Using personal development activities to improve learners’ well-being

During the semester of Oct 2022 to Feb 2023, I decided to incorporate personal development activities into my C1-level General English classes at an Ecuadorian teacher training university in the hope that it would positively impact my students’ well-being both in the present and in preparation for their future careers and lives beyond the classroom. This was only the second face-to-face semester after the COVID pandemic had forced us into online learning for two years, and many students were struggling with a whole host of issues affecting their lives and learning. Throughout the 16-week semester, I supplemented the textbook with various activities focusing on mental and physical health that I had come across in my own self-development journey. This article hopes to point to a possible way to weave well-being competencies into the English language curriculum, which practitioners elsewhere may be interested in applying in their own classrooms.