Boredom as an Aversive Emotion Experienced by English Majors

Abstract

Despite a growing focus on positive psychology in recent years, negative emotions have not ceased to play a crucial role in learning additional languages in the classroom. This paper reports a study that investigated one such negative emotion – boredom – as experienced by 115 advanced learners of English. They were asked to write a descriptive paragraph about boredom that they experienced during English classes. Qualitative analysis resulted in the identification of five broad categories of factors responsible for student boredom – namely, language tasks, the teacher, modes of class organization, class components and others. On that basis, some boredom-coping solutions are offered.

Keywords

Boredom negative emotions individual differences advanced learners of English boredom in English language classes

Introduction

The foreign or second-language (L2) learning process hinges heavily on students’ emotions, both positive (e.g. enjoyment, curiosity, hope, pride) and negative (e.g. anxiety, frustration, anger, boredom), which shape their attitude to and perception of what is taught to them (Dewaele and MacIntyre, 2014; Resnik and Dewaele, 2020; Richards, 2020). Of all these different emotions, boredom appears to be the one that is most intensely and most commonly experienced in various educational settings (Goetz et al., 2014). Students often find themselves distracted, uninvolved and therefore unwilling to participate in teacher-proposed activities, which contributes to a rather pessimistic picture of classroom reality (Shernoff et al., 2003).

Although usually referred to as one of the plagues of modern times (Spacks, 1995), boredom remains vastly underappreciated in schools and higher educational institutions where teachers tend to confuse it with students’ laziness, anxiety or depression, or simply ascribe it to their personality traits (Macklem, 2015). It is a silent emotion that does not entail disruptive behavior and can, therefore, be easily overlooked. Nonetheless, it should be realized that boredom may have a deleterious effect on what transpires in the classroom (Pekrun et al., 2010), which is why it deserves attention, especially with respect to L2 learning, an area where few relevant studies have been conducted to date. The article presents the results of one such investigation which focused on advanced learners of English in the Polish educational context.

Literature Review

Causes of Boredom

Boredom is a debilitating and distressing emotion that pervades the L2 classroom, making it hard for some students to derive pleasure, contentment and satisfaction from activities perceived by their peers as exciting or enjoyable (Chapman, 2013; Fahlman, 2009). Bored individuals usually experience high levels of disengagement from their immediate learning environment to which they attend with passivity and disinterest. More precisely, they feel alienated from their passions, desires or goals, lack meaningful involvement in the task at hand and, as a result, have difficulties in concentrating on it (Henry and Thorsen, 2018; Skinner et al., 2009). Such students also have the impression that time is passing slowly, which produces a feeling of being stuck in the present and unable to overcome this frustrating condition (Weinerman and Kenner, 2016). The emotion of boredom ranges from being relatively cheerful to extremely unpleasant, depending on the extent to which students are aware of this problematic situation and motivated to change it (Goetz et al., 2014). This negative experience has also been reported to correlate to student stress, risk-taking and impulsivity (Daschmann et al., 2011; Thackray, 1981), as well as to reduced cognitive effort, self-regulated learning and motivation to perform (Pekrun et al., 2010; Preckel et al., 2010). Interestingly, while boredom usually afflicts students whose level of academic achievement and/or ability is low and who, therefore, withdraw from a particular task in anticipation of failure, it may also pose a threat to gifted individuals who find themselves distracted as a result of being under-challenged (Larson and Richards, 1991; Plucker et al., 2004).

