MAOJIE ZHOU (SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL STUDIES UNIVERSITY)

EXPLORATION OF LATENT PROFILES ANALYSIS OF GLOBAL COMPETENCE AMONG EFL LEARNERS AND ITS INFLUENCING FACTORS : SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Adolescents in the new era find themselves amidst the rapid transformations of today's globalized society, where possessing global competence is a fundamental skill for coping with life, learning, and work demands. To explore the potential categorization and influencing factors of global competence among secondary school students, this study selected 6,881 students from 89 secondary schools in Shanghai as participants. Employing latent profile analysis, the study investigates the heterogeneity of global competence among secondary school students. Additionally, it employs variance analysis to examine the relationship between potential categories of global competence and foreign language proficiency. Logistic regression analysis is utilized to identify the influencing factors of the latent profiles. Results indicate that global competence among secondary school students can be categorized into four latent groups: low competence, moderate competence, relatively high competence, and high competence, with the majority falling into the relatively high competence category and the fewest in the low competence category. Significant differences are observed in foreign language proficiency scores among the four latent groups. Factors such as gender, grade level, duration of foreign language study, and number of foreign languages studied influence the latent profiles of global competence. These findings provide insights for future theoretical and practical research endeavors.

Ph.D. candidate at Shanghai International Studies University, with research interests in foreign language teaching and teacher development.