The Relationships between EFL Students’ Academic Emotions and Academic Engagement: The case of Wollo University First Year Students

Abstract

This article reports on the relationships between academic emotions and academic engagement of first year EFL students at Wollo University. It also seeks to identify the emotional and academic engagement patterns of first year students. Forty Five students filled a questionnaire consisting of two scales, namely, academic emotion scale and academic engagement scale. The academic emotions scale was used to collect data on students‟ responses to different emotions they might experience during learning English like enjoyment, happiness, pride, hopelessness, boredom, embarrassment, and anxiety. An academic engagement scale elicited students‟ responses on their cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagements in the learning of English. Students‟ responses on both scales were correlated to determine any possible relationships between the two variables. To describe the data, descriptive statistics such as percentage, mean, minimum, maximum and standard deviations were computed. Pearson-Product-Moment correlations were conducted to see whether or not there was a relationship among the variables. And it was found that students showed moderate academic emotions and academic engagement. The results from the correlation analysis indicated that there was a statistically significant relationship between students‟ academic emotions and their academic engagements. Similarly, significant correlations between the academic emotions variables themselves and academic engagement variables among them were found. Based on the findings, it was recommended that due attention should be given to non-cognitive factors as well in English education.