Ask the Authors: Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching

We recently held an online event to highlight a couple of books in our Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching series, in which authors Gary Barkhuizen and Chika Takahashi discussed their research with series editors Sarah Mercer and Stephen Ryan. In the second half of the event we opened the discussion up for audience questions and we received so many that we decided to answer those we didn’t have time for in a blog post. The recording of the event is available to watch on our YouTube channel.

Questions for Gary Barkhuizen, editor of Language Teachers Studying Abroad

A long time ago, as an undergraduate student, I was a participant in a study to measure L2 French development after study abroad. I remember being asked about romantic relationships in the return interview. At the time I thought it was very personal – is it an element in participants’ experience?

The short answer is ‘yes’. The chapter by Mitchell and Tracy-Ventura, for example, looks at careers after study abroad and gives examples of how participants often return to the host countries to continuing living with (and marrying) people they met while studying abroad. ‘Relationships’ is a very important theme running through all the chapters, and these include not only professional but also romantic relationships.

Is there a system that would allow those going on study abroad programs to meet up with others who have already been? Sharing experience could help acclimatization, perhaps.

This kind of ‘meeting up’ is often arranged by the organizers of study abroad programs, usually within institutions. A number of chapters in the book give examples of this type of connection, and how useful it is for both those going abroad (to learn from those who have already been) and those who have returned (to reflect on their past experience). Sometimes the meeting up takes place online.

Does your book include anything about teachers studying while working abroad?

Actually, it’s more like working while studying abroad. And the work might be internships, short-term placements in schools, doing a practicum, volunteering, etc. I can’t think of examples of studying while working abroad – is that still a kind of study abroad? A good question.

How do you see study abroad driving brain drain, intellectual capital exodus? This is very serious in a range of countries. Students go abroad and later settle abroad, markedly so in the case of Bulgaria, where I am.

It depends on the nature of the study abroad. For example, a semester abroad as part of a degree program requires the participant (a pre-service teacher probably) to return to the home country to complete the teacher education program. Many study abroad programs are a few weeks’ long only, in the form of an exchange for example, and so participants always return. This question may be referring to independent study, of a first degree, or a postgraduate qualification. Here there are easier options for staying abroad after study (and some host countries actually encourage this), but even so there may be immigration visa constraints about staying and often scholarship requirements forcing return.

Questions for Chika Takahashi, author of Motivation to Learn Multiple Languages in Japan

These sound like exceptional learners – did you have certain criteria when selecting participants or did you start out with a larger group?

Yes, I agree that they are rather atypical learners. Indeed, I started out with a larger group: I first interviewed 13 students who responded to the questionnaire in my dissertation, which was administered before the interviews, and who volunteered to be individually interviewed. I noticed that these two learners were contrasting and unique in their own ways even at the very first interviews. Half a year later, I did another round of interviews with five out of the 13, including these two, and they are the two I focused on after this round of interviews and the two who never declined my invitation. I can only thank them for the perseverance.

Was your study informed by a particular motivation model or theory?

Yes, I focused on the L2 motivational self system as well as intrinsic motivation in self-determination theory. At the same time, some themes not covered by these theoretical frameworks emerged from the interview data, and I tried to be particularly careful not to overlook these themes. I believe this is one of the strengths of this type of small-scale, in-depth studies.

I’m very pleased to hear that your languages other than English (LOTE) learners really enjoy language learning itself, not just as an instrument. How were your participants motivated to learn English?

They were of course aware of the aspect of English as a global language and were motivated to learn English to be able to communicate with people around the world. At the same time, particularly one of them considered that in order to understand people of other languages he needed to learn their languages. In this sense, English was not enough and was only “one of the languages” he learned; he never mentioned the aspect of, for example, learning English to gain a competitive edge in the job market.

With online language learning, is the lack of natural human interaction not one of the main reasons for loss of motivation?

That may be the case, as many of us are realizing that doing something online vs face-to-face indeed involve certain differences. At the same time, when you are learning through various media, you may get a sense of “interacting” with those in the programs online, on the radio etc., i.e., with those in the community (whatever that community may be) that one day you hope to be a part of. I think this aspect may be particularly relevant to ideal L2 self, as it involves the aspect of imagination. This aspect may be particularly relevant with the radio, which my interviewees used for their English self-instruction. This is because not having visual information may actually stimulate their imagination.

