Connecting foreign language enjoyment and teachers’ metadiscourse: a teacher–student rapport perspective

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.