There are various reasons for student boredom that deserve to be briefly described in relation to a few models and theories that shed some light on its complex and obscure nature. First, this negative emotion may be caused by the paucity of new stimuli and lack of challenge, which culminates in having to do repetitive activities that are not properly adjusted to individuals’ needs and level of proficiency (the under-stimulation model; Larson and Richards, 1991). Second, students tend to be bored in teacher-supervised situations, where they are expected to invest effort in performing tasks that they regard as monotonous (the forced-effort model; Hill and Perkins, 1985). Third, boredom may result from students’ awareness that a given task is of little value and that there is no room for their own choice or initiative (the control-value theory of achievement emotions; Pekrun, 2006; Pekrun et al., 2010). Fourth, students are bored when they cannot sustain attention while doing the activity at hand (the attentional theory of boredom proneness; Harris, 2000; LePera, 2011). Fifth, boredom can be caused by students’ inability to identify, understand and communicate their emotions (the emotion theory; Eastwood et al., 2007). Sixth, this negative emotion can be associated not only with lower performance but also with an increase in activity levels resulting from attempts to self-regulate attention and deal with frustration at not being able to find a way out (the dimensional model; Pekrun et al., 2010). Seventh, boredom is presumed to occur when the units of one’s mental energy (mentons) are either unused or overused, which indicates that effective learning depends on the right, neither too high nor too low dose of challenge (the Menton theory of boredom; Davies and Fortney, 2012). Eighth, this aversive experience may stem from a disturbed balance between perceived challenges and perceived skills – that is, in circumstances where the latter start to exceed the former (Flow theory; Csikszentmihalyi et al., 2005). Lastly, the reason for boredom can be a lack of meaning or purpose in learning when students are unable to link the assigned tasks to their own lives and they thus opt for avoiding active participation in class (Chan et al., 2018; Fahlman, 2009).

L2 Boredom-Related Research

Until recently, the phenomenon of boredom was largely ignored in research on L2 learning and teaching, with the effect that it was treated only as an indirect object of study. To be more precise, various authors used to refer to this negative experience while primarily investigating other issues. In his mixed-methods study, for example, Peacock (1997) sought to examine the place of authentic materials in shaping the in-class motivation of 31 beginner-level Korean university English as a foreign language (EFL) students. While the participants’ observed on-task behavior was positively influenced by such materials, a different picture emerged from their comments, showing that they perceived authentic materials as much more boring than non-authentic ones. This led Peacock to assume that the students intentionally and successfully concealed the emotion of boredom from the teacher and peers. The aim of Beerman and Cronjäger’s (2011) longitudinal, quantitative study was to explore the relationship between the perceptions held by 548 teenage German L2 learners of French about the value of French-language instruction and the emotions of joy, anxiety and boredom that were experienced over a three-year period of their language course. The obtained findings showed that the participants’ favorable perceptions of L2 instruction were significantly and positively associated with joy, while at the same time significantly and negatively correlated with boredom. Joy and boredom were found to develop along conflicting trajectories, which implies that, with the passing of time, there was a decrease in the learners’ enjoyment and an increase in the experience of boredom. Yet another study indirectly referring to L2 student boredom was carried out by Jean and Simard (2011) among 2321 Québécois high-school students of L2 English/L2 French and 45 teachers for the purpose of examining their perceptions and beliefs about different forms of grammar instruction. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data demonstrated that grammar instruction was an indispensable, albeit boring and disliked, component of the L2 learning process. This made Jean and Simard raise the question as to whether grammar should (not) be viewed as a necessary evil. Finally, in their quantitative study, Kormos and Csizér (2014) investigated the influence exerted by motivational factors and self-regulatory strategies on 638 Hungarian EFL high-school students’, university students’ and adult learners’ autonomous learning behavior. The results revealed that the participants’ learning effort was related to their ability to overcome boredom (satiation control), which led the researchers to conclude that effective management of this negative emotion is crucial to the enhancement of learner autonomy.

The first study to explicitly address boredom in the L2 classroom was conducted by Chapman (2013) who, drawing on combined qualitative and quantitative methodologies, examined the beliefs about boredom held by 57 German L2 students of English and their three teachers. The results demonstrated that the respondents’ feelings towards their teacher were the most important predictor of boredom. The analysis also helped Chapman classify the student respondents’ ‘bored’ behaviors into active (e.g. reading ahead in the coursebook, making lists of things to do) and passive (e.g. doodling, playing with the mobile phone). The main reasons for student boredom were identified and these included low-challenge, coursebook-based activities and unengaged partners. Chapman’s (2013) research was followed by two studies conducted in the Croatian and Ecuadorian educational setting, which, while worth mentioning, will not be described in this paper since they are concerned with teacher boredom (Dumančić, 2018) and instruments of detecting this negative emotion (Palm et al., 2018) rather than with its effect on learners.

