Effect of mobile phone app-based education on quality of life and menopausal symptoms in menopausal women.

Over the past two decades, English-medium instruction (EMI) has become an increasingly prominent feature of higher education worldwide, especially in non-Anglophone settings where universities pursue internationalization and global competitiveness (; ). It is commonly presented as a strategic tool for strengthening students’ academic and linguistic resources while also enhancing institutions’ international visibility and appeal (; ). Yet, empirical research has consistently shown that students’ experiences of EMI vary widely. Across EMI learning contexts, learners report markedly different levels of satisfaction, emotional engagement, and willingness to continue learning through EMI (; ). While many students acknowledge the instrumental value of EMI, they also describe emotional strain, heightened anxiety, and doubts about whether sustained engagement in EMI learning is worth the effort (; ; ). Taken together, these mixed accounts suggest that EMI learning is shaped not only by cognitive demands but also by learners’ emotional responses, raising a central question concerning the relationships among demanding EMI experiences, learners’ affective evaluations, and their willingness to persist. Existing EMI research has approached variation in learners’ satisfaction and willingness to persist through several complementary perspectives. One influential perspective foregrounds learners’ English language proficiency, suggesting that limited linguistic resources heighten cognitive strain and constrain learners’ ability to engage productively with EMI learning (; ). A second line of inquiry shifts attention toward instructional and contextual conditions, including perceived teacher support, classroom interaction, and pedagogical design, which shape the quality of learners’ EMI experiences (). Drawing on cognitive load theory, subsequent studies have increasingly characterized EMI as a learning mode that places substantial demands on cognitive processing, often treating cognitive load as a limiting factor that impedes comprehension and learning efficiency, following foundational formulations by and . Taken together, this body of work has clarified the linguistic, instructional, and cognitive conditions under which learners are more likely to engage successfully in EMI learning. What remains less clearly articulated is the relationship between demanding EMI experiences, learners’ affective evaluations, and their intention to continue EMI learning. Two closely connected gaps remain insufficiently addressed in the EMI literature. Although learning satisfaction is frequently examined in EMI research, it is seldom conceptualized as an affective evaluation mechanism that actively shapes learners’ decisions about continued engagement. More often, satisfaction is positioned as a distal outcome, rather than as an evaluative mechanism linking learning experiences to persistence-related judgments (; ). At the same time, continuance intention—despite its central role in learning systems and user behavior research—has received limited attention in EMI contexts, which tend to prioritize achievement outcomes and momentary emotional responses over longer-term engagement decisions (; ; ; ). Beyond these gaps, prior EMI and related online-learning research has often emphasized the potential costs of high cognitive demand, including increased processing difficulty and weaker evaluative outcomes (; ; ). This emphasis leaves less room for examining whether cognitive effort in demanding learning environments may also carry different evaluative meanings when it remains manageable (; ). Consequently, the relationships between cognitive demands, learners’ affective appraisal of EMI experiences, and the evaluative significance of positive emotions in challenging EMI contexts require further clarification.