Impact of achievement goal orientations and growth mindset on language performance of secondary school EFL learners in China / Wang Ruishi, Gurnam Kaur Sidhu and Priyadarshini Muthukrishnan

Research in second and foreign language teaching and learning has indicated that there are many factors that influence language performance. These factors can be broadly divided into internal and external factors. This study investigated the impact of two internal factors, namely achievement goal orientations and growth mindset. It explored four types of achievement goal orientations namely mastery approach orientation, mastery avoidance orientation, performance approach orientation and performance avoidance orientation. Meanwhile, the two types of mindset investigated were growth mindset and fixed mindset. This no experimental quantitative study involved 360 Grade Eight Secondary students from five randomly selected schools located in the Tongcheng County in Hubei Province, China. Data were collected using a survey questionnaire and the findings were analyzed using SPPS version 27. The findings indicated that there was a significant and positive relationship between achievement goal orientations and language performance. Mastery approach orientation, and mastery avoidance orientation however showed a significant, moderate and positive relationship, performance approach orientation showed a significant, low and positive relationship and performance avoidance orientation showed a very low and negative relationship with language performance. Furthermore, it showed that there was a significant, very low and positive relationship between growth mindset and language performance. Overall, these findings imply that achievement goal orientations and growth mindset should be further explored as potential factors influencing language performance in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms.