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Measuring and profiling Chinese secondary school English teachers’ language mindsets: an exploratory study of non-native teachers’ perceived L2 proficiency loss

  • Yingping Guo , Weijun Wang ORCID logo , Yuan Yao ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Jie Yu and Yanling Chen
Published/Copyright: May 20, 2022
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
From the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching Volume 61 Issue 4

Abstract

Non-native second language (NNL2) teachers’ perceived L2 proficiency loss is a widespread, yet largely underrepresented phenomenon. This study used a sample of 969 Chinese secondary school non-native English teachers (91.6% female, Mage = 37.18, SD = 9.45) to examine their decremental beliefs toward English language proficiency within the framework of mindsets. Both variable-centered and person-centered approaches were adopted to perform data analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis provided validity evidence for the decremental mindset construct. Latent profile analysis categorized the participants into three groups: low decremental mindset, moderate decremental mindset, and moderate-high decremental mindset teachers. Multi-group structural equation modeling demonstrated that the direct effect of a decremental mindset on effort beliefs about English language ability loss was evident across the three groups, whereas only the decremental mindset of certain moderate-high decremental mindset teachers could lead to prevention-focused motivation. As an early attempt to examine people’s decremental beliefs toward language ability, this study extends existing research on language mindsets and provides a new perspective for the analysis of NNL2 teachers’ perceived L2 proficiency loss. Practical implications for NNL2 teacher educators and administrators are discussed on the basis of the findings.

Keywords: decremental mindset; effort beliefs; non-native second language teachers; perceived second language proficiency loss; prevention-focused motivation
Corresponding author: Yuan Yao, College of Foreign Languages, Wulingshan K-12 Educational Research Center, Huaihua University, East Huaihua Road, 180, Hecheng District, Huaihua, 418000, Hunan, China, E-mail:

Funding source: Social Science Evaluation Committee of Hunan Province

Award Identifier / Grant number: XSP21YBC357

  1. Research funding: This work was supported by the Social Science Evaluation Committee of Hunan Province (grant number XSP21YBC357).

  2. Data availability statement: All the data used in this study are available from the authors through email.

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2022-0050).

Received: 2022-03-01
Accepted: 2022-04-29
Published Online: 2022-05-20
Published in Print: 2023-11-27

© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2022-0050
Keywords for this article
decremental mindset; effort beliefs; non-native second language teachers; perceived second language proficiency loss; prevention-focused motivation

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Investigating the impact of task complexity on uptake and noticing of corrective feedback recasts
  4. Consequences of the comparative fallacy for the acquisition of grammatical aspect in Spanish
  5. Incorporating peer feedback in writing instruction: examining its effects on Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ writing performance
  6. Listener engagement: the missing link in research on accented speech
  7. Enhancing English spatial prepositions acquisition among Spanish learners of English as L2 through an embodied approach
  8. Lexical and grammatical collocations in beginning and intermediate L2 argumentative essays: a bigram study
  9. When concept-based language instruction meets cognitive linguistics: teaching English phrasal verbs with up and out
  10. Validation of a multiple-choice implicature test: insights from Chinese EFL learners’ cognitive processes
  11. A longitudinal study of topic continuity in Chinese EFL learners’ written narratives
  12. Miscommunicated referent tracking in L2 English: a case-by-case analysis
  13. Rule-based or efficiency-driven processing of expletive there in English as a foreign language
  14. When are performance-approach goals more adaptive for Chinese EFL learners? It depends on their underlying reasons
  15. Teaching L2 Spanish idioms with semantic motivation: should this be done proactively or retroactively?
  16. Role of individual differences in incidental L2 vocabulary acquisition through listening to stories: metacognitive awareness and motivation
  17. Measuring and profiling Chinese secondary school English teachers’ language mindsets: an exploratory study of non-native teachers’ perceived L2 proficiency loss
  18. The role of working memory in the effects of models as a written corrective strategy
  19. Comparing motivational features between feedback givers and receivers in English speaking class
  20. Examining resilience in EFL contexts: a survey study of university students in China
  21. High school EFL teachers’ oral corrective feedback beliefs and practices, and the effects of lesson focus
  22. L3 acquisition of aspect: the influence of structural similarity, analytic L2 and general L3 proficiency
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