Abstract
Factors influencing Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) extend beyond learners’ internal variables to include contextual and discursive factors, such as teacher talk in classroom interactions. While prior studies suggest that teachers’ metadiscourse helps build interpersonal relationships and a supportive classroom climate, how it discursively shapes learners’ moment-by-moment experiences of FLE remains underexplored. Adopting a mixed-methods approach and a rapport management perspective, this study investigated the FLE of 288 sophomore English majors at a Chinese university and examined how teachers’ metadiscourse may be associated with students’ reported FLE. Quantitative results indicated significant differences in FLE levels across classes taught by different instructors. Comparative analysis revealed that the teacher in the highest FLE class employed metadiscourse more frequently and diversely than her counterpart in the lowest FLE class. Qualitative case analysis further illustrated how this teacher’s metadiscourse was discursively aligned with the construction of teacher-student rapport by attending to students’ face sensitivities, equity rights, and association rights. Rather than positing a direct causal effect, the study highlights how metadiscourse use co-occurs with a more harmonious classroom environment and higher student-reported FLE. These findings contribute to understanding the interpersonal pragmatics of teacher talk and offer pedagogical insights into fostering an affectively supportive language learning atmosphere.
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Data availability
The dataset generated from the questionnaires during this study is available as an Excel file from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The discourse analysis corpus used in this study cannot be made publicly available due to confidentiality agreements with the participants.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the 2024 Chongqing Municipality Higher Education Teaching Reform Research Project (grant number 243177).
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Jinlong Yang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing (original draft, review & editing). Jiaxin Luo: Investigation (Literature review), Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing (original draft).Qiang Fu: Writing (review & editing). All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethical approval for this study, covering both the initial and supplementary phases of data collection, was granted by The Ethics Committee of Sichuan International Studies University (Approval Number SISU- LL20250005) on September 30, 2025. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Oral informed consent was digitally audio-recorded for all participants. Written consent was not feasible due to time constraints inherent in the classroom setting. Consent procedures were administered by Dr. Jinlong Yang and a trained research assistant. Participants included 288 undergraduate students and 2 teachers. All individuals were informed of the following aspects of the research: Participation is voluntary; Data collected will be used solely for research purposes; All data will be anonymized prior to analysis; Participants consent to the publication of anonymized findings in academic journals, books, or reports. Informed consent was obtained prior to any data collection activities. The consent process took place between June 16, 2024, and October 11, 2025.
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Yang, J., Luo, J. & Fu, Q. Connecting foreign language enjoyment and teachers’ metadiscourse: a teacher–student rapport perspective. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-07061-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-07061-x
