“…With regard to RQ1, we identified three salient classes with distinct developmental patterns for language learning motivation and two developmental patterns for emotion, respectively, among the 176 Chinese college students over two semesters. This observation highlighted a particular contribution of the GMM technique to motivation research; that is, it helped to identify patterned outcomes regarding the complex and dynamic processes of motivational development, which might have been ignored in most process-oriented research where inter-individual differences in terms of developmental processes were not considered (e.g., at a relatively global, subgroup level; see similar views in Baba and Nitta, 2021 ; Lee and Ju, 2021 ). Specifically, three different classes (each with a distinct developmental pattern) were found for the 176 Chinese EFL learners’ learning motivation, with the high stable class comprising the dominant developmental pattern (65.7%), corroborating the finding of Guay et al (2021) that most learners had constantly high levels of motivation over time.…”