All the other research projects devoted to L2 student boredom were designed and carried out in the Polish educational context, four of which are outlined below. In the first of them, which was both qualitatively and quantitatively oriented, Pawlak et al. (2020a) examined the patterns of boredom experienced during a single English class by 11 university students displaying moderate (MBS) and high (HBS) general levels of this negative emotion. The study also sought to find out whether the observed patterns mirrored the participants’ individual trajectories of boredom, as well as to indicate factors responsible for shaping those trajectories. Fluctuations were revealed in both the MBS’ and HBS’ self-reported levels of boredom, although some obvious divergencies between those two groups of students were observed. In particular, while a gradual increase in the level of this emotion was detected for the former, boredom remained consistently high for the latter. Another thing is that general boredom patterns did not fully translate into the individual trajectories of this experience, as was evident with one of the MBS whose boredom throughout the entire class was higher than the overall tendency for this group. Finally, high or low levels of participants’ boredom were linked to such individual difference (ID) variables as learning styles, learning experience and self-awareness.

The second study carried out by Pawlak et al. (2020b), also mixed-methods in nature, investigated fluctuations of boredom experienced by 23 English majors divided into two groups that participated in two naturally occurring classes intended to practise integrated skills on the basis of identical lesson plans. The research project also aimed to identify reasons for the observed changes in boredom patterns. It should be emphasized that, to the best knowledge of the present authors, this was the first study to examine this negative emotion in groups of students participating in classes designed in exactly the same way. The analysis showed that the intensity of boredom was moderate or low for both groups. However, evident discrepancies between the two groups were also revealed in self-reported boredom levels, which could be ascribed to a more pronounced impact of individual variation among students manifesting this emotion with greater intensity. When it comes to a comparison between the two classes, both groups perceived one of them as more boredom-inducing than the other, which was the outcome of the differences in their content, organization and progression. On the whole, speaking tasks performed in dyads were found to produce lower boredom levels, as opposed to grammar and reading activities, which evidently made the participants more withdrawn and disengaged. It should also be emphasized that the students’ self-ratings of boredom levels, both for the whole class and for particular time points, diverged from within-individual and between-individual boredom patterns. Importantly, the amplified experience of boredom was related to a lack of novelty, excessive focus on receptive skills, repetitive grammar exercises, introductory stages of the classes and individual work, but it was mediated by gender and proficiency. Once again, the analysis allowed the assumption that boredom could also be the corollary of ID factors, such as motivation, willingness to communicate (WTC), aptitude, beliefs or working memory.

The quantitatively oriented study, carried out by Pawlak et al. (2020c), was aimed at examining whether there were differences in the levels of boredom experienced in practical English classes by 111 second- and third-year English majors, as well as at identifying its possible causes. The obtained findings revealed second-year students’ boredom as a more intense emotion than was the case with third-year participants, which appeared to be a naturally occurring tendency resulting from the arrangement and content of a three-year course program. More specifically, the initial enthusiasm and enjoyment typical of first-year students gradually gives way to tedium, skepticism, disillusionment and/or restlessness experienced in the second year of studies, to be followed by intentional effort made by third-year students who are determined to complete a diploma paper and pass their final exams. When it comes to the factors contributing to student boredom, they were shown to encompass a shortage of interesting topics to discuss, negative earlier learning experiences, monotony of classes, negative attitudes, a lack of creativity and insufficient involvement.

Finally, in Kruk’s (2019) mixed-methods research project, boredom was investigated alongside WTC, motivation and language anxiety (LA) experienced over a period of one semester by two advanced students of English during their visits to a virtual environment constituted by Second Life (SL). The study was also intended to explore the relationship between those ID factors and to indicate the antecedents of changes that those very factors were subject to. The analysis of the data showed that all four variables under investigation underwent fluctuations both during a single SL session and over time, although it has to be emphasized that the two participants differed in the levels of those fluctuations and that a general perspective on the trajectory of the students’ data did not directly correspond to the individual session tendencies. Whereas the interactions between the four ID factors were dynamic and, to a certain extent, difficult to predict, the two participants’ trajectories were observed to share some common patterns at specific points in time (e.g. boredom and LA from one session to another, WTC and motivation in most sessions). Lastly, a number of both positive and negative predictors of variations in the levels of examined constructs were distinguished, such as involving topics, the ability to comprehend and be comprehended by other SL users, problematic or impolite interlocutors and monotony.

