Innovation in Language Learning

Social Cognitive Theory and the Control-Value Theory pointed out that perceived teacher support, as an important environmental variable, plays a significant role in shaping students’ personalities, promoting students’ individual development, and alleviating students’ negative emotions. Therefore, this study introduced second language grit and academic self-efficacy, aiming to explore the relationship between students’ perceived teacher support and foreign language burnout, considering whether L2 grit and academic self-efficacy play a chain mediating role. 378 Chinese high school students were recruited to complete the paper questionnaire of the four variables. SPSS 26.0 and PROCESS v4.1 were used for descriptive, correlational, and mediating analysis. The research results showed that Chinese high school students had moderately high levels of perceived teacher support, L2 grit, academic self-efficacy, and foreign language burnout. Lastly, further correlation analysis showed the significant correlation between the four variables. Mediating effect showed that L2 grit and academic self-efficacy play a chain mediating role between perceived teacher support and foreign language.The study makes up for the vacancy of empirical studies on foreign language burnout in the field of L2 acquisition and confirms the effectiveness of Social Cognitive Theory and Control-Value Theory in explaining foreign language learning phenomena. Practically, it also shows the general tendency of Chinese high school students’ foreign language burnout and provides selective approaches and suggestions for relieving students’ foreign language burnout.