivational factors can impact anxiety levels. In contrast, several studies, including those by Alrabai (2022) and Chow et al. (2017), have identified a direct negative correlation between listening motivation and anxiety, indicating that higher motivation can lead to reduced anxiety. These findings underscore the importance of understanding how motivational dynamics and anxiety interact to affect language learners.

Further studies explore how individual differences and situational factors impact these relationships (Ducker, 2022). Jiang and Papi (2021) emphasized that a range of situational factors and individual differences, such as academic discipline, frequency of engagement, and age, influence anxiety levels. Additionally, Ji et al. (2022) highlighted that foreign language anxiety not only arises from the intrinsic challenges of learning a new language but is also exacerbated by external pressures like test anxiety and social anxiety. Moreover, K. Li et al. (2023) distinguished listening test anxiety from general listening anxiety and found that while listening test anxiety negatively affected self-perceived performance, general listening anxiety did not affect self-perceived performance but positively affected listening test anxiety. These findings suggest that both intrinsic language difficulties and external situational factors contribute to the development and intensity of anxiety in the listening process. Consequently, exploring the causes and effects of listening anxiety on motivation at a micro level is essential to understand its multifaceted nature and develop targeted interventions.

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) brought a new perspective to examine the complex interaction of affective variables on the individual level. This theory emphasizes the dynamic interaction of multiple factors in the development of the system, the non-linear fluctuating characteristics of the relevant factors at the micro level in time, and the complex interaction between individual differences and the external environment (Larsen-Freeman, 2015). It suggests that affective, cognitive, and social factors act as sub-systems that continuously interact and that a slight change in one of these variables may cause a change in the others, thus affecting the final language acquisition and language proficiency (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). Based on the principle of CDST, several studies have investigated the dynamic changes of emotion and cognition in listening and speaking tasks of foreign language learners with the idiodynamic approach (Aubrey, 2022; Boudreau et al., 2018; MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022).

3 The idiodynamic approach

The idiodynamic approach is a mixed-method technique that monitors changes in emotional or perceptive states associated with individual communication tasks (MacIntyre & Legatto, 2011). Participants rate their emotions immediately after completing a task, providing moment-to-moment data on their affective states (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022). The procedure is implemented in several stages. Initially, participants engage in a videotaped listening or communication task. Subsequently, they use the idiodynamic software (Anion Variable Tester V2 software) to rate their emotional responses (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022). The software then exports these ratings into Excel, providing data and graphical representations of the participants’ emotional fluctuations (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022). Lastly, a stimulated recall session is conducted, where participants reflect on and explain the reasons behind their emotional changes (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022). This methodological approach allows researchers to quantitatively assess changes in affective states while also qualitatively exploring the underlying causes of these changes (MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022).

The idiodynamic approach has been utilized in speaking and listening tasks to closely examine subtle shifts in factors such as anxiety and comprehension (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2022; Ducker, 2022). In some studies, participants simultaneously rated multiple variables, such as enjoyment and anxiety, providing insights into how emotional factors interrelate (Aubrey, 2022; Boudreau et al., 2018). Boudreau et al. (2018) found that a form of mastery motivation or a growth mindset can mitigate the negative effects of anxiety during the L2 communication process. However, excessively high negative emotions can overpower positive emotions. Aubrey (2022) found that increased anxiety during speaking is significantly related to task-level factors, cognitive-linguistic factors, and achievement outcome factors. Particularly, cognitive difficulties, such as conceptualizing ideas, lead to increased anxiety. While individuals feel a sense of accomplishment, their anxiety tends to decrease. MacIntyre and Gregersen (2022) applied this method to look at the correlation between willingness to communicate (WTC) and anxiety in speaking tasks, paving the way to assess emotional and cognitive fluctuation at the same time.

Both motivation and anxiety have been noted for their dynamic nature and studied with the idiodynamic method on a trial basis (MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2022; MacIntyre & Serroul, 2014). However, this approach has rarely been used to investigate the interrelationship between motivation and anxiety. Research by MacIntyre and Serroul (2014) indicates that motivation is not static but constantly fluctuates over time during listening tasks. Similarly, Boudreau et al. (2018) found that the emotion of anxiety also fluctuates over time in such tasks. The dynamic correlation between motivation and anxiety can be measured at the micro level using the idiodynamic method within the CDST framework. This study aims to analyse the moment-by-moment fluctuations of motivation and anxiety in the listening activities of Chinese EFL students across two specific tasks: a multiple-choice listening test and a listening exercise that requires summarizing. The research questions are as follows:

• Research question 1: How do motivation and anxiety correlate with each other when Chinese EFL learners are doing listening tasks?

• Research question 2: How do specific factors influence the fluctuations in motivation and anxiety within listening tasks (a multiple-choice test and a practice task requiring a summary) among Chinese EFL learners?