I work as an English teacher at a Japanese elementary school and I’m struggling with dealing with students who have low engagement during the class, due to lack of concentration. In this situation, how is it possible for me to improve their engagement？

Your question reminds me of my kids! I’ve never taught at elementary school, so my comment is based more on my experience as a mother, but I’d say it’s difficult for them to concentrate, first of all, for a long time (maybe 15 minutes or so? That’s probably one of the reasons why self-instructional radio materials are short), and on a topic they don’t find interesting or relevant. Also, the other day I was trying to teach some basic pronunciation of English to my daughter, who’s a 6th grader, which she found quite boring. So instead of teaching her some random sounds of English, I re-started with the explanations of basic sound systems of a language, sort of like a little linguistics class. This she found interesting and was able to understand. So even within an elementary school what one finds interesting depends on the grade, right? Of course, these are all well-discussed topics related to motivation, I think, but the issues of class organization, interest, relevance, and age all come into play.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the event and asked so many interesting questions! For those who missed it live, you can watch the recording below.

Language Teachers Studying Abroad edited by Gary Barkhuizen and Motivation to Learn Multiple Languages in Japan by Chika Takahashi are available on our website.

From Pre-service to Retirement: The Wellbeing of Language Teachers across the Career Span

This month we published Language Teacher Wellbeing across the Career Span by Giulia Sulis, Sarah Mercer, Sonja Babic and Astrid Mairitsch. In this post the authors introduce the book’s themes and explain what inspired them to write it.

What is wellbeing? What characterises the wellbeing of language teachers across the different phases of their career? How can language teacher wellbeing be supported at these different stages of their career? These and many other questions are explored in our new book based on a large-scale funded research project, Language Teacher Wellbeing across the Career Span.

Teaching is one of the most stressful professions. For language teachers, there are potentially unique additional challenges, such as language anxiety, energy-intense methodologies, and the status of languages and language teaching. With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, these challenges have been exacerbated. Language educators across the globe are facing increasing levels of stress, ultimately resulting in high rates of attrition and burnout. Our book was inspired by our wish to further understand not only the factors influencing teachers’ wellbeing, but also what can be done in practice to support language educators to thrive and teach to the best of their abilities.

One key premise of our book is that each phase of a language teacher’s career is characterised by distinctive challenges and resources which shape their wellbeing. Across their professional lives, teachers experience different issues that may threaten their wellbeing. For example, the challenges experienced by a novice teacher will differ from those of an experienced teacher who is approaching retirement. However, research tends to typically focus only on understanding the lives of pre-service and early career teachers. In this book, we attempt to paint a picture of the challenges and resources of language teachers at all phases of their career, from pre-service education to late-career.

If you are a language teacher, a teacher educator, or a researcher interested in language teachers’ multifaceted lives, we believe that this book may be for you!

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Teachers of Multiple Languages by Eric K. Ku.

What are Editors Looking for in a Proposal when Deciding Whether to Publish a Book or Not?

We recently held an online event with series editors and authors from our Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching series about publishing their books, with an opportunity for audience questions at the end. Here’s a taster of one of the questions that was discussed, answered by series editors Sarah Mercer and Stephen Ryan.

What are editors looking for in a proposal when deciding whether to publish a book or not?

Sarah Mercer
The key thing is a contribution that belongs in the series you’re submitting your proposal to, so in our case, it must be about the psychology of language learning and teaching. It should have something original to say and the authors need to show that they can identify the gap their research is filling.

Your proposal should be relevant for a global market – it can be researched at a local level but must be reflected on in global terms too. It must be professional in terms of writing and content and should be worthy of book-length treatment and not something that could be covered by an article. It should have a clear coherent thread running through it – something to watch out for especially with an edited collection.

