The recent decade has seen an increase in attention and an upsurge in studies about emotions in the field of L2/FL teaching and learning. To expand our understanding, this study set out to investigate how young learners' boredom and enjoyment were related, concurrently and longitudinally, to grit and growth mindsets through the lens of broaden-and-build theory. Ninety-eight primary-school EFL learners in Hong Kong participated in this longitudinal study. The findings show that all variables under investigation were intercorrelated moderately to strongly. Remarkably, the two emotions predicted around 30% to 50% of the variance in grit and growth mindsets. However, closer scrutiny via multiple regressions revealed that enjoyment was the only significant predictor of perseverance of effort (a component of grit) and growth mindsets while boredom was the only significant predictor of consistency of interest (another component of grit). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2024 John Benjamins Publishing Co.

The two-year longitudinal case study reported in this paper documents a Putonghuaspeaking mainland Chinese undergraduate student's language learning experiences and strategy use in an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Using a sociocultural approach, this paper focuses on three biographical episodes, which recount how the student attempted to create alternative ways of learning and seek new learning opportunities within the learning context, how she came to realise the limitations of her efforts and withdrew from her early active pursuits, and how she followed other mainland Chinese students in memorising words and attached her own meanings to her memorisation efforts. The paper highlights the social, cultural and political aspects of her strategy use and argues that learners' biographical experiences are an important avenue for us to understand learners' strategy use as a complicated phenomenon revealing the interplay between learners' agency and context.
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