III Research design

1 Participants

Five non-English major undergraduate students (four female and one male) from a University in China were recruited for this experiment. Their ages ranged from 17 to 21 years (Mean = 19.8, SD = 1.79), and they were in various stages of their education, from freshman to junior year. All participants identified Chinese as their first language and English as their second, with none reporting fluency in a third language. The participants varied in age, gender, major, and frequency of English listening. Participants’ information is shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Participant information.

Participant	1	2	3	4	5
Gender	Female	Male	Female	Female	Female
Age	19	21	17	21	21
Grade	Freshman	Sophomore	Freshman	Junior	Sophomore
Major	Geographic Information Science	Chinese Literature	Atmospheric science	Philosophy	Law
CET 6 listening grade	138	Missing	189	158	173
CET6 grade	461	416	591	469	481
Overseas experience	1 month in England	Never	Never	2 months in Japan and Korea	Never
Settings of English listening	Test Preparation, Classroom, Online Platform	Test Preparation, Classroom	Test Preparation, Classroom	Test Preparation	Test Preparation, Classroom, Online Platform
Frequency of English listening	Often	Not often	Seldom	Seldom	Often
Self-evaluation of English listening (7)	4	3	1	2	2

2 Research instruments

In the research on students’ listening emotions, the context-specific approach categorizes general listening and listening tests (Ji et al., 2022). The most common listening situations for Chinese students of EFL are listening practice in the classroom and listening tests. Therefore, two kinds of listening tasks were designed in this experiment. Task 1 is a simulation test with materials from Grade 6 listening comprehension, totalling about five minutes, including a conversation and a monologue with the topics of music and architecture, respectively. The test questions are multiple-choice questions. The listening questions were placed on the test paper. Task 2 is a post-listening task, which requires a summary and an opinion statement of the topic after listening in either English or Chinese. The listening material is ‘What college brings us’ from an English college textbook for non-English major students.

The Anion Variable Tester V2 software was used to collect the changes in motivation and anxiety per second during the participant’s listening sessions. The scoring range for motivation and anxiety was set from −5 to +5, with −5 indicating very low and +5 indicating very high levels of motivation or anxiety.

In addition, we designed a questionnaire to collect participants’ demographic information. Since the questionnaire was distributed to participants after the completion of the experiment, we added the Likert seven-point scale to assess participants’ perceptions of the listening materials, self-perceived listening proficiency, emotional regulation ability during English listening, confidence level during English listening, and enjoyment during English listening. This information helped us contextualize their performance and interpret the findings more accurately.

3 Research procedures

The experiment was piloted by two participants who were not included in the formal experiment. One day before the start of the formal experiment, the researcher briefly explained the experimental procedure to the participants online and informed the participants of the reward for the experiment.

In the experiment, participants entered an empty classroom. They signed the informed consent form and were informed to simulate a listening exam. After finishing the exam, participants were provided with definitions of motivation and anxiety before scoring. These definitions are sourced from Colman (2015). The translated original concepts, along with simplified explanations, were displayed on the computer screen as follows:

Motivation is a driving force or forces responsible for the initiation, persistence, direction, and vigour of goal-directed behaviour. Motivation is the intrinsic drive of a person’s behaviour. When your motivation is high, you have a strong desire to listen at this point, and you are willing to cope with relatively more energy and effort.

Anxiety is a state of uneasiness, accompanied by dysphoria and somatic signs and symptoms of tension, focused on apprehension of possible failure, misfortune, or danger. When you feel anxious, you experience psychological discomforts such as nervousness, worry, and tension. There may also be physical reactions like increased heart rate and sweating.

The definitions had been confirmed to be comprehensible in the pilot study. After they had read the concepts, the researcher ensured they understood them and then guided them through using the software with a sample video until they became familiar with it. Then, the participants were asked to recall and rate their instantaneous motivation and anxiety levels while watching their videos. Two participants scored their anxiety first, and the other three scored their motivation first. After scoring, the researcher exported the rating graph and conducted a stimulated recall with the video throughout. The questions include: your motivation/anxiety was high/low at that time. What were you experiencing? Your motivation/anxiety increased/decreased a lot. What did you experience? Is there anything else you would like to add?

After the first interview, participants performed the listening practice task. Before listening, the researcher informed participants that they needed to briefly summarize the text and give their own opinions at the end of the listening. The procedure afterwards was the same as in the first round, except when the researcher uploaded the video and set the basic information, the participants completed the one-minute summary and comments. The experiment ended with the questionnaire.

4 Data collection and analysis

The Excel scoring data exported by Anion Variable Tester V2 was first revised by removing the blank seconds at the beginning and the end of the video, where no listening material was played and no scoring was done. Some participants rated their emotional fluctuations even after the listening material had ended. To capture these fluctuations, we also included these responses in our analysis. As a result, participants have slight time variations in each task. After double-checking and refinement, the line graphs of participants’ motivation and anxiety during the listening tasks were presented.

