Tag Archives: empowerment

Empowering your students: Managing exam stress

By Fiona Deane

athlete pose 2Exams make many of us feel stressed.  For some students, stress helps them to achieve a higher mark.  For others, it turns into “distress” (Stanton, 1983) and  this negative stress on their mind (and body) can have an adverse effect on their exam performance, and equally importantly on their day to day life. Unfortunately, some teachers may not be given much training or guidance on how to support students whose stress has got out of control.

This post will:

1) Explain why your students might be experiencing exam stress

3) Discuss academic theory on the relationship between cognition and affect

3) Offer six different activities to help your students get to grips with their nerves

Young people and stress

In 2009,  the Guardian released alarming statistics from the Prince´s Trust regarding the wellbeing of young people in the UK.  Inargh! this report polled by the charity for its Youth Index Study, it reported that “more than a quarter (27%) said they were always or often down or depressed. Almost half of all those surveyed (47%) said they were regularly stressed.”  This is clearly not only a British phenomenon.  In the context of my sector, teaching English as a foreign language, I have witnessed young people experiencing stress as they grapple with living away from home, with managing their money, with establishing and developing new relationships and, in the context of this post, with preparing for international English exams such as CAE, TOEFL, IELTS or TOIEC.

Why do EFL students suffer from exam stress?

  • Economic reality

inflationWith the backdrop of the recession looming large and the workplace becoming more and more competitive, young people are bent on acquiring as many qualifications as possible.  Having one degree may no longer be enough.  This “qualification inflation” or “academic inflation” puts pressure on non-native English speaking students not only to improve their chosen career qualifications but also to gain a high level qualification in English, such as IELTS 6.5 or above or CAE.

  • Expectations

Students may be coming from a family or culture where there are high expectations of young people.   I have witnessed this in students coming from Asian cultures.  Specifically looking at Korea, Daniel Tudor (2012) says that “Confucianism´s power can be felt in the realm of the national obsession, education.   South Korea is famous of its unhealthy preoccupation with exam results and the pursuit of admission to the best universities.  This is a legacy of Confucianism´s injunction to self-improvement through education…”.  He also adds that “every year there are suicides of third-year high school students at the time of …the university entrance exam”. (For more articles on this, see The Guardian Weekly and BBC articles).

  • Lack of life experience 

Just this week, I carried out tutorials with my CAE preparation group.  A conversation with one of the group, a Swiss 19 year old past and futureyoung woman, has stayed with me.  As we reflected on what she was doing differently that had lead to improved results, she interestingly commented that she felt that she was learning how to deal with stress better.   She openly admitted that her high school exams hadn´t been difficult.  Now, she was required to pass CAE in a short time frame in order to be accepted onto a Primary Teacher Training programme.  This was her first experience of dealing with heightened exam pressure.  At the start of the course, she simply had not had the life skills to know how to deal with this.

  • Unhealthy study-life balance

overwhelmedIf they come from highly competitive societies, our students may have developed unbalanced study-life behavior patterns.  Returning to the example of Korea, Daniel Tudor (2012) suggests that childhood in Korea is sacrificed in order to gain the necessary marks that they need.  “Children enjoy relatively few opportunities to play and socialize with their peers.  According to research undertaken by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, Korean children are among the worst in the world at social interaction  (thirty-fifth out of thirty-six countries surveyed).  In school, children are constantly tested and ranked, rather than taught to work with one another.  After the final bell, most are sent to hakwons (private language schools) …When school vacations come, children are not free to relax but instead spend more time in hakwons.”

Academic theory and stress: The Affective Filter

Affective filterFollowing the ideas of Stephen Krashen (1982), the Affective Filter Hypothesis describes how affective (emotional) factors have an effect on learning a second language (as can be seen in the diagram on the left).  Arnold (2009) tells us that “an affectively positive environment puts the brain in the optimal state for learning:  minimal stress and maximum engagement with the material to be learned.”  Thus, there would seem to be a strong relationship between cognition and “affect”.  Neuro-scientist  Joseph LeDoux (1996) claims that “minds without emotions are not really minds at all”.  Indeed, as NLP guru Anthony Robbins believes “80% of success in life is psychology, 20% is mechanics”.

