Effects of Peer Motivational Support on Learning Engagement Among Medical Students in EFL Classrooms: The Serial Mediating Roles of Task Value and Enjoyment

Learning engagement is generally viewed as a core determinant of learners’ achievement in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, yet the current engagement frameworks contain conceptual ambiguity and measurement overlap. Furthermore, evidence on how peer motivational support shapes learning engagement is limited. Addressing these gaps, this study examined whether task value and enjoyment function as sequential mediators linking peer motivational support to learning engagement. Data were collected from 202 Chinese medical undergraduates across three universities in Guangxi, China. Results indicated that peer motivational support exerted significant direct effects on learning engagement. It also had indirect effects via enjoyment and via the serial pathway through task value and enjoyment, whereas the indirect effect through task value alone was not significant. The model explained 71.1% of the variance in learning engagement. Importance-performance map analysis further showed that peer motivational support was the most important predictor, followed by enjoyment, while task value showed lower importance. These findings extend the application of control-value theory to medical EFL classrooms and offer practical implications for supporting students’ learning engagement.