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Abstract
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Writing in a foreign language is widely recognized as one of the most cognitively demanding and affectively loaded skills for EFL learners. It requires the orchestration of linguistic knowledge, higher order cognitive processes, and self management of emotions and motivation (Hyland, 2016; Kormos, 2012). For university level EFL learners, writing tasks often trigger intense emotional reactions, particularly anxiety, but also positive emotions such as enjoyment, as well as negative deactivating emotions like boredom (Cheng, 2004; Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2016; Li, 2021). Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that writing anxiety negatively affects writing quality, fluency, and learners’ willingness to engage in writing tasks (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994; Negari & Rezaabadi, 2012; Woodrow, 2011). At the same time, the rise of positive psychology in second language acquisition has shifted attention toward positive emotions, particularly enjoyment, which has been shown to facilitate engagement, persistence, and achievement in language learning, including writing (Dewaele et al., 2019; Li et al., 2023). More recently, boredom has emerged as a critical yet underexplored emotion in L2 writing, associated with disengagement, reduced effort, and poorer achievement (Kruk et al., 2022; Li et al., 2025).
Parallel to the affective turn in SLA, self regulated learning (SRL) theory has provided a powerful framework for understanding how learners actively control their cognition, motivation, behavior, and emotions during learning (Zimmerman, 2000; Schunk & Zimmerman, 2012). In the domain of writing, self regulated writing strategies—such as goal setting, planning, monitoring, feedback use, motivational regulation, and self reflection—have been shown to enhance writing performance and learner autonomy (Zimmerman & Risemberg, 1997; Teng & Zhang, 2020). Despite a growing body of international research examining self regulated writing strategies and writing performance, relativ
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