 

Activities to help students deal better with their stress

oprah and mick

So what can we as teachers do to help our students with stress?  Here are six activities.   They are activities which focus on students developing their own self-reflection and meta-cognition (see my earlier post about this – Empowering your students:  what makes me an effective learner?)

 

  • Speaking activity:  Are you a good friend?

adviceAt the beginning of the course, students are asked to discuss what makes a good friend.  In a brainstorm on the board, the teacher elicits “giving good advice” or “being a good listener”.  You then tell students that a friend of theirs is excited but worried about moving to another country to go on a language course .  The class brainstorms what the student might be worried about and come up with solutions and practical suggestions to ensure the student enjoys their language study programme to the max (inspired from the student book of Ready for CAE (2008, Macmillan Exams)  by Roy Norris and Amanda French

This activity covertly encourages your students to make predictions about a stressful experience and to come up with solutions for an unknown other (which may be more comfortable than finding solutions for themselves).  It is a great window for you to see whether they can relate to such stress before and what solutions (or not) they already may have in place for themselves.

  • Self-reflection and prediction:  How do you predict you will perform in the exam?  

This is a more inductive approach carried out just before the mid term mock exam.  Students are asked first of all to reflect on their own experience of exam stress in their own countries.  Here, pressures of their education culture may rise to the surface.  Then they are asked to discuss  whether they think their performance in an upcoming mock exam may be affected by nerves (positively or negatively).  Students share what possible solutions they know of to reduce stress on their mock exam day.   Previous students have come up with ideas such as Steiner exercises, breathing exercises and yoga (I will share more of these ideas in a future post.)   Once the students have taken their exam and have their results, I then ask them to recall this discussion and to see if their predictions were right.  If they were different, they are asked to say why they are different.

  • Understanding the chemistry and biology of stress:  “Amy Cuddy´s power poses” 

I often use TED Talks with my EFL learners to improve their listening skills, to widen their vocabulary and to develop their summary abilities.   So at a significant point in the term, I ask students for homework to watch Amy Cuddy´s talk “Your body language shapes who you are” which explains how stress can manifest itself in the body and how we can reverse the effects of stress.   As part of the homework, the students are asked to take notes, be ready to give a summary of the talk (using some of the vocabulary chunks that Amy uses) and be ready to discuss their views.  This is an excellent presentation, made powerful by the images, scientific fact and the personalized story telling technique so common to many TED talks.  Because the topic is relevant to the speaker herself, it is easy for the students (particularly the girls) to identify with her.  So far, all my students have taken an interest in Amy´s ideas.  We then tried out Amy´s power poses before the next exams.  Each time my students have done this, there have been astoundingly improved results (about 10 – 15% higher marks).

  • Deep listening in one to one tutorials

Giving our students the opportunity to voice how they are feeling is crucial when dealing with stress.  Tutorials can arise spontaneously, when you recognize that a student would benefit from emergency remedial action, or on a systematic basis throughout the course.  Understanding why they may be experiencing stress (which could include some of the reasons given above) is important and this will most probably emerge through “deep listening” (Arnold, 2009); that is, focused listening in a non-judgmental and objective manner.   Being sympathetic to their story will validate their emotions (instead of causing them to hide them through shame).  It is also worth considering whether you feel the student may benefit from your school´s in-house counseling system, should the stress seem to be out of hand.

  • Students share reflections about their stress management to the whole group

In my last round of tutorials, students came up with some really excellent reflections on reasons for their progression, which were related to their own stress management.  I took noteclass discussion of the most useful points and then (with their permission) asked some of the students to share their reflections with the whole group.  For example, one student reported how they chose to walk into school the day of the exam, revising points quietly in their head as they walked (as opposed to coming in on the bus, surrounded by chatter in rush hour).  Another said how they found studying together made them feel less isolated.  This discussion involved very fruitful student collaboration benefitting both the “sharer” and the students who took on their ideas.

