When I used to ask my Turkish students how something was they would often reply “I was bored.” even when it seemed to me there was no possible way that could have been boring. I would correct them and say it was frustrating or challenging. Without thinking too much about it, boredom seems to be only one, fairly straight-forward feeling. I have come to find out however that there are different kinds of boredom and in order to get them out of our classrooms, we need to better understand what they are and what causes them.
1. Monotony of Mind
This is how we feel when we are required to do repetitive tasks that we have already mastered or required to wait around and suffer through an under-stimulating atmosphere. In an English classroom, when students are experiencing “monotony of mind”, they start to misbehave, fall asleep or simply stare into space. I know that this happens to me when I am in a language class that requires me to fill out endless grammar worksheets, play hangman over and over again, watch long presentations or listen to a long monologue by the teacher.
Combat techniques:
I love classroom routines because it saves a lot of instruction time when students already know what to do but too much routine can suck the joy out of learning. After establishing routines, make sure you shake them up so class doesn’t become to predictable. Students should sometimes enter class thinking, “I can’t wait to find out what we are going to do today!”. You can do this by creating fascinating hooks at the beginning of each unit.
When I started a unit on food for example, I split my students into small groups and blindfolded them. I then gave each group a bag of fruits and vegetables. I asked them to pass one item at a time around the group to everyone except one person, that person had to ask questions like “How big is it?”, “How does it feel?”, or “What color is it?”. The people who are blindfolded can’t see the color of course but they could make a guess. Make sure you include some items that will surprise them like a purple carrot. The person asking questions has to guess what the item is. Continue with this activity changing the person who asks the question until they have described all of the items in the bag.
Make sure when you plan your lessons, you keep things from being repetitive by mixing what students are expected to do. If you have a reading activity that requires a lot of focus and individual work, follow it with a game in which need to get up and talk. If they have been doing a lot of discussion work, follow it with a short, engaging video that enables them to use a different skill. Finally, if you must do a grammar worksheet, don’t follow it up with another grammar worksheet, ask students to get up and use that grammar in as active a way as you can.
2. Lack of Flow
Flow is that wonderful state you get into when you are focused and engaged in an activity. I usually find this flow when I am printing photographs in a darkroom because it is challenging to get the contrast and timing just right but I know how to do it and if I work at it I can succeed. Lack of flow is the opposite. If there is no challenge and I am just doing something to get it done, I get bored. On the other hand, if I don’t know how to do something and I can’t figure it out, I just get frustrated and just as my Turkish students pointed out, frustration is one form of boredom. Finding that flow for all of the students in any given class can seem daunting to an ESL/EFL teacher, I know I found it daunting. It often seems that every single student has totally different needs and is at a different language level.
Combat Techniques:
Make sure that you differentiate your classroom. Don’t expect all of your students to do the exact same work in the exact same way. Some students are ready to write a 5 page essay with a well developed thesis statements while others need to work on creating a coherent paragraph. That is OK! There are lots of ways to differentiate a classroom; check out this post by Teacher Mom entitled How I Differentiate Like a Pro Using Cornell Notes. Another way to differentiate is to use Learning Menus in which Students can choose what and how many activities they would like to do. For instructions on how to create learning menus, Teachhub.com has created this post: Use Activity Menus to Differentiate and Maximize Student Engagement. However you choose to differentiate, it is important for students to be able to do work that puts them in that flow state.
3. Need for Novelty
Some people need more external stimulation than others. The Psychology Today article claimed that extroverts tend to need more external stimulation than introverts. Being aware of this can help us plan lessons that are effective for both our extroverted and our introverted students.
Combat Techniques:
Make sure that you plan at least one surprising/unexpected thing into each day. This could be anything from changing the seat arrangement, inviting a guest speaker, introduce a new game, put an interesting picture or quote up on the board or screen, getting up and dancing to a song, give students a quick scavenger hunt, blindfold students and ask them to feel objects in order to describe them instead of looking at them, or challenge them to solve a problem. After a few days this can become challenging, I encourage you to talk to other teachers and find out what their favorite little surprises are, or better yet, observe them. I always come away with lots of new ideas when I observe other teachers and it pulls me out of the ruts I get into.
4. Difficulty Paying Attention/Short Attention Span
Many students have a hard time paying attention for long periods of time. I have watched many a student start out pretty well, paying attention to a video or reading a text only to start to squirm minutes later. I have also noticed that attention switches off when students are tired, hungry, too hot, too cold, or feeling bad. When students are having a hard time paying attention, they start to feel bored even during engaging activities.
