Online English engagement: Antecedents and outcome

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about unprecedented challenges to people’s lives and students’ learning. During the pandemic lockdown in mainland China, English as a foreign language (EFL) courses in universities had to shift from classrooms to online courses. The double-fold aim of the current study was to examine how students’ online English learning engagement affect their English learning outcome and possible antecedents (i.e., enjoyment of ICT use, and metacognitive strategies) that determined students’ online learning engagement and, hence learning outcome. Participants included 427 first-year undergraduate students from a university in mainland China. Results of structural equation modeling indicated that (1) online English engagement positively predicted English learning outcome; (2) English learning engagement was positively associated with enjoyment of ICT use and metacognitive strategies, and (3) enjoyment of ICT use and metacognitive strategies positively affected learning outcome by way of online learning engagement, in the face of the negative direct association between enjoyment of ICT use and learning outcome. Implications for online English learning engagement and instruction are discussed.