A Brief Overview for the Book PsychologyforLanguageTeachers

○ Deligeqiqige

(Inner Mongolia Normal University, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, 010022)



A Brief Overview for the BookPsychologyforLanguageTeachers

○ Deligeqiqige

(InnerMongoliaNormalUniversity,Hohhot,InnerMongolia, 010022)

From the beginning of the 21st century, educational psychology has been placed great importance in the educational field. However, a few people have been concerned about psychology for language teachers in foreign language teaching. Aiming to provide relatively recent developmental trends of psychology for language teachers, the bookPsychologyforLanguageTeachersby Marin Williams & Robert L. Burden offered comprehensive survey of different psychological theories and methods. The authors applied social interactionism which they thought encompassed the key elements of learning and teaching. The paper is aimed to generalize and summarize its theoretical frame work of theories and some issues and

related methods of teaching and learning from the psychological perspectives.

psychology, language teacher, language teaching and learning

I. Introduction

The readers must be more or less in contact with psychology in different ways, especially the theory and knowledge of educational psychology. Facing with development of society, new challenge put forward by deepening of teaching reform and advocating of all-round quality education, what kind of theory of psychology do foreign language teachers have to acquire? Besides the theories and skills of foreign language teaching, what kind of understanding to the process of learning do we basically require in order to make the process of foreign language teaching and learning become more educational and promote effectiveness of learning and learners’ improvement of all-round quality? There are two principles underlining much of the content and format of this book: one is that fundamental importance to teachers of an understanding to what is involved in the process of learning to inform our teaching of the language: the other is that teachers’ own conceptions of what is meant by learning and what affects learning will influence everything that they do in the classrooms in order to make informed decisions in day to day teaching, teachers need to be consciously aware of what their beliefs about learning and teaching are. Thus, this is a book that is principally about psychology. The book is intended for teachers of foreign language at primary, secondary or tertiary levels, teachers of English as a foreign language, modern language teachers, teachers those involved in teaching any language in the UK or overseas, teachers from a range of teaching context and cultural backgrounds, teacher trainers, head teachers or inspectors, anyone involved in the education of children.

Ⅱ. An Overview for the Contents

The book contains ten chapters.

Chapters one and two first introduce briefly the discipline of educational psychology by discussing major schools of thought such as behaviorism, the cognitive school of psychology, constructivism, humanism and social interactionism and their development. On the basis of the theories above, the author stressed a social-constructivist model of the teaching process. It includes four key elements: the learner (s), the teacher, the task and the context and the elements are analyzed one by one in the following chapters.

In chapter two and three, the author primarily talks about individual teacher. First it argues what kind of beliefs and conceptions teachers bring to the classroom and dominate their behavior. That is to say, there seems teachers’ beliefs about themselves, about learning and its educational relevance and about learners which author has put emphasis on here. The author suggests constructivism as the core of our pedagogical model and teachers’ constructions of learning and learners need to be made clear. Then, in the chapter four, the author has introduced the concept of mediation. In particular, he emphasizes the Feuerstein’s mediated learning experience of language teaching and its powerful and profound influence. In his conception, the role of teacher as a mediator in the process of learning and meaning construction is paid great attention by the author.

The chapter five, six and seven state the role played by the individual learner. Then the author discusses respectively learner’s personal quality, motivation, learning strategy and how these factors have an impact on the process of learning and their own construction process. In chapter five, attribution theory is introduced especially by stressing individual’s unique perspective on the world so that teachers must seek ways to set up a positive level of learner’s self-esteem in order to have learners assess their own successes and failures and make them fully autonomous. Then in chapter six, the author analyzes the internal and external factors of motivation and suggest that teachers need to arouse their learner’s natural curiosity and interests and ask the learners to personally involved in the task and activities ideally challenging; the learners should be in the support of setting up their own goals and evaluate own outcomes under the encouragement of the teacher and peers. Chapter seven is consisted of relatively important contents offering some advice on strategies and skills use of learning situation. It begins talking about definition of learning strategies and conception of learning to learn. Then it follows the discussion of distinction between strategies and skills. In the following part, the difference is made between cognitive strategies and meta-cognitive strategies and introduces the theory of learning in the language teaching such as Rubin and Oxford’s theory of learning for cognitive strategies and Wenden for the meta-cognitive strategies. In the final part of this chapter, author put forward the training for the learning strategies. In recent years, learning strategy training has aroused much attention in the field of teaching language. There have appeared some methods for training program including vocabulary learning methods, listening skills and strategies for reading. in addition, author introduces another kind of procedures for learning strategy training by O’Malley and Chamot. In conclusion, author examines the language learning strategy and its methods of training from the aspects of learners, teachers, task and environment and points out strategy training must meet the needs of the learners’ and fit the learners’ personal characteristics and pay attention to their own construction of learning strategy.

