Enjoyment in the Foreign Language Teaching Environment: Saudi Teachers’ Perspectives

Positive emotions are crucial for facilitating the learning process in foreign language (FL) classes. It has been well established that the emotion of enjoyment highly influences students and teachers in language learning environments and plays a key role in motivation. The first objective of this study was to investigate the foreign language enjoyment (FLE) levels of FL teachers in Saudi Arabia. The second objective was to investigate the level of enjoyment felt by these teachers when they were FL students. Third, gender differences with regard to the level of enjoyment were studied. Finally, the sources of enjoyment were explored. 36 teachers from different educational institutions in Saudi Arabia were surveyed. The results demonstrated that the participants experienced high levels of enjoyment when teaching FL classes; however, their enjoyment levels were significantly higher when they were FL students. A positive atmosphere at the workplace, students’ excitement about language learning, and the joy of passing knowledge to others served as sources of enjoyment among the FL teachers. In terms of their experiences as FL students, FLE stemmed from their own FL teachers’ attitudes as well as the process of learning a language applicable to real daily life. The pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed in this article.