Flow and anxiety in the second language classroom

		Dr. Michael Zuniga is a professor of second language teaching at the Department of Language Didactics at the University of Quebec in Montreal. zuniga.michael_j@uqam.ca
		Avery Rueb has been a second language teacher for the past 15 years working in both FSL and ESL in 5 different countries. He has been a FSL teacher at Vanier College for the past 9 years. His research interests include flow in the classroom and educational games. He’s also the co-founder of Affordance Studio, a serious game company in Montreal. rueba@vanier.college.ca

Few places are as anxiety-provoking as the second language classroom, where learners at all levels come in frequent contact with feelings of inauthenticity and incompetence as they develop new linguistic and intercultural skills. The anxiety inherent to the language classroom has been shown to interfere significantly with learning from comprehension to production (see MacIntyre & Gardner, 1994). Authors from such studies explain that language anxiety in effect hijacks cognitive resources crucial for learning, such as attention and memory, which are automatically redirected toward the source of anxiety (Eysenck, 1979). It is thus not surprising that researchers have concentrated primarily on examining anxiety in the classroom since the 1970’s when the field began looking at affect and second language acquisition.

However, reducing anxiety in the language classroom is not sufficient, teachers must also go about fostering positive emotions in order to improve learning outcomes for second language students. The broaden-and-build theory, for example, explains that while negative emotions engender avoidance behavior, positive emotions (e.g.,joy, interest, contentment, pride and love) have a broadening effect, encouraging engagement, creativity and exploration, thus fostering learning and a sense personal well-being (Fredrickson, 2013). In this way, positive and negative emotions are not simply two sides of the same coin. They are in fact two interrelated but independent emotions (Dewaele & MacIntyre, 2014). This raises questions as to how second language teachers can create more positive emotions in the classrooms.

Time flies when you’re focused and having fun!

One of the most extensively researched positive experiential states has been the flow construct, which can be defined as peak motivational experiences characterized by intense concentration and involvement experienced by people performing challenging but doable tasks such that they lose track of time and self-consciousness (see Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), Time flies when you’re focused and having fun! Early flow research aimed to understand the conditions that allow artists and athletes, for example, to flourish by entering into concentrated, trance-like states, losing themselves in their work for hours (Csikszentmihalyi,1975).To define the characteristics of this optimal experience of flow, Csikszentmihalyi and his colleagues collected data from thousands of participants using an ingenious method whereby participants wore a pager that,when randomly activated, incited them to stop and record what they were doing and how they were feeling. The results revealed what Csikszentmihalyi refers to as the elements of enjoyment: Participants experiencing these optimal emotional states were not engaged in leisure activities, as one might expect, but rather stimulating and meaningful tasks for which they perceived themselves as having:

1) skills matching the challenges,

2) clear goals and immediate feedback on progress and outcomes,

3) total awareness of actions and deep concentration,

4) a sense of total control,

5) a loss of self-consciousness,and e.g.,Egbert, 2003

6) a sense of time flying (Csikszentmihalyi,(1990).

Flow was indeed the word many participants used to describe these intensely enjoyable and productive situations. Csikszentmihalyi argues that humans expand and flourish while in flow, and research suggests that participants experiencing flow exhibit exploratory behaviors pushing them beyond current skill levels (Trevino & Webster, 1992) and enhancing task performance (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Jackson & Roberts, 1992).

These elements of enjoyment also appear to closely resemble conditions that most second language teachers and researchers would consider favorable to learning. It is therefore not surprising that a small number of studies (e.g., Egbert, 2003; Kirchhoff, 2011) have already looked at flow in the classroom. Egbert, for example, observed significant flow in a text chat activity and Kirchhoff detected elevated flow levels during an extensive reading course.

While these studies show that flow does exist in the classroom, they do not tell us much about the specific dimensions or characteristics of tasks, activities and other teacher practices that are favorable to flow. Identifying those characteristics would allow us create a framework to help teacher render current practices more enjoyable by tweaking specific aspects such as adding a game element to a current activity, or rendering it more kinesthetic and interactive.We believe that identifying specific flow-inducing activity characteristics will help harness positive emotions in the second language classroom and promote engagement,creativity and exploration.

A facilitating methodology

In an initial, and ongoing, pilot study, we developed a methodology to help answer this question. We are currently working with ten Cégep teachers of French and English as a second language and their students (n=300). Each teacher chooses five activities that students evaluate for flow at various points throughout a semester. In order to evaluate an activity, teachers and students fill out separate online Google Form questionnaires. The teacher questionnaire has 25-items defining the activity characteristics, which include items such as:

• the targeted competencies (grammar, vocabulary, pragmatics),
• the competency modes (e.g. listening, speaking, interacting, reading writing),
• the interactive dynamics (individual, pairs or groups),
• the teacher-student dynamics (teacher- or student-centered),
• pre-task planning, (did students have time to prepare before completing activity).
• competition (was the activity competitive),
• timing (was the activity timed).

On their end, students anonymously completed a flow questionnaire,developed by Webster, Trevino and Ryan (1993), containing 14 items with a Likert scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strong disagree). Here is a sample of the items:

• This task excited my curiosity.
• This task was interesting in itself.
• I felt that I had no control over what was happening during this task.
• When doing this task, I was aware of distractions.
• This task bored me.
• I would do this task even if it were not required.

Since we wanted to gather flow data on a wide range of activity types, we encouraged the participating teachers to evaluate their most engaging ones activities as well as their least engaging ones. We therefore suggested that the teachers evaluate student flow after grammar quizzes, games, collaborative writing exercises, oral presentations, online vocabulary exercises, conversation tasks, etc.

The preliminary results from 24 tasks (424 respondents) suggest that games and other interactive activities conducted in a group setting, involving movement, an element of competition and ongoing feedback generate significantly more flow in the L2 classroom. We also observed several trends approaching significance suggesting that students experience more flow in non-evaluative situations and during timed activities. More data will be needed, however, to see if these trending factors do indeed significantly influence flow.

As a takeaway for second language teachers, here are some teachers can add both movement and a game element to the activity. The activity suggestions for creating flow based on this pilot study:

• Gamify your activities: because games are some of the highest-rated activity characteristics in our study, it is a great idea to create both team and individual leaderboards or use Socrative,  a free web application which easily gamifies classroom quizzes and exercises.

• Get students into conversations: it turns out that students love to have both free-form and guided conversations with other students. For example, different Information Gap Activities rated highly in flow in our pilot study.

•Time your activities: when starting an activity, display the Google online stopwatch application on the whiteboard to give your students just enough pressure to move them into flow.

Also, we suggest that teachers create activities which combine the most engaging activity characteristics from our study to create even more flow for their students. For instance, the paired dictation, where two students sit together with one student writing what his/her partner reads out loud, is an engaging activity because it already encourages conversation and negotiation between pairs. In order to make it even more engaging, teachers can add both movement and a game element to the activity. The activity called Read and Run is one of the highest-rated activities for flow in the pilot study.

We are excited about the opportunity to continue to work on this study in order to bring teachers and students more scientifically backed recommendations for making learning more flow-inducing and more engaging. We would like to thank Vanier College for supporting Avery Rueb’s contribution to the project through the Vanier Development and Support Opportunities Grant he received.