Subsequently, each of the five participants’ Excel sheets of the two tasks was imported into SPSS for statistical and Pearson correlation analysis. The statistical analysis examined the average values and standard deviations of motivation and anxiety for each participant in each task. Furthermore, we calculated the total counts of motivation and anxiety scored for each participant in each task, which reflects the times of participants using the software for scoring, indicating the frequency of the fluctuations of the two variables.

Pearson correlation analysis was conducted for each participant in each task. The data for the correlation analysis were participants’ motivation and anxiety scores during the listening process for each task. Each single correlation analysis helps us grasp the overall relationship between motivation and anxiety for each participant in each task. It also facilitated the assessment of the strength of the relationship between motivation and anxiety among participants by comparing correlation variations among participants and across different tasks.

In addition, this study also conducted a segmental Pearson correlation analysis for those participants who did not show an overall significant correlation in the tasks (Boudreau et al., 2018). According to the visualization of the motivation and anxiety depicted in the graphs, we noted some potential correlations between the two variables within specific intervals. Then, we extracted participants’ motivation and anxiety ratings during these intervals and conducted a Pearson correlation analysis. The correlation analysis of these segments allows us to identify the diversity of correlations within the same task.

We employed the moving correlation analysis proposed by MacIntyre and Ducker (2022) to capture the dynamic relationship between motivation and anxiety. Moving correlation analysis was conducted for each participant’s motivation and anxiety per task. In this analysis, we broke down the data of motivation and anxiety into 10-second segments. The moving correlations between the two variables were calculated using a moving-window approach within each of these 10-second intervals (see MacIntyre & Ducker, 2022).

Corresponding to the study of MacIntyre and Gregersen (2022), we presented the result of moving correlation in line graphs to visualize the dynamic relationship between participants’ motivation and anxiety. Importantly, a significance test for the moving correlation was not conducted because the interpretation of the changing relationship between the two variables is the focus, as MacIntyre and Ducker (2022, p. 6) noted that ‘the correlations produced in a moving window are not meant to estimate the (true) value of the correlation in a population, as much of the individual differences research in SLA does, but rather to focus on how the relationship between two variables changes over time.’

The audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed. Then, we triangulated the idiodynamic rating data with the interview data. We corresponded the transcribed discourse with fluctuations in motivation and anxiety and mapped out the nuanced psychological processes of each participant, delineating their cognitive and emotional fluctuations throughout the tasks. Specific behavioural and emotional patterns unique to each participant were summarized, providing insight into the intricate interplay between motivation, anxiety, and the factors influencing them.

Some commons in participants’ reported factors influencing their changes in motivation and anxiety were also identified. We coded and categorized such common factors as patterns. We summarized the situations in which each factor tended to occur and the relationships of these factors across participants, tasks, and contexts.

IV Results

1 Relationship between motivation and anxiety

The results of the Pearson correlation analysis of motivation and anxiety for the five participants in each of the two tasks are demonstrated in Table 2. The data shows three negative correlations, two positive correlations, and five non-correlations. Participant 3 showed significant negative correlations, whereas Participant 4 showed significant positive correlations. There was no significant correlation between motivation and anxiety for Participant 2 and Participant 5. Participant 1 had a non-significant correlation in Task 1 but a slight negative correlation in Task 2. The uncorrelated relationships showed two main patterns, one in which there was less overlap between the two variables at the same time (e.g. Participant 2) and the other in which the relationship between the two variables was intricate (e.g. Participant 1 and 5). We also detected a segmental significant negative correlation (r = −0.273, p < 0.05) in the 108–169 s in Task 1 of Participant 1.

Table 2.

The Pearson correlation analysis of motivation and anxiety.

N	Task 1							Task 2
	Correlation	Motivation			Anxiety			Correlation	Motivation			Anxiety
	Correlation	Count	M	SD	Count	M	SD	Correlation	Count	M	SD	Count	M	SD
1	−.08	164	0.48	1.30	74	0.19	0.68	−.11*	186	0.58	0.91	20	0.04	0.24
2	−.05	135	0.56	1.04	88	0.16	0.81	−.07	95	0.37	0.68	20	0.04	0.27
3	−.44**	228	0.26	1.93	261	0.59	2.19	−.13*	292	0.61	2.73	298	0.90	2.58
4	.31**	214	−0.02	1.85	94	0.08	0.86	.12*	190	0.75	1.07	74	0.02	0.48
5	−.08	109	0.33	1.06	123	0.49	1.22	−.02	87	0.25	0.80	73	0.11	0.65

Note. *p < .05, **p < .01.

We computed and visualized the moving correlations of motivation and anxiety for each participant in each task. The visualized graphs show that each participant in each task exhibited positive correlations, negative correlations, and near-zero correlations within each task. This indicates that motivation and anxiety exhibit both concurrent and opposite changes.

