Foreign Language learning and teaching Enjoyment: Teachers’ Perspectives

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15503/jecs20192.170.188

Keywords:

Key words: foreign language enjoyment, foreign language teachers, enjoyment, SLA, gender differences, positive psychology

Abstract

Aim. The primary objective of the present study was to investigate the level of Foreign Language learning Enjoyment and Foreign Language teaching Enjoyment experienced by foreign language teachers in Poland. The secondary aim of the study was to investigate the sources of FLE from the perspective of FL teachers.

 Methods. The informants of the study were Polish educators teaching foreign languages at different educational levels (from primary to tertiary education). To compute the obtained quantitative data, the statistical program STATISTICA was used. Standard descriptive and inferential statistics were used to report means, median and standard deviation for sociodemographic and baseline characteristics of the sample. The t-Test and one-way ANOVA were used to show mean differences in the score data.

Results. The results of the study revealed that foreign language teachers experienced a relatively high lvel of both Foreign Language learning Enjoyment) and Foreign Language teaching Enjoyment (FL teaching Enjoyment), regardless of independent variables (e.g. place of residence, level of education, language being taught, the years of experience). The result revealed a significant gender difference in FL learning Enjoyment in favor of females, while there was no gender difference in FL teaching Enjoyment. A qualitative analysis of participants’ emotional experiences in FL classroom confirmed previous research on FLE to a certain degree. That is, FLE is more related to learner-internal and teacher-specific variables than to the behavior of the peers and the atmosphere created in the FL classroom.

Conclusion. The originality of the present study lies in the choice of a mixed method approach (both of a qualitative and quantitative nature) using a relatively large sample in a field characterized by case studies. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study on foreign language enjoyment among teachers within the Polish educational context.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Ewelina Mierzwa, Department of Applied Linguistics,Opole University, pl. Kopernika 11, 45-040 Opole, Poland

A doctorate student in English Language and Literature at the University of Opole, Poland. She specializes in applied linguistics. Since 2018, she has actively participated in a number of international academic conferences (held in Poland, in the Czech Republic, in Germany and in Romania) and published articles in the field of second language acquisition (e.g. on the relationship between enjoyment and gender, the link between enjoyment and foreign language classroom anxiety, and finally, enjoyment among FL teachers). Her main research interests concern psychology, psycholinguistics, the role of affective factors in SLA, especially the relationship between enjoyment and anxiety in the FL classroom.

Downloads

Published

2019-09-02

How to Cite

Mierzwa, E. (2019). Foreign Language learning and teaching Enjoyment: Teachers’ Perspectives. Journal of Education Culture and Society, 10(2), 170–188. https://doi.org/10.15503/jecs20192.170.188

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2019): Journal of Education Culture and Society

Section

DYNAMICS

License

CC-BY

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. All authors agree for publishing their email adresses, affiliations and short bio statements with their articles during the submission process.