This research attempted to explore students’ perceptions of teacher humor, humor appropriateness, and humor homophily as potential predictors of their cognitive learning, affective learning, and L2 achievement. The participants included 298 EFL learners (188 female and 110 male students), in the 20-25 age range, in private English language institutes in Iran, and data were collected nationwide. The volunteered participants were asked to complete five questionnaires. Among the participants, 23 students participated in the structured interviews. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide data collection, the interviews were conducted via video calls, voice calls, or voice messages, and they were audio-recorded with the participants’ consent. Further, thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) with the aid of NVivo 12 software was utilized for analyzing the qualitative data. The results of the quantitative phase of the study indicated that humor homophily was the strongest predictor of affective learning. Based on the revealed patterns of results, it was further disclosed that teacher humor, humor appropriateness, and humor homophily moderately predicted affective learning. Contrarily, their predictive power was weak for cognitive learning and L2 achievement. The noticeable result of this research lies in the concurrent use of the independent variables, that demonstrated higher direct effects on L2 achievement. Moreover, the findings of the qualitative phase of the study confirmed and supported the results of the quantitative phase. It was concluded that humor is beneficial in enhancing students’ affective learning. Finally, the results of this study could be helpful for different stakeholders in L2 education, including language teachers, language learners/students, teacher trainers, managers, and supervisors of language institutes.