Combat Techniques:
Make sure you plan your lessons so that students don’t have to focus their attention on only one task for more than 20 minutes or so. If you ask students to edit each others’ papers for example, after about 20 minutes stop them and do an activity that requires them to stand up and talk rather than read. Of course, if they are totally absorbed and focused on the task, you can let them go for a bit longer but make sure you stop them before they start to get bored.
5. Emotional Awareness
Have you ever been in a situation and found yourself wanting to be somewhere else, doing something else but you didn’t really know what. There is this longing for something but even you yourself can’t really describe why you are feeling dissatisfied or bored or what the problem is exactly. This makes it difficult to know what goals to set or what to work for, everything just seems boring and you start too look around for who to blame.
I saw this a lot with my high school students. They were having all kinds of feelings and emotions but were having trouble defining them or where they were coming from.
Combat Techniques:
Design a unit around understanding emotions and how to practice self- care. One of the most effective units I have ever done was on mental health. At the beginning of each class students would write for a few minutes about how they were feeling physically, emotionally and mentally. They then ran a series of experiments on themselves to see if they could change how they felt or thought using the following things: exercise, music, sleep, meditation, and social contact. I asked them to bring their attention to their bodies and minds before and after doing these different activities and reflect on what makes them feel good and focused. So many things came out during that unit and students were able to either take better care of themselves or develop the language to ask others for help.
6. Lack of Inner-Amusement Skills
When my brother was a baby sometimes my mother would forget he was there. He could spend extended periods of time just playing with his toes or contemplating the shadows on the wall. I wasn’t as good at that and demanded more attention. As I grow older I have found that I have developed greater skills for inner amusement. I value and even need “down time” to get everything else out of my head and just be alone with my thoughts. It is certainly easier to teach and parent someone who has inner amusement skills because they are not always looking to you for entertainment. Those who don’t naturally amuse themselves can learn how though, so don’t despair if there are many students in your class who seem to lack this skill.
Combat Techniques:
One of my favorite things to do with my students (and just do by myself) is ask everyone to sit quietly with their eyes closed for 3 minutes and count how many different sounds they can hear. I got this idea from a TED talk by Julian Treasure entitled 5 Ways to Listen Better. It comes in just under 8 minutes and is a great way to get students to practice note taking.
Another thing you can encourage your students to do is be curious. It seems like recently many cultures in the world are encouraging people to react and have opinions to things but we don’t encourage people to be curious. I am guilty of asking my Japanese students to agree or disagree all the time, thinking that this would inspire discussion. It rarely did, everyone just stated their opinion and it was done. Much more valuable is encouraging students to find out more about how the other person thinks and sees the world. If someone says they think something is true, rather than agreeing or disagreeing, a much better response would be “When did you first start thinking that?”, “Would you still feel that way if ______?”, “Have you ever changed your mind on that issue?”. Once you start asking questions in your head, the world becomes a fascinating place. I spent 8 days on the Trans-Siberian Railway this spring by myself mostly without internet and not speaking a word of Russian. I was never bored because I just kept observing what was happening around me and asking myself questions and coming up with hypothesis. Then I would observe more to see if I could prove or disprove my hypothesis. It is amazing how many hours you can be not bored if you do this!
7. Lack of Autonomy
Let’s face it, in most of our English classes our students are captives. They had no choice about enrolling in your course. They might be cooperative or uncooperative but they are prisoners in that they can not choose to not come.
Once they get to class most of the decisions are usually already made for them. This unit we will be studying “Technology”. Read the article on page 23. Get into groups of 4. As an adult who has been an adult for quite some time, it is hard for me to remember just how little choice I had when I was a student and how that made me feel. I was a “good” student and generally tried to pay attention but I do remember being bored and that was probably because I was just following orders. My favorite assignments, the ones I actually remember, were the ones in which I could decide how I wanted to present the knowledge I was acquiring.
Combat Techniques:
Let your students decide whenever possible. Ask them what they would like to study in the next unit, give them several options of books to read, let them watch a video of their choice as homework, give them learning menus, come into class with 2 different games to play and let them choose. My students are always surprised and delighted when I ask them what they would like to do and it always helps them stay focused.
What are your favorite ways to keep students engaged from the beginning to the end of your classes? Please share in the comments below! Happy Teaching!!
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