Notes from Justin Bailey’s lecture “Mindful Language Teaching Strategies”.
Definition of mindfulness: the mental approach of paying attention to what is actually happening right now, without judging it, without having a negative response to it.
Benefits for students as well as for teachers:
1. Reduce anxiety.
Anxiety has a negative effect on working memory as well as on language acquiring.
2. Improve working memory.
Working memory or brain function means how many things your brain can deal with at the same time without failing.
Justin would introduce some mindful listening strategies he used in his class, as listening is a powerful tool for comprehensible input and language acquisition.
Strategy 1: Breathing
Check in your breath. Is it short or long? deep or shallow? Do you hold your breath? Where do you physically feel your breath?
Way to calm yourself down: breathe in, and breathe out for longer time.
Ask students to close their eyes or look at the ceiling, or teacher projects a peaceful picture. Then teacher asks students to picture a leaf, picture a leaf floating in the air, about the same height as your eyes. Then when you breathe in, pull the leaf close to you, about an arm’s length to your eyes, so close that you can look at the leaf to see its size and color. When you breathe out, blow away the leaf to where it was. Repeat for several times.
Make it harder: You are in a forest with lots of trees. When you breathe, the leaf comes to you or leaves you between the trees. You have to be very mindful to do this.
Variations: ask students to look at the classroom, and pull items in the room, e.g., a clock on the wall; ask students to look at a word on blackboard, and pull the word, or even breathe in the word, and ask them, what does it feel like inside you? Then blow away the word back to where it was. Ask the students choose the word they want.
Strategy 2: Body Scan
Body scan is a good way to fall asleep or calm down generally. It is also a TPR.
We invite someone or ourselves to focus briefly on different parts of our body to see how these parts feel or help them relax.
Sit comfortably, or lie comfortably, begin breathing calmly, notice your left foot, pay attention to your left foot, how does your left foot feel, see if you can help your left foot relax.
Then your right foot, left leg, right leg…(This is also a good way to review body parts vocab.)
You can also use your target words or target grammar in this process when you give students instructions. E.g., I want you to pay attention to…I wish you would pay attention to…
Variations: picture a butterfly, the butterfly is your friend, how does it look like? this butterfly flies in front of you, it has magic power, wherever it lands, that part relaxes, that part feels better. Go ahead and let that butterfly land on your left shoulder. When it lands on your left shoulder, your left shoulder feels better. Go ahead and move your left shoulder, does it feel more relaxed? Then the butterfly flies and flies over your head and lands on your right shoulder…Then the butterfly walks on your neck…Move your neck carefully cos you don’t want to crash your butterfly…Then your butterfly lands on the top of your head and help your mind relax…
You can figure out your own ideas on body scan or search online for more brilliant ideas.
Teachers’ implication
These mindful strategies are not only for students; teachers can also use them to relax themselves in class.
1. Returning to your breath. Breathe calmly can help you focus and take your mind away from distractions.
2. Feeling your feet on the floor. Feeling the pressure against the floor can also help you focus.
3. Feeling and hearing your heartbeat.
Strategy 3: Journey of the Senses
Think of a place that you’d love to visit. It can be general, like Africa, or a beach, or a forest; OR it can be very specific.It can be far or near, realistic or less realistic.
In this process, students don’t need to reply. They just picture as teacher gives instructions.
Breathe calmly, and when you are comfortable,close your eyes; or stare at the ceiling, do not let other things disturb you.
Use your ears, your hearing, what do you hear? What is the closest or nearest thing you can hear now? What is the farthest thing you can hear?
Now I want you to use your sense of touch, your physical feeling. I want you to feel your body touching the chair. Now use your imagination, allow your seat to transform/change from being a seat, where you are physically seated, to being a place, your dream place you would like to go. Feel it, is it soft or hard? Is it cold or warm?
Now, in your imaginary place, what do you hear? Do you hear the sound of nature, animals, wind, water flowing, waves, sound of cars or bikes, people walking or talking? Can you understand their language?
Now open your eyes to your imaginary place,what do you see? Do you see trees, cars?
Now use your sense of smell. What do you smell? Do you smell flowers or food?
Speaking of food, it’s time to have some food in your imaginary place. Go to where you can get some food. Maybe you go to a tree to pick some fruits or a bush to pick some berries, or a fancy shop or a market. You don’t need to use the money, just get whatever you want. Take the first bite. Does it taste sweet or sour, cold or warm, does it taste like you expected? Take a sip of drink and see what it tastes like.
Go and find a place where you can sit. Once again, what can you see? What can you hear? What can you smell? What can you feel?
Now use your imagination, to take you back to where you physically sit.
Open your eyes, wiggle your fingers and stretch your head. Welcome back!
Variation: You can pick just one sense in their travel location. You can add questions, “Would you like to live here? If you can bring one friend here, how would you like to bring?” You can also add vocab practice like food or vehicles in this activity.
Note: In the process, students close their eyes. IF you are not sure if they understand, you can ask your students to do gestures OR they can just raise up their hands when they don’t understand. For a single student, teacher can whisper to him. Otherwise,teacher can write on the whiteboard to explain, and tap to remind students to look at it. After students checked, they close their eyes again.
Strategy 4: Mindfulness with Pictures
1. What can you see in this picture?
The point of using a picture is not to elicit output or practice oral English, but to build attention to the picture so we can work with it or the story/text that is related with it.
2. Ask the students to put forward some questions relating this picture, but not answer them. What questions do you have? Purpose: increase students’ curiosity.
3. Look at the picture, make statements using maybe. Students can use their imagination or curiosity. E.g., Maybe the woman is lost.
4. Teacher can also create a simple story with the students using this picture by asking questions.
Aim: to let students mentally and physically focused and enable students to have longer and deeper attention.
Strategy 5: Second-person Storyasking
Justin got inspired from the game of “Choose your adventure” and created second-person storyasking.
Let’s decide a location. Picture you are on a beach. (Students can close their eyes or teacher quickly find a beach picture and project it.)
You can feel the sand with your feet. You can smell the air and the water. You can hear some birds. You can see a house on your right and a cave on your left. Do you want to go right to the house or left to the cave? (For either or question, you can ask students to raise up one hand for option 1 and both hands for option 2. OR ask students to write down on the whiteboard on their hand.)
You want to go to the house. Do you go quickly or do you go slowly?
When you get to the house, you see the door is open. Do you want to go inside or do you want to go around to keep looking?
OK, you want to keep looking cos you are careful. You go to the back of the house, and all the windows are closed. What color is the house? (For open questions, students can answer together or write on their individual blackboard. Teacher can combine their answers and control the story.)
You go to the other side of the house, and this time you see a window is open. Do you want to climb through the window or do you want to go to the front and enter the house through the door?
You quietly climb through the window. You see a table, two chairs and a picture of a man on the wall. Suddenly, you hear a sound from another room of this house. Do you want to climb out of the window to get away or do you want to go to see what the sound is? …
For teachers, you don’t even need to have a good story in mind or an ending, cos students are interested in what would happen next. You can decide certain things in advance, and let students decide something and be creative.
Closing Comments
When teachers begin using these mindful strategies, they will find the students’ focus improve bit by bit and sometimes students even require to do these exercises.
Teachers can use these strategies at the beginning of the class or in the middle of class as a brain break.
Teachers can also find using these strategies may improve their own attention span and well-being.