The moving correlations revealed varying frequencies and magnitudes of positive and negative correlations among individuals and tasks. We identified two distinct patterns among participants. The first pattern exhibited frequent alternations between positive and negative correlations, indicating a dynamic and nuanced interplay between motivation and anxiety (e.g. the graph of Participant 4, Task 1). This pattern was found in the tasks of Participant 3, Participant 4 and Participant 5, and Task 1 of Participant 1 and Participant 2.

In the second pattern, instances of positive and negative correlations are seldom consecutive and only appear within certain segments (e.g. the graph of Participant 2, Task 2). This pattern was found in Task 2 of Participant 1 and Task 2 of Participant 2. In the next subsection, further examining the contextual factors and individual differences within these tasks may provide qualitative insights into these two correlation patterns.

2 Individual differences of the five participants

Participant 1 had the highest self-evaluation score in English listening among the five participants. Her motivation means and counts were higher in Task 2, while her anxiety means and counts were both smaller. In Task 2, she said, ‘Overall, I was more relaxed and willing to keep listening because there was no task of answering questions during the listening’ and ‘I was interested in the topic.’ Therefore, the task type and the topic of the material affected her.

In Task 1, her anxiety came from fear of missing information up front, capturing the keywords, and worrying about performance. Between the two listening materials of Task 1, Participant 1 reported weaker interest and comprehension of the second material than the first one, which explains the fact that she gradually had less frequent motivation but more frequent anxiety. Taking a closer examination, she explained her high motivation and negative anxiety in the first 43 seconds: ‘The content and vocabulary of the recordings were repetitive with the multiple-choice question in the beginning and were more interesting at first. I felt confident.’

Later, a pattern appeared twice where her motivation dropped to negative, followed by positive anxiety due to her ‘distraction from reading the questions’. Entering the second material, Participant 1 had positive motivation and subsequent positive anxiety because she felt less comfortable as she had not read through the multiple-choice questions on the test paper (171–196 seconds).

During 252–271 seconds, her motivation went negative, followed by positive anxiety. She reported:

I didn’t understand a thing, so I briefly went off on a tangent, which caused my anxiety. I heard the clip related to the last question, but I was not sure if I got the right answer to the previous questions. I might have missed the information.

Her anxiety arose from her lack of comprehension and the consequent distraction, which led to her uncertainty about her choice of the previous questions. Later, however, she regulated her mindset and began to ‘back up’ as she sensed the need to approach the end of the task. This was when her motivation and anxiety both increased. In the end, as soon as she heard the information for the last question, she immediately demotivated herself.

Participant 1 described the topic of the listening material in Task 2 as familiar and interesting. As can be seen, she barely felt anxious, and her motivation was sustained in positive value most of the time. She drove the entire listening process with interest, rarely being affected much by inadequate comprehension. Unlike Task 1, she reported listening to the general meaning instead of focusing on the minutiae.

If I have to read the question while listening, it’s a lot of work. Here, I was just listening to the general idea.

Explaining why her motivation dropped a few times, she accounted for one of them for ‘processing the statistic numbers’ and explained the others as ‘my attention needed to be relaxed once in a while’. It is noticeable that her motivation declined in the end. As she said,

It was a typical summary with no new information emerging. This paragraph has shorter sentences than the previous one. I was not paying much attention because there were no more new ideas.

Since she focused more on the overall grasp of the idea, she seldom felt anxious. Her occasional anxious emergence was because of her ‘worry about missing the information’ and ‘relating the job hunting to myself’. She felt anxious once when she experienced comprehension difficulty, but it was transient after she ‘heard the familiar words and content’.

Participant 2 reported that he felt confident and enjoyed the listening process in the questionnaire. There was no significant correlation between motivation and anxiety in Participant 2’s listening tasks. In Task 1, the two variables are mostly influenced by comprehensibility and the key information. His anxiety increased, and his motivation decreased as his understanding became inadequate. Comparably, his comprehension led to ‘concentration’ and, thus, low anxiety. His motivation rose when he heard valuable information for the questions. As soon as he chose an answer, the motivation and anxiety both dropped.

Participant 2 was also asked why he sometimes experienced no fluctuation in motivation and anxiety. His overall lack of motivation and anxiety in Task 2 is attributed to the task type. He felt no task pressure since there was no synchronizing task in Task 2. Therefore, there was a lower level of engagement than in Task 1. Occasional agreement with the viewpoint increased his motivation. But the main reason was his understanding of the text. In contrast, when the text was so difficult that he had difficulty following up, his motivation stayed on the horizon line of 0, ‘I felt like it was really a bit long. I was a little distracted at this time, and I couldn’t keep up.’

Participant 3 has the highest CET 6 grade, yet she had the lowest self-evaluation (1 point) on her listening. She described herself as neither good at nor enjoying the process of English listening. Explaining that she mentioned her background in high school:

I don’t have confidence in my English listening because, in my hometown, the listening score doesn’t count toward our English grade in Gaokao. Therefore, I lack practice in English listening.