At this juncture, it is also warranted to succinctly comment on the 10-week, mixed-methods study by Aubrey et al. (2020), which, albeit not directly connected with boredom, coincides at certain points with the research projects by Pawlak et al. (2020a, 2020b, 2020c) described above. The study in question was carried out among 37 upper-intermediate EFL students from a Japanese university, majoring in sociology. It aimed to investigate the determiners of those individuals’ engagement and disengagement, the latter of which is, as already signalled in the foregoing discussion, one of the characteristics of the emotion of boredom. The analysis of the data demonstrated that disengagement resulted from a constellation of learner-internal factors, such as a negative attitude towards English, a negative perception of language skills or a negative evaluation of one’s own performance, as well as from the task-level factors, including, for example, the paucity of interest-provoking incentives that could match the students’ level of proficiency. While many of these factors were also identified and elaborated on in the studies by Pawlak et al. (2020a, 2020b, 2020c), the main contribution of the investigation by Aubrey et al. (2020) is that it shed light on the role of unfamiliarity with task procedures, motivational burden brought into the L2 classroom from previous learning experiences and a lack of social cohesion understood as the sense of belonging to and acceptance by a peer group.

The studies outlined above clearly demonstrate how intriguing, complex, pervasive and unpredictable the experience of boredom can be, as well as its potential to impact the L2 learning process. The research project described in the following section, relying solely on qualitative data, constitutes another attempt to gain deeper insights into the underlying mechanisms of this negative academic emotion, thus helping us get a fuller picture of how it can influence the learning opportunities of advanced learners of English.

The Study

The present empirical investigation was conducted with the purpose of pinpointing the reasons why advanced university L2 learners succumb to boredom in the course of English classes. The specific research question was as follows: What factors are responsible for boredom in the case of English majors?

Participants

The participants were 115 first-, second- and third-year students majoring in English (85 females and 30 males), enrolled in a three-year BA program at a Polish university. On average, they were 21.30 (standard deviation (SD) = 2.26) years of age, and their mean experience in learning English equalled 10.90 (SD = 3.79) years. On the whole, participants’ proficiency in English ranged from B1 to C1 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, although there was much individual variation in this respect. The students benefitted from an intensive course in English encompassing classes focused on the target language skills and subsystems (e.g. speaking, grammar, pronunciation, writing), content courses (e.g. literature, linguistics, methodology), as well as a number of electives (e.g. diploma seminars). It should be emphasized that the bulk of the content classes and electives were taught in English as well.

Data Collection and Analysis

The participants were asked to write a paragraph about the experience of boredom during their English course – that is, an intensive course including classes (components) dedicated to the practice of different target language skills and subsystems (e.g. listening, writing, grammar, pronunciation). In order to ward off potential misunderstandings, the participants were given a choice as to whether to use Polish or English, but the majority opted for the latter.

The data were analyzed qualitatively by means of the data analytical software NVivo 8 and involved some of the stages presented by Dörnyei (2007). Accordingly, the pre-coding stage commenced with reading the students’ narratives in order to obtain a general sense of the data. During the initial coding stage, the paragraphs were read from the beginning in search of recurring patterns. For any words, phrases or sentences that were found relevant, tree nodes were created with appropriate labels and explicit descriptions of the codes. Some of the codes were produced in vivo – that is, by using the actual words found in the data. In the second-level coding stage, the data were organized into new broader categories. This was done by grouping comparable and closely related categories formed in the previous stage. If no similarity was uncovered, a new category was developed. The second-level coding was performed by producing a hierarchy of codes in the form of a tree diagram by means of the NVivo software. The last stage involved reading all the organized data once again so as to revise the existing categories and accommodate new insights. Subsequently, students’ utterances referring to specific categories and subcategories were identified and counted. The collected data were analyzed by two researchers independently. The coding process yielded a satisfactory interrater reliability of 90%. The remaining points of disagreement were then discussed by the investigators and consensus was reached in each case.

