BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Language, Culture and Diversity
The relationship between strategic approaches and academic procrastination in English learning among Chinese college students: the mediating effect of neuroticism
Provisionally accepted
- University of Science and Technology Liaoning, Anshan, China
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Drawing on the perspectives of planned behavior theory and the triple A theory, this study aims to investigate the association between college students' strategic approaches and academic procrastination in English learning, as well as the mediating effect of neuroticism. A total of 1,169 college students completed surveys including the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students, NEO Five-Factor Inventory, and Aitken's Procrastination Inventory. The findings revealed a significant inverse correlation between strategic approaches and both neuroticism and academic procrastination in English learning. Additionally, neuroticism exhibited a significant positive correlation with academic procrastination. Further analysis confirmed that neuroticism significantly mediated the association between strategic approaches and English learning procrastination, accounting for 12.25% of the total effect. The findings suggest that neuroticism operates as a plausible, though not definitive, mechanism linking strategic learning behaviors to procrastination.
Keywords: college students, strategic approaches, academic procrastination, neuroticism, Mediating effect
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 24 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yan Zhou, yanzhou198923@126.com
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