Participant 3’s motivation and anxiety showed the highest negative correlations and counts of motivation and anxiety in both tasks among the five. As can be seen in the figure, both anxiety and motivation exhibited more intense fluctuations than Participant 1 and Participant 2. Her mean anxiety in both tasks was also the highest among the five. She said,

My listening is poor. I can’t understand listening for the Grade 4 or 6 exams or in my foreign teacher’s class. I tend to be anxious at the beginning and the end of both tasks because they have the results presented, and I would be very concerned about how good or bad the results are.

In Task 2, Participant 3 did not prioritize viewpoints over examples as other participants did. Participant 3 said her anxiety rose rapidly and significantly affected her listening after she discovered something she did not understand:

My brain was just buzzing in the middle after I couldn’t understand a word, and I returned to normal only when I heard something that I did understand.

The factors that most frequently influenced her motivation and anxiety throughout the listening process were her level of comprehension and her mental regulation of self. On the bright side, Participant 3 had the highest frequency of active emotion regulation. She can quickly react to her anxiety and fears and reset herself to overcome the new sub-task.

Importantly, in Participant 3’s interview, we found motivation and anxiety can influence each other’s fluctuation. For example, Participant 3’s decrease in motivation affected her decrease in anxiety:

This was because when I didn’t want to listen, my motivation was weak, I no longer cared about the outcome, whether I could understand or not, or answering your question. Then I did not feel anxious anymore.

Participant 3’s anxiety also drove a change in her motivation. When her anxiety was too high, Participant 3 actively moderated her anxiety and lowered her expectations, which caused a decrease in motivation:

I heard a keyword and matched it with the content, then I became a bit nervous. I told myself to pay attention, but at that time, I felt a bit short of breath, so I had to lower my expectations, reducing my motivation . . . It’s okay if I didn’t hear it.

Participant 4 is a junior student who would only listen to English for tests. She felt overall calmer and less prone to a great degree of anxiety during listening:

Whether it’s a test or a practice, I don’t seem very anxious. If I’m sure I’ve missed a question, I’ll go straight to the next question. Maybe I feel anxious for a bit, but I would tell myself that if I’m anxious here, I won’t be able to answer the next question. And there will not be anxiety anymore.

She was the only one to have a positive correlation between motivation and anxiety. She mentioned that when anxiety was aroused, she was instead more motivated:

There was a bit of positive anxiety because I was interested and wanted to understand. I was a bit rushed, with the desire to comprehend.

Whereas, at lower levels of anxiety, she tended to feel wandering off or wanting to give up:

I was a bit laid-back, feeling that my state was not good. I did the test badly, and I couldn’t understand, and I said, well, that’s it. I was less anxious at the moment. I felt I was lying flat.

Moreover, task type appeared to impact her respective and correlated motivation and anxiety. In Task 1, her motivation and anxiety averages were the lowest of the five, while in Task 2, her motivation average was the highest.

In Task 1, the motivation and anxiety of Participant 4 synchronically maintained high levels for a while, then changed to low levels, and returned to positive values in the end. She perceived the first material as more understandable than the second. She listened to the text attentively in the first 70 seconds until it appeared that she had missed the critical information and failed to choose the answer to the first two questions. Feeling frustrated and demotivated (76–86 seconds), she encouraged herself to relax and prepare for the next question, where her motivation and anxiety returned to positive value.

Her constant negative motivation flow began right after the end of the first conversation because she felt frustrated as she perceived herself to have performed poorly on the first few questions. Her anxiety and motivation were lowered by her occasional passive mindset of giving up.

(I) kind of missed the point and then felt like the task wasn’t done very well by myself and just got frustrated.

Later, the two variables returned to positive values primarily in response to new sub-tasks and relevant information. Ultimately, her motivation dropped as soon as she stopped hearing relevant information.

In Task 2, Participant 4 was more motivated than the others overall. She said:

I found the topic quite interesting, and there was no task per se. It was just an overview like he was giving me a chat. I could just do the listen.

She reported that since the topic of the listening material was more relevant to her, she sometimes agreed with the author’s point of view and associated herself with the content during the listening process. The motivation was only slightly negative for a few seconds throughout the task, mainly due to the lack of novelty in the speaker’s arguments and fatigue due to prolonged listening. The increase in anxiety mainly happened when she ‘tried to capture the point of view’, where her motivation increased simultaneously. Other factors of her rising anxiety were the point of view being ‘too cliché’ to meet her expectations and ‘associating the content with my situation’. While she attributed the decrease in anxiety to ‘the task itself’ being ‘less difficult’.