The chapter eight talks about the third aspect of social construction model-tasks in the teaching and learning process. Author has analyzed the status of task, application of task in the teaching language, some elements of task, the role of task-based approach, and hierarchy of difficulty of tasks etc. Here, author has mentioned a pair of most influential figures- Prabhu and Brindley who considered the relevant factors which would have much effect on the hierarchy of difficulty of tasks. In the concluding part, author summarizes the interactive features of tasks- some factors influencing each other in a task. It is proposed that teacher should select the tasks based on the nature of teaching and learning and learners should complete the tasks by their own cognitive and social process; the tasks should give rise to some emotional effect on tasks and make it even effective and meaningful learning process. In order to explore more deeply cognitive act in the learning process, author have suggested a model of thinking process-cognitive processing approach such as the cognitive map of Reuven Feuerstein and his Instrumental Enrichment program. In his opinion, the interaction nature of task, teacher as a mediator, a supportive environment will promote the completion of the task. Some Educational perspectives on tasks is summarized at last and provides the learners and teachers with useful implication on attitudes and deep comprehension on the process of real learning.

Chapter ten examines the importance of environment which is the last factor when it comes to the constructivist model. Author start talking about ecological perspectives on learning. The term originated from the work of social and clinical psychologist Uri Bronfenbrenner when he explained the development of a person. He said that any person’s development should be examined from the environmental systems surrounding them, namely, microsystem, mesosystem and ecosystem. Environmental preferences have much to do with the learning style which is previously studied and the author thinks it is really a misnomer because learning style has nothing to do with the person’s style of learning. The author briefly concludes the elements of environment-physical conditions, social interactions and psychological ethos and place great emphasize on learners’ subjective feeling and understanding for the environmental elements.

Chapter ten gives the teachers ten basic propositions which are considered to be crucial for language teaching.

Ⅲ. An Overall Evaluation for the Book

Currently, in the new situation of foreign language teaching reform and promotion of overall quality education, the book embodies at least the following three points of implications to the language teachers:

1. The great emphasis must be placed on the role of learners. In teaching foreign language in China, it is quite difficult for language teachers to pay attention to the individual learner. However, teachers should provide rich language material and language environment in the classroom teaching, and ask each leaner to construct his/her own meaning construction. Moreover, learning should be in relevance to the learners’ background experience and realistic situation. That is to say, language teachers should understand learner himself, his/her personal quality and his/her personal needs.

2. Language teacher should be a mediator between the learners and learning process. As a mediation, teacher can promote learners’ construction of awareness, confidence and ability to control their behavior. All these is accomplished by the interaction of language. So language teachers need to master not only the classroom English, but finish the mediation functions above by foreign language. Apart from this, language teacher should have own beliefs and conceptions towards learning and teaching in order to act appropriately in the learning process.

3. Foreign language teaching is educational process. It must reflect development of learners in an all-round way. Except language learning, learners must develop ability to learn; positive emotional elements are required as well; healthy and active personality is needed in the process of learners’ development.

In conclusion, the book has covered all possible theories and models which is related to educational psychology and cognitive psychology. Some areas might overlap with theories and models of second language acquisition. Thus, the book can’t conclude all the factors affecting language teaching and learning. It is worthwhile for the book to provide some cognitive aspects of language teaching and learning form the social interactionist framework and will become a wonderful guide book for young teachers to help them do well in their teaching career.

[1]Marion Williams, Robert L. Burden. 2000. Psychology for Language Teachers[M].Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

德力格其其格，内蒙古师范大学外国语学院外国语语言学与应用语言学专业硕士研究生；内蒙古师范大学公共外语教育学院教师。

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《语言教师心理学初探》述评

德力格其其格

(内蒙古师范大学，内蒙古 呼和浩特 010022)

从21世纪初开始，教育心理学已在教育领域具有重要地位和意义。然而，很少有人在关注语文教师心理学在外语教学中的意义。由马林·威廉姆斯和罗伯特L.等学者编写的这本书呈现的是相对较新的理论发展趋势，为语文教师概括不同的心理学理论和方法。作者用社会建构主义理论作为框架，并且他们认为此理论包含学习和教学的关键要素。本文旨在从心理学的角度概括和总结教学和学习中的一些理论和相关问题。

心理学； 语言教师； 外语教学和学习