Investigating grit in second language learning: The role of individual difference factors and background variables

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 related to learning second or foreign languages. The present article seeks to fill this gap by reporting the findings of a study which has investigated the relationships among grit and a number of other ID factors, that is, domain-general grit, intended effort, language learning enjoyment, and language learning curiosity, as well as background variables, such as age, gender, year of study and experience in learning the target language. Correlational analyses, regression analyses, independent samples and paired t-tests, as well as one way ANOVAs were run on the data collected from 99 Polish students majoring in English. The main finding was that while language learning enjoyment is a direct predictor of L2 grit for younger students, general grit only enters the picture in the case of older students, being itself predicted by enjoyment. The results serve as a basis for the assumption that L2 grit is distinct from general grit, its levels may differ for different languages being learnt and it is likely to be malleable.