Aynur Kesen Mutlu

Writing in a second language (L2) presents significant challenges due to the existing cognitive and social intricacies. Furthermore, psychological factors such as motivation are possibly closely linked to L2 writing success. The writing motivation in an L2 is affected by different factors that interact to influence students' experiences and results. Among such factors, writing self-efficacy and enjoyment are essential elements that greatly affect L2 students' motivation. This study attempts to inspect the connections among writing, enjoyment, self-efficacy, and motivation. This study offers a thorough understanding of how such variables interrelate and affect one another. Gaining insight into the predictive force of writing enjoyment and self-efficacy provides valuable knowledge for teachers and scholars in developing interventions and strategies aimed at boosting writing motivation among L2 students. Two hundred and thirteen students from English Language Preparatory schools of two universities in Turkey took part and the three questionnaires, namely writing motivation, self-efficacy, and enjoyment were administered to the participants. The data was analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The results indicated that there is a strong correlation between motivation and enjoyment, while the correlations between enjoyment and self-efficacy, as well as motivation and self-efficacy, were moderate. The result through SEM revealed that two predictors (writing enjoyment and writing self-efficacy) together explain 35.6% of the variance in writing motivation. The results suggest a moderate degree of predictability, indicating that such variables play a significant role in explaining reasons for people’s motivation to write. These results provided important knowledge for language stakeholders.

This study sought to explore the association between English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ foreign language learning boredom (FLB) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE) (i.e., personal enjoyment, teacher appreciation, and social enjoyment) as well as the mediating role of student-perceived teacher humor styles (i.e., affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating). In doing so, we firstly investigated the relationship between 229 (67 male and 162 female) Turkish EFL university students’ FLB, FLE, and perceived teacher humor styles. We then probed to determine whether perceived teacher humor styles predict their FLB and FLE. The results indicated that all three indices of FLE had significant negative correlations with FLB. While affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles were significantly and positively correlated with FLE, they were negatively associated with FLB. Aggressive humor had only a significant negative correlation with the teacher appreciation subscale of FLE whereas self-defeating humor indicated a significant positive correlation with FLB. The results also showed that FLE could negatively predict FLB. Finally, the results of the mediation analysis indicated two significant mediation relationships which were significantly related to FLB through affiliative and self-enhancing humor. Implications are discussed in the context of teacher education.