Stop, Stretch and Think: Incorporating Brain Breaks in EFL Classrooms

This paper investigates the impact of brain breaks in the language classroom at the tertiary level. A 'brain break' is an activity that takes people away from deep mental work and allows one's brain and body to rest or take a break to reset. In today's rapidly changing education system, students worldwide must take courses/ classes for long hours. This is inevitable in a language class, especially at the tertiary level, which causes loss of attention, fatigue, and loss of interest in the lesson. Long hours of class with lengthy and monotonous tasks require breaks to re-energise the students. Hence, this study investigates the effects of brain breaks in a language classroom from the perspectives of both students and teachers. The researchers chose (N=22) EFL teachers and (N=60) students, both males and females at King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia to participate in this study. Two separate questionnaires were administered to them. To analyse the data, SPSS version 26.0 was used. The results showed that teachers and students preferred incorporating brain breaks in the language class to improve the overall performance of the students. Based on the study results, the paper concludes with recommendations about how teachers can retain students’ attention through effective brain break strategies.