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Abstract Abstract: Triggered situational interest is the inception phase of interest development as well as the precondition of fostering individual interest. In response to Chinese college students’ lack of interest in L2 writing, this article explores the construct componentiality of situational interest in L2 writing and the effectiveness of triggering Chinese students’ situational interest by means of questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews. 212 Chinese non-English major sophomores participated in the present research. Results indicated that situational interest in L2 writing was a multidimensional construct, including instant enjoyment, challenge, and novelty. Among these three factors, novelty was most highly correlated with situational interest. The repeated measures ANOVA showed that contextual richness exerted a significant effect on students’ situational interest in L2 writing and that situational interest was significantly aroused as the contextual features grew richer. The semi-structured interviews revealed that the students preferred writing tasks with relatively richer contextual features as they found them novel, challenging and inspiring. Our findings suggest that supplying rich contextual features in writing tasks can be an effective way in the arousal of students’ situational interest in L2 writing and that teachers can have an important role to play to help generate students’ situational interest.
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