Engagement

Abstract

This chapter reviews the origins of research into engagement and current definitions and operationalizations before considering its increasing role in language education practice and research. A different strand of research on student engagement emerged from the 1990s, where greater attention started to be given to the psychological components involved in engagement. Second-language acquisition (SLA) researchers have more recently begun to explore engagement in language learning, and this interest has grown rapidly in recent years. Affective engagement concerns “the affective nature of learners’ involvement in the learning activities”. Task-based language teaching studies have made methodological contributions to researching engagement at the task level. The field of engagement studies in SLA is certain to have a major influence on our understanding of language learning processes in all its idiosyncratic ways in the coming years and new technologies will facilitate that growth.