Stephen Ryan
In the case of a proposal from an early-career academic, the initial question we are asking is along the lines of “Do we believe this person can deliver a first-class manuscript?” We only have a few pages on which to make that evaluation. We go to each proposal in a positive state of mind; we are looking to encourage publication, not prevent it. It may sound obvious, but a professional presentation of your proposal is important. Careless mistakes, such as errors with names or dates of works cited or clumsily copied chunks of text, start to raise red flags. Basic care and attention make a difference.

Once we start considering the content of a proposal, we are looking for a clear idea; what is the proposed book about and where does it fit within the existing literature? What is unique about the proposed book? Who is likely to be interested in the proposed book?

My own personal view is that reading academic works should not be an ordeal. Reading should be a pleasant, rewarding experience. Evidence of a clear, engaging writing style is always welcome.

You can watch the recording of the event and find out the answers to the rest of the audience questions here:

Getting and Keeping Language Learners Engaged

This month we published Student Engagement in the Language Classroom edited by Phil Hiver, Ali H. Al-Hoorie and Sarah Mercer. In this post the editors explain how the book came about and why it’s important.

All three of us share an interest in the practicalities of getting learners engaged and keeping them engaged. As educators and researchers, we recognized for some years how this has become increasingly difficult in the face of the multitude of distractions competing for learners’ attention. In 2018, we met at the PLL3 conference in Japan. Sarah had already begun work with Zoltán Dörnyei exploring the notion of engagement in depth with a book aimed at educators concentrating on practical issues based on an underlying theoretical frame (Mercer & Dörnyei, 2020). However, all of us felt there was still a need for a greater research commitment to the construct of engagement in SLA. At PLL3, the inspiring relevant plenary by Richard Ryan sealed our resolve to bring such a collection of research papers together. Given its heritage, we are especially honored to have an introduction from Richard Ryan to preface the collection.

In our previous work, we had all seen that although learners may be motivated and want to learn, at the critical moment, their attention could be hijacked leaving them disengaged with the objectives of their learning despite their initial good intentions and motives. Clearly, motivation still has a role to play in understanding learning processes, but learner engagement seems to provide a critical link between learners’ intentions and their actions. What is the nature of engagement, how can it be fostered, and how does it connect with other key variables in language learning – these were some of the key questions driving our interest in compiling this exciting collection of papers.

To date, engagement in language learning has remained relatively unexplored apart from some notable pioneers who have conducted key studies in SLA. This book is intended to chart some of the territory of language learner engagement, pointing out the key areas that can be connected to and built upon but also new directions and avenues yet to be investigated. Engagement is a core foundation for successful learning. While motivation represents an intention to engage, engagement itself is the action state driving learning. Engagement is a complex, multifaceted construct comprised of affective, cognitive, social, and behavioural elements. It is closely interconnected with motivation but differs in its temporal and actional frame. It is a hugely important construct to comprehend, as without engagement, there will be no learning. We are excited to share this collection with you. We expect to continue to learn much more about engagement of different forms in the context of language learning and teaching in the years to come – our hope is that this collection can provide the impetus for that next wave of engagement research.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Contemporary Language Motivation Theory edited by Ali H. Al-Hoorie and Peter D. MacIntyre.

How Do You Prepare a Successful Proposal as an Early Career Academic?

Last month we held an online event with series editors and authors from our Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching series about publishing their books, with an opportunity for audience questions at the end. Here’s a taster of one of the questions that was discussed, answered by series editors Sarah Mercer and Stephen Ryan.

How do you prepare a successful proposal as an early career academic? 

Sarah Mercer and Stephen Ryan

Perhaps the biggest challenge in preparing a book proposal is adapting your research to a very different kind of audience than that of a PhD. As an early-career academic, your potential audience is likely to be unfamiliar with you or your work. That potential audience needs to be persuaded to engage with your work and needs to be persuaded quickly. This means that the scope and purpose of your book must be clear and you must ensure that the findings are relevant beyond the immediate local setting – they must have something to say globally.

When preparing your proposal, it may be a useful strategy to formulate a very brief explanation of your book and why someone should read it – an elevator pitch, if you like. Once you have this in mind, you can use it as a guide for writing the proposal; make sure your proposal does not divert too far from these central ideas.

