Exploring College Students' EFL Learning Engagement in the Context of Blended Learning

Engagement is a leading indicator of learning performance and outcomes. Blended learning in College English courses in China has been prevalent for years, yet it is still necessary to explore and enhance student interest, motivation, and outcomes through further research. Given the critical impact of academic engagement on student success, investigating how students engage in blended learning activities is important. This research presented English language learners' engagement in blended learning behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally between online learning and in-person delivery modalities. It aimed to improve the instructional pedagogies to engage English language learners not only behaviorally, cognitively, but emotionally as well. The research aimed to help teachers gain a comprehensive understanding that will enable them to adjust current methods and identify more effective delivery strategies for improved outcomes. Learners' Engagement in Foreign Language Classroom, developed by Hiver et al. (2020), is taken in this research. In total of 223 EFL students in a Chinese university participated in this survey. The study has some main findings- in the EFL blended learning, online learning shows lower cognitive engagement but higher emotional engagement than in-person learning; blended EFL Learning engagement wasn't affected by gender or degree program levels; there are significant differences between online and in-person learning on the behavioral and cognitive engagement. According to the results, some pedagogical implications were discussed.