  • The last day before the exam: Student created games

20131129_123739It´s always tricky to know what to do the day before an exam.  Exam practice can be inadvisable since low marks can frighten students.  On my previous exam course, students requested that we left the classroom space to be in a more relaxed atmosphere.  We decided to go to a café.  In this group, two Korean students were particularly anxious about the exam the next day.  I took coloured paper to the café and asked the Koreans to teach the other (non-Asian) students to make some origami objects.  All the students became completely enthralled and lost in this activity.  It was a great distraction for both the student “teachers” and for those students learning the art of origami for the first time.

 

Do write to me and share any experiences and successes you have with stressed students.  The life skill of dealing with stress is such an important one in modern life.  As one of current exam students said to me recently:  “I have learnt so much more than just language on this course”.

Fiona

References & Recommended Reading

Arnold J Affect in L2 Learning and Teaching (2009) Estudios de Linguistica inglesa aplicada

Arnold J Coaching Skills for Leaders in the Workplace (2009) Howtobooks

Brown B The Power of Vulnerability (2010) TED Talks

Gregoire C American Teens are even more stressed than Adults (2014) The Huffington Post

Chakrabarti R South Korea´s schools: long days, high results (2013) BBC News

Cuddy A Your body language shapes who you are (2012) TED Talks

Harmer J The Practice of English Language Teaching (2001) Pearson Education Ltd

Kim K et al Students´stress in China, Japan and Korea: a transcultural study ( 1997) International Journal of Social Psychiatry

Krashen S Principles & Practice in Second Language Aquisition (1982) University of Southern California

LeDoux J The Emotional Brain (1996) Simon & Schuster

Lightbown P. & Spada N How Languages are learned  (2006) Oxford

Norris R with French A Ready for CAE (2008) Macmillan Exams

O´Hara M Depression amount the young at alarming level says charity (2009) The Guardian

Oxford R Language Learning Strategies: An Update (1994) http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/oxford01.html

Pert C Molecules of Emotion (1997) Simon & Schuster

Petty G Teaching Today A Practical Guide (1998) Nelson Thornes

Scharle A & Szabó A Learner Autonomy, A guide to developing learner responsibility (2000) Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers

Senior R Korean students silenced by exams (2009) The Guardian Weekly

Stanton H E The Stress Factor: A Guide to More Relaxed Living (1983) Optima

Tudor D Korea The Impossible Country (2012) Tuttle Publishing

Empowering your students: What makes me an effective learner?

By Fiona Deane

frustration“I don’t get it!”.  “That´s stupid!”  “That´s impossible!”  These  student utterances may resonate with you and perhaps hound or hinder you in the classroom.  The age of screenagers, google and instant gratification can lead to impatience, exasperated sighs and a holding of the teacher as responsible for classroom success or failure.   Many students are not yet aware that they themselves magically hold the key to better learning and understanding.

 

As the first of a series of posts focusing on empowering our students, this post will:

  • explain students´ lack of faith in themselves
  • discuss theories to resolve this
  • give an activity to start empowering our learners to trust and develop themselves

Passivity

Harmer (2001) tells us “passivity… is the enemy of true learning”.  The role of instant media plays its part in this passivity. Manyiphone_addiction students come to the classroom with a developed reliance on others or a search engine to give them quick answers.  Problem-solving, critical thinking, brainstorming, deep reading can therefore be met with a rolling of eyes or infuriation since demands are made on the brain beyond lower-order thinking such as “copy” and “paste”, or “play”.

Scrivener (2012) argues that a certain type of passivity may be developed at home.  Some teenagers may have experienced an education culture where obedience to authority is valued above thinking for yourself.  In his book “Korea The Impossible Country”, Daniel Tudor writes that Confuciansim has created a culture where between “older and younger….the superior partner should act with a duty of responsibility and benevolence to the lower, who should respond in return with loyalty and obedience.”  This older/younger relationship is easily transferred to the teacher/student relationship.