Participant 5’s motivation and anxiety were also not significantly correlated across the two tasks. Changes in Participant 5’s motivation and anxiety were influenced by keywords, comprehensibility, and uncertainty about the answer in Task 1, whereas they were dominated by comprehensibility alone in Task 2. In Task 2, Participant 5 experienced a change in self-concept, where her anxiety rose at first when she did not understand, but after she realized that not understanding was the norm, her motivation decreased, and her anxiety arousal was less frequent. Quoting her own words, in around 233 seconds, when she had low motivation and anxiety, she reported:

I didn’t understand it. I felt like it was useless to try . . . I wanted to listen to it, but I could not understand . . . Then I was not worrying about not understanding . . . It was perhaps a normal state because this was not the first time that I could not understand.

3 Common reasons for the changes in motivation and anxiety

After transcribing and coding the results of the stimulated recall, six common and frequent factors for the arousal and changes in motivation and anxiety are categorized: (1) comprehension; (2) value judgment; (3) task stress; (4) content of the material; (5) engagement; and (6) self-regulatory process.

a Comprehension

The comprehensibility of the listening text was the most frequent factor directly influencing motivation and anxiety changes, which also indirectly affected self-evaluation and engagement for some participants. The main difficulties hindering comprehension were fast speed, catenation, novel vocabulary, complex sentences, numbers, etc. Individuals perceived those features of the listening material differently, with the intonation being facilitative for Participant 4 in understanding sentences but making it more difficult for Participant 5 to recognize and process vocabulary. Moreover, the task type influences participants’ perceptions and reactions to comprehension difficulties. For example, in Task 1, the speech speed and catenation were perceived as more difficult to capture the keywords and choose the correct options. In Task 2, conversely, complex grammar and new vocabulary interfering with their grasp of the opinions function in emotional changes. Also, the impact of comprehension level on motivation and anxiety varied within the same individual across different contextual settings (e.g. Participant 5).

The impact of comprehension level also varied across different participants. Participants 1, 2 and 3 tended to experience a decrease in anxiety when comprehension level was high, while anxiety rose when comprehension level was low. For example, Participant 3 explained her understanding of the listening material and said, ‘I felt confident enough to keep going, and then I wasn’t anxious about it.’ In contrast, lower comprehension induced Participant 3’s anxiety, ‘I didn’t know what he was talking about, and then my anxiety came up.’

Participant 5 showed a complex pattern where her anxiety rose when she perceived conflict in comprehension of a word and its Chinese version. She said she would feel more anxious when she ‘seemed to know this word according to its pronunciation’ but ‘couldn’t match the Chinese translation of the word’. However, in some cases, her anxiety decreased when she failed to understand anything.

b Value judgement

Participants’ perception and evaluation of the importance of the text was another frequent factor. This dimension involves the judgment of the importance of the ongoing listening information, the reflection of the previous text, and the prediction of the incoming text. In Task 1, this manifested in prioritizing ‘keywords’ relevant to the questions. In Task 2, the opinions in the listening material were important for summarization, evoking stronger motivation than examples. Individuals exhibit varying motivation and anxiety patterns when assessing text’s value. For instance, Participant 3 experiences a decrease in anxiety upon encountering information perceived as valuable, whereas motivation for other participants increases following their perception of the material’s importance.

c Content of the material

The dimension of the content of the listening material includes interest and attitudes (e.g. Participant 2) towards the topic and ideas and the relevance of the topic or content to oneself (e.g. Participant 1). This factor appeared only in Task 2. Some participants were constantly interest-driven by the topic throughout Task 2 (e.g. Participant 1 and Participant 4), whereas others were motivated by certain content parts. The triggering of interest also had a counterproductive effect on motivation as the listening process progressed. Since interest implies a higher expectation of the viewpoint of the content of the listening material, Participant 4 became less motivated when the opinions or conclusions failed to meet her expectations.

d Task stress

Task stress occurs in both types of tasks. In Task I, the stress is more frequent, diverse, and often intertwined with other factors. Since Task 1 is a during-listening test, Participant 1 was faced with the stress of reading the questions on the paper and listening to the material simultaneously. Also, participants faced the pressure of evaluation, doubting previous task performance, and concerning their scores, etc. Task stress also corresponds to social anxiety (e.g. Participant 3 and Participant 4), where participants were stressed about ‘losing face’ if they performed badly (Ji et al., 2022).

e Engagement

Engagement is viewed as the external behavioural construct of the involvement of the activity (Martin et al., 2017). We included the concentrated and engaged state reported by the participants into high engagement and the state of distraction into low engagement. High engagement was only occasionally mentioned due to increased motivation intrigued by factors like task pressure, comprehension, and value judgments. Therefore, high engagement is usually not the reason for motivation. However, lower engagement may influence the fluctuation of anxiety. For example, in Task 1, where Participant 1’s engagement in listening was low because her ‘attention was diverted to reading the questions’, her anxiety showed a downward trend.

f Self-regulatory process

The self-regulatory process includes participants’ self-evaluation of their performance and self-regulation. Negative emotions such as self-blame and guilt from bad self-evaluation associate task pressure, comprehension, and value judgment. In contrast, self-regulation is primarily determined by a positive mindset. The frequency of this factor showed individual differences. For example, the intertwining of negative affective feedback and emotional regulation in Participant 3 was more frequent than in the other participants.

