A Scoping Review on Foreign Language Teaching Enjoyment

While foreign language learning is widely acknowledged to foster linguistic, cognitive, social, and psychological development, these benefits are dependent on teachers, whose emotions shape the classroom experience. Foreign language teaching enjoyment (FLTE) has recently emerged as a key construct in understanding teachers’ professional well-being and its impact on learners’ outcomes. Nevertheless, research on FLTE remains relatively new, fragmented, and concentrated mainly in a few contexts, necessitating a systematic synthesis of findings. The present study, therefore, aimed to map the scope of research on FLTE, identify related factors, and outline directions for future inquiry. Employing a scoping review design, 18 peer-reviewed empirical articles published between 2021 and 2025 were analyzed, and their findings were thematically synthesized. The results showed that FLTE is strongly predicted by teacher-student relationships, institutional climate, and grit, and is reciprocally linked with learner enjoyment, motivation, and willingness to communicate. The study also concluded that FLTE protects against burnout, sustains resilience, and fosters enthusiasm, job satisfaction, and long-term professional commitment. Based on these findings, the study recommends strengthening relational and institutional support, integrating well-being and self-efficacy into teacher education, fostering grit and emotional skills such as mindfulness and humor, and developing context-specific measurement tools to support these efforts. It was also recommended that future research should diversify contexts, adopt qualitative, experimental, and longitudinal designs, and pursue interdisciplinary collaboration to deepen understanding of FLTE.