THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOREIGN LANGUAGE ENJOYMENT AND GENDER AMONG SECONDARY GRAMMAR SCHOOL STUDENTS

Aim. The aim of the present article was to examine the influence of foreign language enjoyment on learning English as a FL, as well as to investigate this relationship from the perspective of gender. Methods. The informants in the study were students of five secondary grammar schools located in south-western Poland. To compute the obtained data, the statistical program STATISTICA was used. Standard descriptive and inferential statistics were used to report means, median and standard deviation for sociodemographic and base-line characteristics of the sample. The t-Test and ANOVA were used to show mean differences in score data. A series of Pearson's correlational analyses was carried out to verify the relationships between different types of FLE, academic achievement and sources of FLE. Results. The results of this study revealed that there are no statistically significant differences between males and females in FLE, while such differences are found in terms of the sources of FLE each gender perceives as the most crucial ones. It has been proved that FLE increases with the level of students' proficiency, and a high level of FLE results in students' greater academic achievement. Conclusion. Although there were many researches concerning gender differences in the context of SLA, none of them has been explicitly addressed to explore the differences between males and females in FLE. Contrary to expectations, however, the results of this study revealed that gender does not seem to determine FLE experienced by the students to a greater extent.