Findings

The analysis revealed several factors responsible for the experience of boredom among the participants during their English course. They were grouped into five broad categories: (1) language tasks, (2) the teacher, (3) modes of class organization, (4) class components and (5) other. It should be added that the first two categories comprised a number of subcategories. All these categories and subcategories are described below, with the numbers of references to them in the students’ narratives being provided in parentheses.

Language Tasks

One of the most boredom-inducing factors concerned language tasks (126 references in total) planned by the teachers in the English course. Its first subcategory was labelled task difficulty (32 references) and included language activities that the students perceived as boring due to the fact that they found them either too easy or too difficult. The next two subcategories comprised task repetitiveness (29 references) and task monotony (40 references). The former encompassed activities that were regarded by the students as very similar, typical and mundane, whereas the latter included tasks that were perceived as lacking in variety and taking too much time (i.e. some tasks were boring since they were scheduled to last for almost the entire class). In addition, the participants were bored by the topics of some of the language tasks because they were not interested in them, they viewed them as having little value for their language development or because some of the topics were too challenging, concerning things they would never discuss in real life. This boredom-evoking factor fell into the last subcategory – that is, task topics (25 references). Boredom-inducing factors falling into the category of language tasks are exemplified by the following excerpts:

The teacher didn’t recognize the group’s level of English and the tasks he gave us were too easy.¹

I was extremely bored during the phonetics because the classes were very difficult and nobody didn’t know what to do.

I felt bored when the teacher repeated the same kind of activity every class, e.g. ‘filling the gaps.’

. . . when we were supposed to listen and watch a film through the whole lesson.

I was bored when I had to write an essay ‘what makes people happy.’

The Teacher

When it comes to the factors evoking the experience of boredom related to the teacher (40 references), its first subcategory refers to practitioners’ lack of involvement. More specifically, a number of students (10) experienced boredom when some of their teachers were not engaged in classes they conducted or when they were evidently not prepared for them. Several participants (eight references) felt bored in situations in which the teacher did not explain the issues covered adequately and, in effect, the students were not sure how to complete the assigned tasks. It was only natural to label this subcategory insufficient explanations. Some other respondents (11 references) also pointed to situations when teachers dominated classroom interaction, talking too much and sometimes touching upon unrepeated topics, which severely reduced students’ opportunities for the use of English. Given the nature of the comments, a decision was made to call this subcategory excessive teacher talk. (Negative) characteristics of the teacher formed the final subcategory and included boredom factors relating to specific teachers, teacher personality and teacher behavior in class. Such issues were mentioned by 11 individuals. Illustrative examples pertaining to the category of the teacher and its subcategories follow:

I’m bored when the teacher is not involved enough.

I feel extremely bored when the classes aren’t prepared carefully.

I feel bored when the teacher gives us copies with the exercises and asks to do it without explaining at all.

I’m bored when the teacher is scary.

I was bored when my teacher gave us one short exercise (10 minutes) and then was talking about it for 40 minutes.

When teacher didn’t ask questions but only speak and haven’t got interaction with group.

I was extremely bored when the teacher talked about his private life and experiences not connected with the lesson.

. . . when the teacher speaks very slowly.

I felt extremely bored on every reading class with [name of the teacher].

[name of the teacher] is boring.

Modes of Class Organization

The category labelled modes of class organization (seven references) is related to different ways the students were asked to work during English classes. While some participants (3) considered individual work as particularly boring for them, several other students (4) regarded performing language tasks in pairs and/or in groups as a source of boredom. The following two excerpts exemplify these findings:

I am bored when we have to work in groups because usually nobody in groups wants to talk.

I feel bored when I need to search for information in the books or internet for finding ideas for my project all alone.

Class Components

A large number of participants (31) indicated specific classes (components) constituting the English course in which they experienced feelings of boredom. In particular, the students felt bored with reading, listening, writing and phonetics classes. The analysis of the data showed, however, that the students were not very elaborate in their descriptions and limited themselves to just pointing out the components which they found the most likely to induce boredom. This is evident in the following excerpts:

I felt bored during my phonetics course because it wasn’t like I thought . . . .

