Abstract
Influenced by the flowering of positive psychology in the field of foreign language acquisition research in recent years, the present study aimed to explore the perceived functions of playfulness, as a personality construct, among English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this aim, an initial sample of 38 EFL learners were selected randomly from the private language institutes of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. They were interviewed about any perceived functions of playfulness in the EFL learning context. A qualitative content analysis of the collected data led to the extraction of four categories: Fun and laughter, creativity, mastery orientation, and cultivating relationships. A further in-depth analysis of the categories and comparison with the functions of adult playfulness in psychology (primarily Proyer’s 2014 and 2017 works of research) revealed that these four categories can be subsumed under two of the four structural components of adult playfulness; namely, other-directed playfulness and intellectual playfulness. The ability of EFL learners to turn language learning situations, tasks, and environment into enjoyable ones via their playfulness can have implications for the quality of their interpersonal interactions in class and eventually their language proficiency. The findings of this study can pave the way for the translation of the adult playfulness construct from developmental and personality psychology and family relations into the second language acquisition (SLA) domain and its conceptualization in future research in this domain.
Highlights
In recent years, the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has shown growing interest in positive psychology; thereby, highlighting individuals’ strengths and attributes and focusing on the elicitation of positive emotions like foreign language enjoyment (MacIntyre and Mercer, 2014; Dewaele et al, 2019)
Most of the perceived functions of playfulness were ascribed to the creativity category (62.22%), followed by mastery orientation (17.33%), cultivating relationships (15.55%), and fun and laughter (4.88%)
Given the growth of positive psychology in SLA and the focus on both negative and positive emotions in this line of research, we maintain that the concept of playfulness can contribute to the expansion of this research domain
Summary
The field of second language acquisition (SLA) has shown growing interest in positive psychology; thereby, highlighting individuals’ strengths and attributes and focusing on the elicitation of positive emotions like foreign language enjoyment (MacIntyre and Mercer, 2014; Dewaele et al, 2019). Playfulness in Adult EFL Learners of playfulness as a personality construct that potentially can enable language learners to (re-)frame everyday experiences or boring classroom situations to enjoyable, stimulating, and/or interesting ones has not yet been addressed in this line of research. For narrowing this gap in the literature, this initial study explored playfulness in the SLA domain; among language learners. Playfulness is an individual differences variable that enables individuals “to frame or reframe everyday situations in a way that they experience them as entertaining, and/or intellectually stimulating, and/or personally appealing” The perceived functions of playfulness have been investigated among lay persons (Proyer, 2014), to the best of our knowledge, no research has explored the perceived functions of playfulness among English as a foreign language (EFL) learners
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