Reviewing enjoyment in foreign language education from the perspective of positive psychology

With the emergence of positive psychology as a defined specialization, interest in positive emotions has been part of a current trend in the literature of foreign language education (FLEd). Enjoyment as a favorable feeling experienced by learners and teachers has received considerable attention of foreign language educators in a dozen years past. Scholars have widely addressed the issue of enjoyment from learner's perspective with focus on its concept, measurement, influential variables, dynamic nature, multiple roles as well as learner's enjoyment in an online foreign language learning context. Compared to the prior studies on foreign language learner's enjoyment, more studies need to be conducted to explore topics concerning enjoyment from foreign language teacher's perspective though some pioneering attempts have been made. Based on an overview of the extant enjoyment research in the field of FLEd, the present narrative review suggests to construct a hierarchical model to re-conceptualize different types of enjoyment in FLEd. Moreover, it is advisable that diversified research methods should be employed with further theoretical integration and the enrichment of research topics to unveil the complicated positive emotion of enjoyment in FLEd more extensively.