The proposal should be professionally presented and follow the template provided on the website by Multilingual Matters. It needs to be offering something fresh and appealing to a global audience, so the proposal should make clear what gap it is filling. We would recommend giving your proposal to colleagues for feedback and getting them to ask you questions about it. If you can get hold of examples of past successful proposals, that can help to give you an idea of what is expected.

Take time to get the proposal right, which means getting clarity in your own mind about what exactly you intend and what your main message is. In many respects, a proposal is a unique genre of writing: your task is to present complicated and nuanced ideas clearly and briefly. It is a very difficult balance. When struggling with that balance it is probably better to lean towards the side of clarity and brevity, but a little careful wording can help show that you aware of complexities.

One more point worth thinking about is your title. An attractive, memorable title can go a long way to getting the prospective reader to engage with your work.

You can watch the recording of the event and find out the answers to the rest of the audience questions here:

The Emotional Rollercoaster of Language Teaching

We recently published The Emotional Rollercoaster of Language Teaching edited by Christina Gkonou, Jean-Marc Dewaele and Jim King. In this post Christina explains how she became interested in this area of research and what the book aims to do.

Emotions are at the heart of all human behaviour, and teaching and learning are no exception to this. Teachers plan their lessons carefully, select and design classroom materials that are relevant and suitable for their learners, and contemplate decisions related to classroom management and their actual practice before, during and even after class. But what about decision-making related to emotions – their own as well as those of their learners? How do emotions shape and are shaped by their day-to-day, mundane teaching practice? And how are they experienced and managed?

My own interest in language teacher emotions was generated a few years ago and through earlier research I did on learner anxiety. The interview conversations and follow-up discussions with teachers on the topic of learner anxiety showed that teachers were keen to talk about their own psychologies and anxieties too – and that they would, in fact, slightly deviate from the interview topic by reflecting on their own emotions. This is when I realised that I was only asking them questions about how their learners feel, how anxiety influences learning and what they do to help their learners minimise their language anxiety. Although the focus of my research was on learners, I felt that I could have approached emotions and anxiety within language education in a way that was more balanced and fairer to teachers by giving them the chance to discuss their own emotions too.

When I approached Jean-Marc and Jim to collaborate on this book project, I had not expected how topical language teacher psychology and emotions would be in subsequent years – and how rarely they are discussed in teacher education and development, and even amongst teachers themselves, due to lack of time, reluctance to confide and the inherently subjective nature of emotions. Emotions are there, they are present but they are often marginalised for the sake of other priorities, which are undoubtedly important too but shouldn’t be seen as more important than how individuals in classrooms actually feel. We hope that the book will offer insights into constructs and contexts, methods and tools, theories and practices – and, above all, minds and hearts.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Language Teacher Psychology edited by Sarah Mercer and Achilleas Kostoulas.

Language Teachers’ Beliefs in Their Own Ability

This month we are publishing Exploring Language Teacher Efficacy in Japan by Gene Thompson. In this post the author writes about his experience running language teacher workshops in Japan.

How confident are you about successfully completing different teaching activities? What are the factors that influence those beliefs? Are there any experiences that have influenced your confidence towards different teaching tasks?

I confronted these questions during my time contributing to language teacher training workshops in Japan. Working with a licence renewal program and teacher developmental initiatives in a regional prefecture, I observed a huge difference in the confidence of attendees towards implementing government mandated language teaching curricula reforms that encouraged a more communicative focus in English language classes.

For secondary school teachers, the new policy required them to use English as a teaching language. Certain individuals were very confident about doing so – even excited about it. Others were less certain of their capability to carry out lessons effectively if they had to use English with students. Some were completely devoid of any certainty that they could accomplish anything with their students if they were forced to use English when teaching.

What lay behind these beliefs? For many teachers – as users of English themselves – personal ideas about their own English language seemed to be an important factor. Equally, for many teachers, the demands of their teaching environment seemed to be an important part of the equation. For some participants, their school had a motivated and well-resourced teaching staff. For others, student motivation was low and many of their learners had not mastered the skills taught in previous years.

