["TESOL Quarterly, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nForeign language (FL) enjoyment and out‐of‐class FL learning have garnered much attention from both researchers and frontline educators in recent years. The current study set out to contribute to these two burgeoning areas by examining specifically the longitudinal relationships between two types of FL enjoyment (classroom private and out‐of‐class informal learning (ILE)) and voluntary out‐of‐class FL exposure across three timepoints over 1.5 years. 366 Grade‐7 EFL learners from Hong Kong completed three questionnaires and six mini‐surveys. Extending the traditional cross‐lagged panel modeling (CLPM) approach, we adopted a more rigorous and novel method, known as Random‐Intercept Cross‐Lagged Panel Modeling (RI‐CLPM), which takes into account between‐person and within‐person variances when examining relationships. The findings revealed that private enjoyment and exposure time, but not ILE, demonstrated significant autoregressive relationships. More importantly, preceding within‐person ILE significantly predicted subsequent exposure time, but not the other way around. This unidirectional relationship remained robust even after controlling for private enjoyment. The findings therefore underscore the importance of ILE rather than private enjoyment in the promotion of extramural FL exposure.\n"]