ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1555063
How does academic self-efficacy influence learning anxiety and academic burnout in Chinese characters learning among international students in China?
Provisionally accepted
- Xi'an University of Technology, Xi'an, China
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Background: The interplay between learning self-efficacy, anxiety, and burnout has been extensively documented in English as a Second Language (ESL) education. However, Chinese character learning—a uniquely complex task involving visual-spatial processing, stroke order mastery, and radical decomposition—presents distinct cognitive and affective challenges. The dynamics of self-efficacy, anxiety, and burnout in Chinese character acquisition remain under-explored, creating a critical gap in understanding how these constructs operate in non-alphabetic language contexts. Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate how learning anxiety (LA) affects academic burnout (AB) and explores the role of academic self-efficacy (ASE) in the relationship between the two.Methods: A study of 537 international students (50.4% males, mean age = 20.96 years, SD = 1.36) was conducted using the Academic Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES), Foreign Language Learning Anxiety Scale (FLLAS), Academic Burnout Scale (ABS).Results: ①LA was significantly and positively correlated with AB, and significantly and negatively correlated with ASE. ②ASE mediated the relationship between LA and AB. ③Grade level, sleep quality, and parental education level have a significant effect on ASE, LA and AB; and ④Extroversion has a significant effect on ASE, but not on LA and AB. Conclusion: The chain mediation model validated by this study provides valuable insights into the effects of international students’ learning anxiety (LA) on academic burnout (AB) in China, alongside practical implications for preventing and intervening in LA and AB among other current students.
Keywords: Academic self-efficacy, Learning anxiety, Academic burnout, Chinese character learning, International students in China
Received: 03 Jan 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin. 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: Yang Lin, Xi'an University of Technology, Xi'an, China
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