Does a 5-min brief mindfulness or listening activation help college students reduce English listening anxiety before an EFL listening test?
Does a 5-min brief mindfulness or listening activation help college students reduce English listening anxiety before an EFL listening test?

Summary/Abstract: English listening anxiety (ELA) is believed to have a negative effect on listening performance of English learners. The present study examined the effective- ness of two interventions, a brief mindfulness and listening activation in help- ing Chinese college students reduce English listening anxiety before an English listening test and improve listening performance. The experiment was carried out with two intact English language classes. In one class, the participants of Class 1 (English majors) received either a 5-min mindfulness or a 5-min listen- ing activation intervention immediately before a mid-term English listening exam, while Class 2 (law majors) received either a 5-min mindfulness or a 5- min rest intervention. The results showed that a brief intervention focused on mindfulness had a significant effect on decreasing participants’ levels of state listening anxiety, while the listening activation intervention had no such ef- fect. In addition, a 5-min rest intervention, which was initially planned in the experiment as a control intervention, also showed unexpected effect on de- creasing state listening anxiety. However, no significant difference in listening performance was found between the groups in either of the classes.

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