Young Learners’ Well-Being and Emotions: Examining Enjoyment and Boredom in the Foreign Language Classroom

Abstract

AbstractEmotions have received widespread attention in the education field globally thanks to the greater emphasis on well-being in recent times. Against this backdrop and the fact that foreign language (FL) education is increasingly common from a young age, this study set out to investigate what FL classroom activities children find most enjoyable and most boring, and why. Ninety-eight Grade-5 English-as-a-FL learners in Hong Kong participated in this study. The participants put forward 18 activities that they thought were most enjoyable, especially games and videos (together making up about 49% of the responses). Fifteen activities were deemed most boring, especially writing and dictation (together 45% of the responses). Fun, knowledge-gaining, and opportunities for interaction were among the most common reasons given for activities being enjoyable, while difficult, troublesome, and tiring were the main descriptors of the activities they thought were boring.