As a personality trait, 'grit' has been defined as a combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Past research in social psychology has found grit as an important predictor of success across different populations in various academic and non-academic areas. Since successful mastery of a second language (L2) is highly dependent on…

Grit is among the individual difference (ID) variables that have recently come to the attention of researchers investigating second language acquisition. While some empirical evidence has been accumulated, it is clearly scant and limited, also because of the fact that many studies have looked into domain-general grit rather than this attribute as…

Chinese students are frequently seen as passive learners because of their apparent reluctance to speak, particularly in English classrooms. However, this impression seems to reflect a stereotype which is likely to confound willingness to communicate (WTC) and communication behaviour. In this article we argue for more attention to be paid to…