The sources of stimuli that contribute to anxiety and motivation can be single factors, multiple factors, interactions between factors, and cumulative effects of factors. For example, the level of comprehension and value judgment of the text can directly confluence motivation and anxiety. Those actors are also likely to interact with self-regulation to affect the variables. Also, consistent inadequate understanding and task stress cumulate low self-confidence, affecting their subsequent performance in reacting to comprehension and task stress.

V Discussion

This study investigated the relationship between motivation and anxiety in the listening process of Chinese EFL students and the reasons for their fluctuations through the idiodynamic approach. Research question 1 aimed to explore the correlation between motivation and anxiety. The Pearson correlation analysis on motivation and anxiety at the task level revealed diverse correlations between these variables across tasks and individuals. These correlations manifested as positive, negative, or insignificant correlations. This result is consistent with the discrepant correlation between the two variables in second or foreign language learning (Dong et al., 2022; Liu & Oga-Baldwin, 2022; Wu et al., 2022).

The present study found an unexpected positive correlation between motivation and anxiety at the individual level, whereas most previous studies resulted in negative correlations or insignificant relationships between the two variables (Alrabai, 2022; Chow et al., 2017; Jiang & Papi, 2021). Only Participant 4 showed an overall positive correlation between motivation and anxiety. This means that during the listening process, her motivation and anxiety often simultaneously increased or decreased, which can be observed from the two graphs (see Section IV. 1.). We detected rushing and relaxing states in the positive relationship between motivation and anxiety. According to her interview, concurrent increases in anxiety and motivation were found when she was ‘eager to find the answer’ and had a ‘desire to perform the listening well’. The simultaneous decreases in anxiety and motivation were often found when she was ‘laid-back’ as she felt she did not perform well or she had already ‘captured the opinion’ of what she had heard.

The analysis of moving correlations within each task similarly revealed the concurrent presence of positive, negative, and near-zero correlations in the context of each task. Some participants’ moving correlations were evident (the pattern with frequent alternations), but the overall correlation coefficients were insignificant. This may be because the overall correlation coefficient averages the correlation across the entire dataset, potentially masking changes in correlation over specific periods. For those segmental near-zero moving correlations in Task 2 of Participant 1 and Participant 2 (the pattern with occasional correlations), one possible reason is that participants reported fewer motivation and anxiety variables due to their differences in affective changes or unfamiliarity with software use (Boudreau et al., 2018).

Utilizing moving correlation analysis, we found patterns of congruent and opposing changes in motivation and anxiety. The fluctuation of the two variables may share a factor or be influenced by disparate reasons. For instance, difficulties in comprehension, as experienced by Participant 1, can precipitate a decrease in motivation alongside an increase in anxiety. Sometimes, simultaneous fluctuations in motivation and anxiety are caused by respective factors. For example, Participant 4’s decline in motivation was due to her frustration with poor performance. As she said:

I felt a bit frustrated. I didn’t feel very sure of my answers to 2 questions in a row.

While a concurrent decrease in anxiety resulted from her self-regulatory efforts to alleviate nervousness, ‘It’s okay if I didn’t hear it. Don’t be nervous. It’s just a test.’ Moreover, instances of interaction between motivation and anxiety, as evidenced by Participant 3, underscore the complexity of their relationship (see Participant 3 in Section IV. 2.).

Addressing research question 2, we explored how specific situational factors influence the dynamic fluctuations of motivation and anxiety. Common reasons discovered in this study are comprehension, value judgment (Dong et al., 2022), task stress (K. Li et al., 2023), the content of the material (Huang, 2022), engagement (J. Li et al., 2022; Sulis, 2022), and self-regulatory process (Abbott & Lee, 2023). Among these factors, value judgment shows the impact on both variables. The finding of value judgment as a factor in motivation has provided empirical evidence for the EVT model. It has also identified an interaction between anxiety and the EVT model (Q. Wang & Xue, 2022). In both types of tasks, the recognition of the value of the text for task completion can cause changes in anxiety. In these valuable texts, comprehensibility influences the expectations of success, which explains the synergy of comprehension and value judgment.

The self-regulatory processes are also distinguishable among individuals (Chon & Shin, 2019; Karlen, 2016). Consistent with Ducker’s findings, learners’ different responses to factors lead to different patterns in their subsequent motivation and anxiety (Ducker, 2022). This includes giving up or actively regulating negative emotions or mindset. Thus, learners’ self-evaluation and self-regulation are essential in promoting motivation and regulating anxiety (Pietluch, 2022).

