Structural Dimensions of College Students' Literary Responses in Second Language Teaching Contexts and Scale Development

Literary response serves as a key indicator for measuring college students' comprehension and emotional engagement with literary works during second language learning. Based on reader-response theory and targeting Chinese university students, this study followed standardized scale development procedures. Initial items were generated through literature review and qualitative interviews. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on 362 valid questionnaires, ultimately establishing a 35-item scale measuring college students' literary response in second language teaching contexts. The scale demonstrated good reliability and validity. A subsequent survey of 466 university students from six Chinese institutions revealed through descriptive statistics and multivariate ANOVA that:(1) Gender significantly influenced all dimensions except empathy, with female students scoring slightly higher across all dimensions. (2) Overall literary response decreased with increasing academic year. (3) Humanities majors scored highest across all dimensions, showing significant differences with social science majors and others in all dimensions except immersive reading. This study provides a culturally adapted measurement tool for literary response in second-language teaching and offers empirical support for second-language literature instruction practices.