Getting into the flow with your students

Sep 30

Written By Andrew Woodbury

Flow theory, TBLT, and language learning

Read time: 4 minutes

Here’s our TTT for this week on how to grow your online teaching business.

What is TTT? A Tip, Takeaway, and Task. On Thursday.

Enjoy!

Tip: Develop activities conducive to flow

Flow theory has been around since the ‘70’s, but only recently has it been applied to language learning. Chris Jacobs joined us on our Teacher Talking Time podcast to discuss how it helps language acquisition.

Chris is currently working on projects exploring learning optimization through flow. Which begs the question: what is flow?

Flow is a state of deep focus on an enjoyable activity that is at once challenging and accessible. It’s a balance between anxiety and boredom, which is where retention happens.

Chris advocates for creating activities and tasks for our classes that are as conducive to generating a state of flow as possible.

Which begs another question: how do we do that?

Takeaway: Flow has great a impact on language learning

Flow theory was originally championed by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow experiences have the following characteristics:

1. they have concrete goals and manageable rules.

2. they make it possible to adjust opportunities for action to our capacities

3. they provide clear information about how well we are doing

4. they screen out distractions and make concentration possible

Flow theory appeared around the same time as the popularization of task-based learning. And the theory seems offer an great rubric for the design and management of second-language learning tasks.

Chris believes that flow and task-based learning go together quite well.

An activity is more likely to generate flow when:

There is no right or wrong answer.
It’s a problem-solving activity where the students have to do something.

Chris gives two examples of activities he likes to use:

1. Planning an event

This could be planning a work event, planning a party, planning a trip, or really anything.

2. Back to school shopping

Going shopping for school supplies or clothes. With clothes, one day they go shopping for school clothes, on another party clothes, and on another work clothes.

In both scenarios, give as little information about how to do the activity as possible and just let the students go about it.

Task: Design tasks based on flow

The task for this week is three-fold:

1. Listen to the full podcast episode with Chris

2. Design a task or a set of tasks that fit the criteria Chris talked about

3. Try them in your class this week

Then, write a reflection on the differences (if any) you noticed between those activities and other activities you use. Do this every week. After a few months, you’ll have compiled a long list of flow-inducing activities that you can go to which make your life easier and improve your students’ progress much faster.

We’d love to hear what tasks you come up with. Just reply to this email and let us know! Especially after you’ve tried it out.

We hope this helps.

See you again next week.

Leo, Andrew, and Mike