Mindfulness As A Coping Strategy For EFL Learning in Education1 Part 2

Moreover, Krashen (1982) developed the Affective Filter Hypothesis that could explain the reason for such poor results in EFL by OSE students. 

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He argues that humans have a filter, that decides how much intake can reach the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) proposed by Chomsky in the 1950s and 1960s, which everybody possesses and is an innate mental structure that processes the input and creates the schema in the longterm memories of the acquired knowledge. 

However, this filter can act as a barrier to language acquisition and Krashen (1982) contends that the barrier is up when the learner is unmotivated, lacking in confidence, or experiences anxiety. The idea of an affective filter is also supported by recent neuroscience discoveries by Vogel et al. (2018) who investigated the effects of stress on the neural processes for integrating new information and prior knowledge. 

They found that individuals with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol had pronounced connectivity in the hippocampus for schema-related learning compared to the control group, who were not exposed to stressful circumstances. 

The findings revealed that during novel learning trials with new information and no prior knowledge, the mPFC showed enhanced connectivity, yet there was no enhanced connectivity found in the control group. This suggests that stressed individuals may experience difficulty in accessing and segregating the appropriate brain region for learning and acquisition.

Stress and Anxiety in Learning English as a Foreign Language

According to Shonkoff and Garner (2020), stress and anxiety can have detrimental effects on the developing brain during adolescence and can negatively affect learning. 

They argue that those can lead to the loss of neurons and neuronal connections in the hippocampus and mPFC, which can result in increased anxiety, impaired memory, and therefore impaired learning. They contend that although the hippocampus can turn off the effects of cortisol, prolonged stress and anxiety reduces its capacity and as well as impairing memory also impedes neurogenesis in the hippocampus, which is essential for encoding new memories. 

In addition to the stress and anxiety caused by the overwhelming amount of homework, it is necessary to consider that OSE students may be experiencing anxiety in the EFL environment, which has been defined as "a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to classroom learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process" (Horwitz et al., 1986, p. 128). 

Research has shown that this type of anxiety can also have negative consequences on students' EFL results (Charoensukmongel, 2019) and thus increase the levels of anxiety and lack of confidence even more. 

These findings are in line with the previous research discussed and offer reasonable explanations as to why OSE students in Spain are experiencing such high levels of stress and anxiety and consequently are not learning the foreign language. 

Vogel and Schwabe (2016) argue that researchers must consider the possible effects of stress in an educational setting and strategies to reduce it. However, they also note that stressful events do not always lead to a stressful response and that the response is very much dependent on the individual. 

Although research studies cited have tried to control individual differences in learning EFL, it is not possible to control how individuals perceive stressful events. Past influences and preconditioned behavioral traits can determine whether one individual sees making an error in the EFL classroom as stressful or as feedback that they need to improve on next time. 

Furthermore, it can also be argued that individuals can acquire languages differently for similar reasons, for instance, some individuals may have had prior experience from a very young age of other languages that they are unaware of, and as a result, their brains may have already developed strategies that can be beneficial and improve their ability to acquire and learn languages (Kuhl, 2010). 

To counteract the strong negative effects of stress and anxiety coping strategies must be implemented by the stressed and anxious individual. The WHO's (2013, p. 6) action plan proposes that strategies are developed to overcome the issues discussed and it plans to help children develop "a positive sense of identity, the ability to manage thoughts, emotions, as well as to build social relationships, and the aptitude to learn and to acquire an education." 

In this regard, this article examines in detail how mindfulness could be used as a coping strategy to reduce adolescents' levels of stress and anxiety as well as fulfill the proposed criteria for the action plan of the WHO (2014).

Mindfulness

Kabat-Zinn (2003, p. 145) defines mindfulness as "the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment." In this respect, the authors contend that mindfulness should be incorporated into the OSE curriculum in Spain either as a separate subject or as part of the physical education curriculum. 