Previous studies have disputed the role of anxiety in second language acquisition, while this study found both positive and negative effects of anxiety in the listening process (Lou & Noels, 2017). In most cases, high anxiety is often a result of perfectionism, being too demanding, and not allowing for mistakes, which can lead to increased heart rate, inability to focus, and eventually, side effects on listening quality (Barabadi & Khajavy, 2020). In specific contexts, we observed that as participants aimed to complete the task, they experienced a moderate increase in anxiety. This rise in anxiety redirected their previously distracted attention back to the listening task, thereby enhancing their motivation and engagement, which corresponds to the previous findings (Hewitt & Stephenson, 2012; Scovel, 1978). However, this effect was only episodic. Conversely, the drop in anxiety was not entirely beneficial. All five participants reported that when both their anxiety and motivation were at low levels, they experienced distraction or mindset of giving up (Lou & Noels, 2017).

This study identified social anxiety in some participants in addition to test anxiety and task anxiety. Although many studies have found that social anxiety occurs mainly in second or foreign-language interactions, the present study discovered social anxiety in independent tasks as well, where participants worry about losing face if facing terrible test results or summarizing badly (Lee & Hsieh, 2019; Zhang, 2013; M. Zhou, 2016).

The present study identified a pathway for anxiety-induced motivation, which means anxiety may be a force for motivational increase (Papi & Khajavy, 2023). However, the anxiety-induced motivation fails to support its sustained flow. The frequent positive fluctuations in motivation observed in Participant 4 during Task 2 were driven by interest rather than anxiety. Since her motivation level has consistently been higher than her anxiety level most of the time, this phenomenon is likely to provide insight into the competitive relationship between positive and negative emotions in positive psychology, given the positive association between motivation and positive emotions found in the previous study (Dong et al., 2022; Huang, 2022).

We found that the relevance of the topics in Task 2 to students’ lives triggered learners’ association and reflection. Aubrey (2022) also discovered the relevance of the L2 content influencing the emotions of the individuals. He found increased enjoyment when the L2 learners talked about personal experience. In our study, this relevance reduces learners’ stress to some extent, but the content itself triggers learners to think about their future, thus causing anxiety. The role of this anxiety triggered by the content can be further explored.

The limitations of this study should be acknowledged. This individual research may not generalize its findings to a larger population. Since the sample for this study consisted of only five participants, this result cannot be claimed to apply to the whole population of Chinese EFL students. Moreover, the idiodynamic approach does not entirely and accurately recreate the mental processes in the listening process. Participants reported that there would be accidental unintentional clicking and incomplete or delayed emotional reporting.

VI Conclusions and implications

This study employed an idiodynamic approach to examine the dynamic interaction between motivation and anxiety and interpret these fluctuations with an interview. First, we explored the relationships between motivation and anxiety. The single correlations between motivation and anxiety in each task by each participant vary from negative to positive. The moving correlation showed negative, positive and near-zero correlations dynamically coexisting within each task, indicating the nuanced interplay between motivation and anxiety for each participant.

We investigated the factors that influenced the participants’ motivation and anxiety fluctuations through stimulated recall and identified how various situational factors influence changes in motivation and anxiety in the listening process. Additionally, the common factors intricately function on the fluctuations of motivation and anxiety across different individuals and contexts during the listening process.

The discovery in this study can offer some implications for teachers. We found that anxiety plays different roles in different situations. When teaching English listening, teachers should look at listening anxiety dialectically, recognizing the short-lived positive effects of episodic anxiety and moderating frequent and intensive anxiety. Teachers can also identify different types of anxiety based on their causes and provide intervention and self-regulation guidance (Dörnyei et al., 2014). In this study, anxiety did not support a stable flow of motivation, so teachers should not overstate the positive effects of anxiety, and actively triggering students’ anxiety is not desirable (Jin et al., 2021; MacIntyre, 2017).

In listening, learners’ individual characteristics, emotions, cognition, and other factors constitute a complex dynamic system. Individual perceptions of difficulty and emotional changes vary (Liu & Oga-Baldwin, 2022). Therefore, teachers should pay attention to individual differences when teaching listening. For example, texts with different difficulty levels and various topics can be chosen for students with different proficiency levels and interests when selecting listening materials. Moreover, real-life-based and conversational listening materials can motivate the learners to draw connections to their own experiences when they listen to such materials, thereby fostering more active engagement in doing listening tasks (Aubrey, 2022; Emerick, 2019).

The identified factors and their relationships dynamically influence motivation and anxiety, suggesting avenues for further exploration through qualitative and quantitative research methods. Moreover, moving correlation analysis provides a novel method for further discovering dynamic emotional interactions. Additionally, a larger sample size from diverse teaching environments may offer richer insights into the interplay between motivation and anxiety across different contexts. Furthermore, identifying potential patterns in listening tasks prompts broader inquiries into the applicability of these findings across other language learning modalities for a more comprehensive understanding of the complex interrelationships among motivation, anxiety, and language learning processes.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Xuande Wu

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