Investigating the effects of mindfulness meditation on l2 learners’ self-efficacy in an instructed foreign language context

Abstract

A large body of research in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is dedicated to the effects of individual differences among language learners. One commonly studied factor is self-efficacy, and its related subcomponents of foreign language anxiety and second language (L2) motivation. However, specific pedagogical interventions to either enhance or lessen these individual differences have been scarcely investigated and often overlooked in the literature. The present study investigated how mindfulness meditation could be implemented as such an intervention in a university-level Spanish course. Five Spanish sections (n = 65) received mindfulness meditation as a treatment, consisting of five-minute sessions every class period over the span of 13 weeks. An additional five sections (n = 59) were the control group and were used for baseline comparisons, as they completed no such treatment. The Freiberg Mindfulness Inventory (Walach, Buchheld, Buttenmüller, Kleinecht & Schmidt, 2006) elicited participants’ mindfulness scores to measure the effectiveness of the treatment. Using an experimental design at two levels (pre- and posttest comparisons), I used an adapted version of the Questionnaire for English Self-efficacy (Wang, Schwab, Fenn, & Chang, 2013) for an L2 self-efficacy measurement. The Language Orientation Questionnaire (adapted from Dornyei & Chan, 2013) measured participants’ motivation, and the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986) measured participants’ foreign language anxiety. Finally, participants in the experimental group also completed the Mindfulness Experience Questionnaire (created for this study) to provide open-ended responses regarding their experience with the mindfulness meditation practice in the foreign language classroom. Using a mixed between-within analysis of variance (SPANOVA), this study quantitatively analyzes differences in scores using pretest and posttest survey data. Qualitatively, I used Charmaz’s (2006) Constructivist Grounded Theory to do a line-by-line analysis of the open-ended responses provided by the learners regarding various aspects of the experimental group’s perceptions of the treatment. Quantitative findings from this investigation did not show a significant difference in the survey scores between the experimental and control groups in any of the dependent variables except for the mindfulness scores. However, the qualitative findings indicated that participants had strong positive sentiment towards the mindfulness meditation practice. There were two major categories that emerged from the qualitative data analysis, which related to language learners’ anxiety and a mindset for language learning. Overall, this study provides evidence that mindfulness meditation can be a useful pedagogical tool in the instructed foreign language classroom.