Lack of self-awareness

who am iMany learners come to the classroom “not… aware of their individual cognitive or perceptual learning styles” (Lightbown & Spada, 2006).  Indeed, they may not even be aware that such concepts as learning styles or multiple intelligences exist.   Answering questions such as: “Am I open-minded to different points of view?”, “Am I a visual or kinesthetic learner?”, “Do I like solving puzzles?”, “Does stress affect my performance?”, “Can I think on my feet?”  are crucial to establishing and prioritizing individual learner needs.

Meta-cognition & Reflection

rockwell_mirrorAccording to Geoff Petty (1998), “reflection involves a systematic and objective evaluation of the student´s concrete experience”.    Encouraging students to consider who they are as people and share this with their classmates is arguably the first piece of the learning puzzle.  The cornerstone is their reflection on their innate strengths and weaknesses, which can then be followed up regularly with reflection on their progress on these points.

Taking responsibility

Petty (1998) suggests that reflection “may be largely undertaken by… the teacher at first, but the long-term aim should be to get the students to carry out the process by themselves”.  Scharle and Szabó (2000) believe that responsible learners are “learners who accept the idea that their own efforts are crucial to progress in learning, and behave accordingly”.   They go on to say that learners “need to realize and accept that success in learning depends as much on the student as on the teacher”.  By asking your students to question their learning habits and identity, you are effectively turning them into responsible learners without them realizing.

make hole in wall-breakthroughThe gateway to empowerment & self-belief

Crucially, we as teachers need to disengage from our “leader” role and encourage our students to get to know themselves, look at themselves in the mirror and know their strengths and weaknesses.   At this moment,  the student may first experience positive feelings of empowerment and trust and begin to understand that they hold the key to their learning.

 

questionimgClass activity: What skills and personal qualities make me an effective learner?

Class type:  ELT Exam or General English groups at Intermediate to Advanced levels.

1) Learners are asked to discuss in pairs the question:  “What skills and personal qualities do I need to be an effective language learner?”

2) After about ten to fifteen minutes of discussion, we share our ideas together on the board.  It is always the students themselves (with little if any prompting from myself) who come up with such fantastic answers as these:

  • imaginative
  • open-minded
  • finding fun in the learning process
  • thinking outside the box
  • believing in myself
  • patient
  • outgoing
  • not afraid to get things wrong
  • hard-working/diligent
  • able to identify what I need to improve
  • reading frequently in English”

3) The students are asked to reflect in pairs on which of these attributes they already possess and which they might perhaps need to work on.

4) This is then fedback to the class as a whole to ensure that learners understand that all students have strengths and weaknesses and that these will be different for each of them.

what makes a good language learner5) Creators of their own advice:  I take a picture of the ideas brainstormed on the whiteboard, print it out and put it on the pin-board in the classroom.  Conveniently, as the course progresses these student created ideas can be referred to at times of struggle to encourage them on their journey.  For example, if a student may resist trying out a new technique or activiity, I refer them back to the ideas that they came up with and ask them if open-minded was a good quality that was mentioned in order to be an effective learner.

I have found this an invaluable activity on all the Cambridge CAE exam classes that I have taught. It lays the foundations for further reflections that take place throughout the course.   Try it out and let me know how it goes!

Fiona

References & Recommended Reading

Harmer J The Practice of English Language Teaching (2001) Pearson Education Ltd

Lightbown P. & Spada N How Languages are learned  (2006) Oxford

Oxford R Language Learning Strategies: An Update (1994) http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/oxford01.html

Petty G Teaching Today A Practical Guide (1998) Nelson Thornes

Pulverness, A. Just how low can you go? IATEFL Learner Independence PL Newsletter (2000) IATEFL

Scharle A & Szabó A Learner Autonomy, A guide to developing learner responsibility (2000) Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers

Scrivener J Classroom Management Techniques (2012) Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers

Tudor D Korea The Impossible Country (2012) Tuttle Publishing