I felt extremely bored in listening classes.

I always feel bored during reading classes.

Other

The category of other (14 references) contained a variety of boredom-provoking factors. Some students experienced boredom due to the fact that they were compelled to do something in class or they were forced to ‘tell the story about something unreal.’ According to some participants, this negative emotion was also caused by practicing unnecessary target language subsystems or specific elements within those subsystems (e.g. pronunciation and grammar, but also specific structures). They also pointed to uninteresting and tiring issues that other group members spoke about, tiredness, classes scheduled early in the morning or late in the afternoon and the perception of classes that ‘last forever.’ Finally, several students pointed out problems with the proper use of audio and video equipment by their teachers. Such issues are exemplified in the following excerpts:

I’m bored in classes when teachers force students to read different texts and force them to write essays. In my opinion, writing essays and reading texts at classes is boring. I prefer doing these activities at home.

I didn’t like when on reading classes instead of practice reading we write some stupid text. It doesn’t teach anything, it is just boring.

. . . when other class attenders had to discuss topic and they discussed it in a very boring way . . . .

. . . listening classes when the teacher turns on the video on his tablet and we can’t hear anything.

Discussion

The analysis allowed the identification of five categories of factors which are likely to generate the feeling of boredom among advanced learners of English. These are as follows: (1) the language activities that are used in class; (2) teacher-related issues; (3) the mode of classroom arrangement; (4) a specific component of the English course; and (5) an amalgam of causes that can be described as somewhat idiosyncratic in nature as they refer to such subjective phenomena as feelings of compulsion, perceptions of peers, tiredness or concrete situations that may come up in class. For one thing, it is clear that most of the identified factors fit in well with the causes of boredom outlined earlier in the article and deriving from theories proposed in the field of educational psychology (cf. Hill and Perkins, 1985; Larson and Richards, 1991; Macklem, 2015; Pekrun et al., 2010) but also from the findings of some of previous studies in the domain of L2 learning and teaching (e.g. Aubrey et al., 2020; Pawlak et al., 2020a, 2020b). For example, the specific categories and subcategories, as well as the excerpts used to illustrate them, highlight the fact that boredom mainly stems from unpropitious choice of learning tasks and activities. This is related, for example, to the failure to adjust the challenge they pose to students’ needs or abilities (i.e. the subcategory of task difficulty), with the feeling of boredom resulting from having little to do or reluctance to deal with tasks that are seen as unattainable. Boredom also emerges from the fact that the activities used in class lack novelty, they are often very similar in nature (e.g. filling out gaps), too much or too little time is devoted to them and the way in which they are implemented precludes manifestation of students’ agency (i.e. subcategories of task monotony and task repetitiveness). Equally important is the fact that the themes of some of the tasks (e.g. happiness) as well as their nature are seen as having little to do with what the students are likely to be required to do in real-life, out-of-class situations (i.e. the subcategory of task topics). The other causes of boredom also largely mirror those identified in previous research (e.g. Pawlak et al., 2020a, 2020b, 2020c) and include issues related to the teacher, the way in which activities are organized, as well as the focus of a particular class (i.e. the categories of the teacher, modes of classroom organization, class components, as well as other). This said, the analysis of the data allowed a much more fine-grained understanding of such broad reasons for the occurrence of the feeling of boredom. This is evident in the elaboration on the teacher-related causes (i.e. the subcategories of lack of involvement, insufficient explanations, excessive teacher talk and teacher characteristics), the misguided focus of some tasks and activities, as well as the way they are planned and organized (i.e. categories of modes of class organization and other) or the specific element of the intensive English course (i.e. the category of class components). With respect to this last issue, it would seem that classes devoted in their entirety to reading, listening, pronunciation and writing are more likely to induce boredom than those focusing on speaking, integrated skills or, presumably, even grammar.

