Boredom Beyond Disengagement: The DRIVE Heuristic for Boredom‐Related Action in Language Learning

Research on foreign and second language (L2) boredom has clarified its antecedents, dimensions, measurement, and relations with motivation, engagement, and achievement. L2 studies also document heterogeneous coping, emotion‐regulation, and self‐regulatory responses, but lack a common functional scheme for comparing how the learner–task relation changes after boredom becomes salient. This conceptual article proposes the DRIVE heuristic for boredom‐related action: Disengagement, Reengagement, Interpretive reframing, Venturing, and Effortful continuation. In this model, boredom is treated as an aversive cue of a perceived problem in attention, value, challenge, resources, or expected progress; the cue does not determine the response that follows. DRIVE was developed abductively from the initial contrast between disengagement and continued learning‐oriented involvement, with candidate distinctions refined through interdisciplinary theory, published L2 research, and experience‐informed L2 examples. The heuristic codes analytically segmented response functions rather than stable learner types or fixed stages. DRIVE complements existing coping and regulation frameworks by classifying the primary response function in the learner–task relation: loss of learning orientation, procedural repair, appraisal change, movement to another learning route, or continued goal‐directed effort without those changes. The article specifies category boundaries, temporal coding rules, L2‐specific affordances, and propositions for measurement, process research, and pedagogy. The article thus outlines a research agenda for evaluating the reliability, distinctiveness, and explanatory value of DRIVE across L2 learning contexts and potentially other domains.