Many participants observed our seminars and simply rejected everything we presented. Quite quickly, my colleagues and I realized that our seminars were much more effective when we made them into workshops. Generally, we would provide a ‘recipe’ for using a teaching strategy (e.g. using the ‘sandwich’ technique) with a certain learner group, then push our attendees to think about how they could change or apply that technique in their classrooms – often challenging them to try them out on each other using microteaching or other practice activities.

We couldn’t cover as much ground in our sessions in workshop fashion. However, we found not only that our participants developed knowledge about different teaching strategies, but also that our sessions could influence – to a greater degree – the extent to which participants felt confident in their ability to actually employ the ideas from our workshops in their classrooms.

This experience stimulated the research presented in Exploring Language Teacher Efficacy in Japan, as I became interested in the relationship between teacher beliefs of capability, their personal abilities, and the influence of contextual demands upon their beliefs and practice.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Language Teacher Psychology edited by Sarah Mercer and Achilleas Kostoulas.

Language Teacher Agency Matters!

This month we published Theorizing and Analyzing Language Teacher Agency edited by Hayriye Kayi-Aydar, Xuesong (Andy) Gao, Elizabeth R. Miller, Manka Varghese and Gergana Vitanova. In this post the editors explain how the idea for the book came about.

We witnessed scholars’ and teachers’ growing interest in language teacher agency throughout the process of producing this volume. This book idea was hatched over dinner at AAAL (2016 in Orlando, Florida) before a colloquium on language teacher agency in which we editors had all participated. The colloquium attracted a large number of keen attendees and ended with a lively discussion that we all enjoyed. It became clear that many of the attendees were also doing research on teacher agency, and we decided that it was important to bring these developing research studies together into an edited collection. A few months later we posted a Call for Papers, and we were overwhelmed by the response: we received more than 100 submissions! Language teacher agency clearly matters everywhere as these submissions include studies based in urban schools and rural schools, in university classes and church-based volunteer-provided classes, located in diverse national contexts including Australia, China, India, Japan, Mexico and the US. Now, several years later, we are delighted to see a good number of these submissions developed into chapters.

Language teacher agency is not easily defined, in part, because it is always contextually mediated. It thus seems inevitable that scholars will use different methods and focus on a range of topics in order to understand teacher agency in the particular contexts they are exploring. The chapters in this book explore teacher agency in relation to social justice and equity efforts, teacher identity and professional development, teacher evaluation processes, curricular decisions and innovations, and the creation of new teaching practices. It is likewise clear that scholars will adopt different theoretical approaches to help them make sense of the on-the-ground practices and activities that they observe. In this volume, authors draw on ecological theory, sociocultural theory, actor network theory, critical realism, and positioning theory. Our book is not prescriptive in nature; in other words, we do not tell teachers what they should do to be an agent. However, through systematic data collection, the chapters successfully document the complexities associated with language teacher agency in strikingly different contexts, which we believe offers unique insights, implications, and strategies for language teachers. Given the range of perspectives offered in this collection, we are hopeful that it will spark new and continually diversifying research approaches and methods.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Language Teacher Psychology edited by Sarah Mercer and Achilleas Kostoulas.

 

IATEFL in Liverpool 2019

Janet Enever’s opening talk

The conference started for me with the pre-conference meeting of the Young Learners SIG at which Janet Enever, series editor for our Early Language Learning in School Contexts (ELLSC) series, gave the opening keynote. Her talk was entitled ‘21st Century ELT for 3 to 10-year olds’ and she tackled many current issues in working and researching with young language learners, such as the age factor, assessment and native/non-native speaker teachers. She stressed the importance of making sure that the conditions are right to ensure the development of language proficiency in children. Among the other speakers of the day was Shelagh Rixon, one of the editors of our forthcoming book Integrating Assessment into Early Language Learning and Teaching Practice, who presented her work with her colleague Amanda Davies: ‘Primary learning: borrowing the best from ELT and the mainstream’.

