THE PREDICTIVE ROLE OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EMOTIONS IN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARD LEARNING ENGLISH: A PLS-SEM APPROACH

Abstract

This quantitative study used PLS-SEM to analyze how positive and negative emotions predict students’ attitudes toward learning English across three public-sector universities in Karachi, Pakistan. A cross-sectional sample of 120 undergraduate students was used, and students’ emotional responses were measured using the Modified Differential Emotions Scale (mDES). Students’ attitudes toward learning English (ATLE) were assessed using five adapted items from the LLMQ (Ryan, 2008). Data were analyzed using both structural and measurement model assessments in SmartPLS 4. The findings indicated that positive emotions significantly predicted students' attitudes toward English learning (β = 0.258, p < .001). Contrary to the established hypothesis, negative emotions (NE) positively and significantly predicted students’ attitudes toward learning English (ATLE) (β = 0.136, p = .001). These research findings suggest that positive emotions (PE) improve students’ attitudes toward learning English (ATLE), while some negative emotions (NE) may also motivate learning in challenging ESL contexts. Finally, this study contributes to emotion research in SLA by demonstrating the context-dependent role of both positive and negative emotions in Pakistani higher education.