---
title: "Navigating emotional resonance and language identity through"
description: "The study asks whether teaching Chinese university EFL learners about World Englishes, the view that all English varieties… 40 references."
authors: ["Yaoyao Zhu", "Yan Zhang", "Chunlin Yao"]
year: 2026
venue: "Frontiers in Psychology 17"
source: "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431/full"
doi: "10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431"
licence: "CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Frontiers in Psychology)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/zhu-2026-navigating-emotional-resonance-language-identity/"
---
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# Navigating emotional resonance and language identity through World Englishes education: an experimental intervention with EFL learners in China

**Authors:** Yaoyao Zhu, [Yan Zhang](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/yan-zhang/) and Chunlin Yao · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** [Frontiers in Psychology 17](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/frontiers-in-psychology/) ([Frontiers in Psychology 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/frontiers-in-psychology/2026/)) · **Publisher:** [Frontiers Media](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/frontiers-media/) · **Licence:** [CC BY (journal licence per DOAJ; Frontiers in Psychology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431) · [PDF](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431/pdf) · [DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431](https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7131244174)

**Citations:** 1 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The study asks whether teaching Chinese university EFL learners about World Englishes, the view that all English varieties (Chinese English included) are legitimate and owned by all their users, can change how they relate to English. The authors argue that many learners see English as someone else's language, which weakens identity and confidence. Of the factors behind weak emotional engagement with a foreign language, they treat identity as the one most open to change. In a quasi-experiment, two classes (77 students) that showed no initial differences were randomly assigned to conditions. Both took the same course, except for 16 academic hours: World Englishes for the experimental class and the history of English for the control class. After 10 weeks, both classes repeated two adapted questionnaires, one on English language identity and one on emotional resonance with English. The experimental class improved more on both measures. The authors take this as support for building World Englishes into Chinese EFL curricula, though they caution that the results may not generalise.

## Key points
- Sample: experimental class of 38 students (24 F, 14 M, mean age 18.6) and control class of 39 students (22 F, 17 M, mean age 19.2).
- The control class got an equal-length substitute module (history of English) rather than nothing, so total teaching time was the same in both classes.
- The identity instrument was adapted from Khatib and Rezaei (2013). It has 20 items across six domains, including attachment to Chinese, pronunciation attitudes and language use in society, with test–retest r = 0.835.
- The emotional resonance instrument came from Toivo et al. (2024) by swapping "my L1/LX" for "Chinese/English." It has 15 items, a prior Cronbach's alpha of 0.867 and test–retest reliability of 0.853. Both questionnaires use a five-point Likert scale.
- The authors list three limitations: no principled sample-size estimate, highly motivated participants from an extracurricular setting, and pedagogical recommendations that were never tested.

## Interesting ideas
- **Active control condition.** The control group received a time-matched module with different content, not an empty slot, so any gain can be tied to the content rather than to the extra hours.
- **Baseline equivalence before assignment.** The authors confirmed the two groups did not differ at the start, and only then compared their gains.
- **Template-based instrument adaptation.** An existing questionnaire was reused by replacing the abstract placeholders "L1/LX" with concrete language names.
- **Test–retest as a reliability check.** Each instrument was given twice to see whether it produces stable scores, separately from what it measures.
- **Treating all varieties as legitimate.** The World Englishes stance treats non-native varieties as valid English rather than errors.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (learn): Compare each new training signal or repair rule against a same-size "placebo" addition, such as random silver sentences, so improvements are not just effects of extra data volume.
- **I2** (learn): Before running an A/B evaluation, check that the two test slices have similar baseline parser and QA scores, so that differences in the slices are not mistaken for model gains.
- **I3** (answer): Write school-test and word-problem items as templates with typed slots, then fill them with different entities or measures to get many controlled variants of one validated question.
- **I4** (learn): Run each evaluation suite twice under different seeds or with paraphrased items, and report its stability before trusting score differences between model versions.
- **I5** (tree): When converting UD dialects or treebanks, tag constructions from other English varieties as variants instead of normalising them to a single standard, so the parser does not penalise them.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

Also on the byline: [Tianjin Chengjian University](https://ror.org/01d0bkz51) · [Xinxiang University](https://ror.org/05qvskn85).

📚 Shelves (2): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 16,039 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 15,891 works

🧭 Topics (3): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,263 works · [😊 Sentiment & emotion](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/sentiment-emotion/) · 972 works · [🖍️ Grammatical error correction & learner language](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/grammatical-error-correction/) · 156 works

## Cite

Cite as: Yaoyao Zhu, Yan Zhang and Chunlin Yao. 2026. Navigating emotional resonance and language identity through World Englishes education: an experimental intervention with EFL learners in China. Frontiers in Psychology 17.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{zhu2026navigating,
  title = {{Navigating emotional resonance and language identity through World Englishes education: an experimental intervention with EFL learners in China}},
  author = {Yaoyao Zhu, Yan Zhang and Chunlin Yao},
  booktitle = {Frontiers in Psychology 17},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1793431}
}
```

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## References

40 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

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*Updated 29 October 2026*