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Research on second language (L2) enjoyment and anxiety has mainly focused on independent reading and writing tasks. An integrated reading-writing task involves students in both reading and writing processes, raising the possibility of different combinations of, and unique interaction between, enjoyment and anxiety across reading and writing in such a task. This study aimed to identify integrated reading-writing task based enjoyment and anxiety profiles using a person-centered latent profile analysis (LPA) and to explore their relationships with imagination and performance. Six hundred and seventy-nine 12th-grade Chinese students completed an integrated reading-writing task, namely a story continuation writing task (SCWT), and a questionnaire measuring their L2 reading enjoyment and anxiety, writing enjoyment and anxiety, and imaginative capacity. The LPA identified four different profiles: (1) the moderate-enjoyment/moderate-anxiety group, (2) the moderate-enjoyment/low-anxiety group, (3) the high-enjoyment/moderate-anxiety group, and (4) the low-enjoyment/high-anxiety group. Further, a student’s profile membership was strongly predicted by imaginative capacity. Those in the moderate-enjoyment/low-anxiety group scored highest in story continuation writing performance. Pedagogical implications tailored to integrated reading-writing task instruction are discussed.

This study aims to uncover the relationship between interaction and alignment in a reading-speaking integrated continuation task, especially focusing on whether an increase in interaction intensity can lead to stronger alignment and further generate positive effects on L2 learning. To this end, 31 participants were asked to perform reading-speaking integrated continuation tasks under three different conditions featuring low, medium and high interaction intensity respectively. The results showed that 1) alignment existed in the reading-speaking integrated continuation task; 2) increasing interaction intensity generated stronger alignment at both linguistic and situational levels; 3) growing interaction intensity contributed to more coherent and accurate L2 oral production. These findings not only proved the workings of mind-body-world alignment, but also testified that increasing interaction intensity could bring about a stronger alignment effect (Wang, 2010), which then contributed to better L2 oral performance. These findings confirm again the role of interaction in L2 learning and suggest that alignment could possibly be a mediating factor that links interaction and L2 development. Pedagogical implications for teaching and learning L2 speaking are discussed.

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