Foreign Language Enjoyment and Anxiety in Chinese EFL Classrooms: A Latent Profile Analysis of Learner Subtypes

Foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) are among the most intensively studied emotions in second language (L2) learning. Yet the existing literature is dominated by a variable-centred logic, reporting the average strength of association between the two constructs and thereby leaving a substantive question unanswered: how do enjoyment and anxiety combine within the same learner? Framed by control-value theory and broaden-and-build theory, this study examined 1,086 non-English-major undergraduates drawn from three universities in eastern China. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was applied to identify enjoyment–anxiety configurations, and R3STEP and BCH procedures were used to test profile differences in academic achievement, classroom engagement, gender, major, and year of study. Four interpretable profiles emerged: dual-high (14.2%), enjoyment-dominant (38.6%), anxiety-dominant (30.1%), and dual-low (17.1%). The four-profile solution yielded an entropy of 0.847, and both the BLRT and the LMR-LRT indicated a significant improvement over the three-profile solution. Enjoyment and anxiety did not function as opposite poles of a single dimension. The dual-high profile, comprising one seventh of the sample, did not differ significantly from the anxiety-dominant profile in anxiety, yet its enjoyment approached that of the enjoyment-dominant profile—indicating that high enjoyment does not offset high anxiety. BCH tests revealed significant associations between profiles and both achievement and engagement, with medium-to-large effect sizes (Cohen's d = 0.52–1.13); the dual-low profile reported the lowest engagement, and the anxiety-dominant profile the lowest achievement. Profile distribution varied by year of study, with sophomores significantly over-represented in the anxiety-dominant profile relative to first-year students. We argue that a person-centred lens discloses configurational heterogeneity that variable-centred methods necessarily obscure, and that classroom intervention should move beyond single-direction strategies—raising enjoyment or lowering anxiety—toward profile-tailored combinations.