The Royal Albert Dock near the conference centre

Another of our series editors, Sarah Mercer, who, together with Stephen Ryan, oversees our Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching (PLLT) series, was also present at the conference. Her latest book Language Teacher Psychology (edited with Achilleas Kostoulas) was very popular with the delegates, as was her older title Positive Psychology in SLA (edited with Peter D. MacIntyre and Tammy Gregersen). The second book in this new PLLT series Visualising Multilingual Lives (edited by Paula Kalaja and Silvia Melo-Pfeifer) was published just last month and was also a real hit. Many delegates found not only the content very appealing but also appreciated the full colour printing throughout the book.

Down in the exhibition hall, I had a very busy few days, with many of our books attracting attention from the IATEFL crowd and plenty of authors and familiar faces stopping by to say hello and browse our new titles. Aside from the books in our PLLT and ELLSC series, highlights for the delegates included Creativity and Innovations in ELT Materials Development edited by Dat Bao, Language Learner Autonomy by David Little, Leni Dam and Lienhard Legenhausen, Spirituality and English Language Teaching edited by Mary Shepard Wong and Ahmar Mahboob and Language Learning and Teaching in a Multilingual World by Marie-Françoise Narcy-Combes et al.

The Royal Liver Building

The conference was held in the Liverpool Arena, which was totally transformed and unrecognisable from when I last came to it, to watch England play an international netball match. It was funny to be in the same venue with our books! The arena is situated on the waterfront and I enjoyed walking every morning along the docks, despite the blistering cold and wind. The docks are also home to Liverpool’s Three Graces and many museums, the Tate gallery and plenty of restaurants and cafes. Luckily I had some free time before I left the city and my favourite visit was to the Open Eye Gallery, where there is a striking exhibition of portraits of female UK MPs. Liverpool is certainly somewhere I’d like to return to for a holiday.

Laura

Multilingualism As Lived Through Visual Means

This month we published Visualising Multilingual Lives edited by Paula Kalaja and Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer. In this post the editors explain how they used visual methodologies to examine multilinguals’ emotions and their expression of those emotions.

It is only gradually being acknowledged that multilinguals, or people who use more than one language, form the majority of people in the world, not monolinguals. However, multilinguals find themselves in different contexts and for different reasons, and their knowledge of the languages varies. In addition, becoming and being multilingual are quite heterogeneous and individual achievements are experienced very differently by subjects, depending on their contexts and life trajectories.

There are two approaches to multilinguals. The objective approach attempts to figure out the mechanisms inside a multilingual’s mind and trace developments in his or her knowledge of any language (and possible stages in the process) in terms of mastery of a linguistic system or in terms of an ability to communicate or interact with others in the language. In contrast, the subjective approach attempts to find out how a multilingual feels about becoming or being multilingual, or what the different languages and their use mean to him or her personally. In other words, the second approach focuses on multilinguals and their lives as subjectively experienced or as lived, including positive and negative emotions, attitudes, beliefs, visions and identities.

Traditional methodologies (such as questionnaires, interviews and observation) may not be the most suitable options when tackling issues like this, as they may suffer from a “linguistic bias” in their attempts to describe or explain emotions, which are not always easy to put into words. So, to address these sensitive issues, we decided to make use of visual methodologies of various kinds, including drawings and photographs, as mediators between emotions and their expression by multilinguals. However, as a rule, visual data were complemented with other types of data, and the starting points and ways of analysing the pools of data for form and/or content vary from one study to another. But even if visual materials are not always used as the only pool of data, they bring to the foreground aspects that individuals choose to visually represent and comment on. So, using visual methodologies may also be about what is not visible, not represented or not valued by the multilingual subject.

As editors of Visualising Multilingual Lives, we invite the readers to learn about visual narratives accounted by multilinguals in different parts of the world, printed in full color. The different chapters of the book offer coherent, original and individualized insights into multilingualism as experienced in three domains: the multilingual self, the multilingual learner and multilingual teacher education. With a preface by Claire Kramsch, the volume acknowledges the potential of arts-based methodologies in grasping the singularities of multilinguals and their linguistic biographies.

Paula Kalaja paula.kalaja@jyu.fi
Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer silvia.melo-pfeifer@uni-hamburg.de

 

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also enjoy Language Teacher Psychology edited by Sarah Mercer and Achilleas Kostoulas.