There are also three issues that need to be addressed at this juncture. First, it should be kept in mind that the experience of boredom is bound to be mediated by a host of ID factors, such as learning style, strategy use, motivation, WTC, personality or beliefs, influences that were not taken into account in the present investigation. Second, although it might seem that boredom is merely a flipside of motivation, it appears to be a complex emotion in its own right, not least because it can affect motivated and unmotivated students equally. For example, an individual who might on the whole manifest a strongly motivated learning behavior might feel bored in a particular class, which might translate into his or her more or less overt disengagement. By contrast, a person who does not see much of a reason for learning English in general may, on occasion, be carried away by what transpires in the classroom and thus become very engaged in the tasks and activities being performed. Obviously, similar to motivation and many other ID factors, boredom can be seen in terms of trait and state and it can fluctuate over time over these two dimensions. Third, the study is not free from weaknesses, such as the use of only qualitative data, the focus on English majors or the fact that it adopted a macro-perspective in the sense that it explored the causes of boredom in a very general manner (i.e. without reference to specific classes or situations). The picture would undoubtedly become much more complex if specific lesson plans or teachers’ and students’ dispositions on a given day had been taken into consideration as well.

Pedagogical Implications

The study provides a basis for a handful of pedagogical proposals that can aid teachers in lowering the experience of boredom among advanced learners of English at university levels. In the first place, given the age and maturity of such students, it would make sense to pick their brains about their perceptions of the tasks and activities employed in English classes and negotiate the topics of such tasks. Second, irrespective of task type or the topic, it is clearly necessary to introduce variety, avoid repetitive activities even though they may have proved highly successful in prior instruction and ensure that students have opportunities for preparing for tasks that may be cognitively challenging (e.g. because they deal with new or difficult topics). This is not to say, obviously, that task repetition as such cannot be a useful pedagogic tool (cf. Bygate, 2018), but, rather, that the use of similar task formats over a longer period of time can lead to enhanced feelings of boredom and disengagement. Third, while it is easier said than done, teachers should do their utmost to show involvement in their classes, even if this might mean feigning it when dealing with minimal pair pronunciation practice, numerous controlled activities aimed at a particular grammar structure or inherently monotonous reading exercises. They should also try to make sure they do not dominate classroom interaction, although they might naturally be tempted to do so. Fourth, a balance should be struck between different modes of classroom organization (i.e. whole class, pair work, group work) within the confines of a specific class, as this will always help reduce the prospect of monotony and, thus, boredom. Fifth, while some components of the English course may be inherently more boredom-inducing than others (e.g. writing classes vs speaking classes), following the guidelines given above can ward off its actual occurrence or at least diminish its intensity. Sixth, even though this is an arduous and daunting task, there is certainly merit in charting the individual profiles of students, which can be consulted when dealing with evident signs of boredom, and used as a basis for taking some remedial actions. Seventh, it is possible to envisage specific, longer-term pedagogical interventions aimed at reducing boredom across different components of the English course. Finally, while these guidelines are grounded in a very specific context – that is, English classes taught to advanced students majoring in this language – some of them can surely prove instrumental in reducing boredom in other educational settings, such as English lessons conducted in different types of schools.

Conclusion

Boredom is a negative emotion that remains, to a large extent, unexplored in the context of teaching and learning additional languages, including English taught as a second or foreign language. The article has reported a study that has investigated the causes of this negative emotion in the case of Polish university students majoring in English who are by definition quite advanced and, at least to some extent, motivated to achieve high levels of proficiency. Qualitative analysis allowed the identification of five main factors that contribute to the experience of boredom in this context – that is, different aspects of the task employed, the characteristics and behavior of the teacher, modes of classroom organization, specific components of the intensive English course and a mixed bag of causes concerning different aspects of a specific class (e.g. interlocutors, the focus on a particular target language feature, technical problems). The examination of factors that contribute to the occurrence of boredom as well as its intensity offered a point of reference for proposing guidelines in terms of reducing this aversive emotion, not only in the context in which the study was conducted. Obviously, if such pedagogical recommendations are to become more fine-tuned and, thus, more effective, boredom needs to be investigated with groups of learners of other ages at other educational levels, and the utility of specific interventions in this respect should be verified as well. It is the responsibility of scholars to undertake such research with the aim of optimizing L2 instruction in different learning environments.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Mariusz Kruk

Notes

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