There is quitseveralof research to suggest that mindfulness may be beneficial to adolescents by reducing stress and anxiety levels, as well as improving executive functions in the brain including working memory (Riggs & Brown, 2017). Deng et al. (2020) argue that for adolescents whose "higher brain regions" (p. 8), such as the mPFC, are still developing and are responsible for executive cognitive processes, mindfulness could help regulate the emotions, and reduce the effort and cognitive overload that they are prone to experience during this time of development. 

Their study revealed that higher levels of mindfulness in adolescents were correlated firstly, with lower reactions of emotion-generating brain regions and secondly, without activation of higher brain regions. 

This could imply that if adolescents were aware and regularly practiced mindfulness, then not only could they benefit by having more emotionally stable behavior, but their brains would also develop without the risk of damage that stress and anxiety can cause. 

A meta-analysis review of mindfulness studies all of which involved adolescents by Erbe and Lohrmann (2015) showed that mindfulness consistently had significant results for its positive effects. 

Firstly, mindfulness could reduce depression and anxiety in adolescents, as well as stress, emotion regulation, and general well-being. Moreover, the meta-analysis (Erbe & Lohromann, 2015) found a significant improvement in academic performance, which they argued is a result of mindfulness increasing attention and cognitive performance. In addition, a study by Diaz-Gonzalez et al. (2018) specifically tested the effects of mindfulness practice on Spanish adolescents aged 13-16 who were receiving psychological treatments as outpatients. 

They found that after eight weeks of practicing mindfulness for 20 minutes with an instructor and a further 25 minutes at home,e there was a significant decrease in their reported levels of anxiety compared to the control group who received no treatment. As a result, other researchers have asked how it is possible that mindfulness could be responsible for improving academic performance and reducing levels of stress and anxiety. 

Although the exact neural pathways that mindfulness affects are still unknown, several studies have found that long-term practice of mindfulness can cause increased volume in the hippocampus (Lardone et al. 2018Greenbergrg et al. 2019). 

Lardone et al. (2018) revealed by using meta-encephalography that participants who had been practicing mindfulness every day for a year had better neural connections in their brains between the right hippocampus and the rest of the network. 

So, the right hippocampus is involved with the creation of future events or prospective memories, including memories without prior knowledge or a schema that is already present. However, they also found that the left hippocampus was activated when information regarding past events was registered. Thus, their findings support the idea on a neurological level that there is a difference between learning new information and acquiring information if it is already connected to a schema that has been established in the brain. Moreover, it provides evidence that mindfulness can increase working memory capacity. In contrast, Greenberg et al. (2019) investigated to reveal the results after only practicing mindfulness for four weeks. 

There were no significant differences between the control group and the mindfulness group regarding the right hippocampus. Nevertheless, they did find a significant increase in the volume of the left hippocampus in the mindfulness group after only this short time of practicing mindfulness. This suggests that even for those who have only just started consistently practicing mindfulness there are almost immediate benefits. 

As this work has already shown that the left hippocampus is essential to working memory capacity, these findings provide further evidence that mindfulness can indeed increase EFL performance. Considering that this research focuses on adolescents, it is important to mention that the research findings by Lardone et al. (2018) and Greenberg et al. (2019) were done with participants aged 18-50. 

However, a research study by Quach, Jastrowski, and Alexander (2016) also carried out a four-week study of the effects of practicing mindfulness on directly working memory capacity, specifically in adolescents aged 12-17. The findings revealed that after four weeks of practicing mindfulness, their working memory capacity test scores increased compared to the control group. 

Although they did not use technology to assess differences in brain regions, the memory tests used suggest that mindfulness can improve working memory capacity. Furthermore, there is also evidence to show that regularly practicing mindfulness can reduce stress and foreign language anxiety in an EFL setting. Charoensukmongkol (2019) contends that the anxiety experienced by EFL speakers when using the language in all skill sets can hinder their performance. His study focused on using EFL for public speaking when giving a presentation. 

He compared students's test scores for state and trait mindfulness and found that students who reported feeling high levels of state and trait mindfulness also claimed to feel less anxious during presentations using EFL. Moreover, the high levels of state and trait mindfulness reported in students were found to predict higher scores on presentations given in EFL than those students who reported feeling anxious or low levels of state and trait mindfulness.

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