LanguageLearners—FromLearning Styles to Identity 4.

1 EFLinthe21stcentury betweenlearning and

education 4.2 Languagelearners from apsycholinguistic point of view: learners as non-trivial machines
processing language 4.3 Languagelearners from asocio-cultural point of view: learners as
humanbeingsandmeaningmakers 4.4 Implications for the EFL classroom 4.5 Conclusion From a global
perspective, education is the key to democratic participa tion and personal welfare. Therefore, providing
as many people with as much education as possible is a fundamentally democratic endeavour. From a
historical point of view, it is thus very consistent that the human ist approaches to public schooling for
an increasing number of people in the 17th and 18th century drew on the idea of instructivist teaching
to large numbers of students, crowded into large classrooms. In the 20th century, various reform
pedagogical movements and an increase in peda gogical research raised awareness that learning is a
fundamentally indi vidual and even idiosyncratic process. Therefore, uniform instruction to large groups
was increasingly seen as problematic. The idea of learner orientation was born. About a century later, it
cannot fully be claimed that this learner orien tation has actually become a reality. Nevertheless, there is
a lot of evi dence that suggests that learner orientation improves the quality of EFL classrooms. In fact,
there are various approaches that look at the lan guage learner from different perspectives, thus
highlighting a multitude of aspects that together constitute learner orientation in a complex way. The
following chapter will first set the stage for learner orientation by putting it into the context of
individualisation. It will then consider it from a psy cholinguistic point of view, highlighting learners’
individuality of process ing language. Afterwards, it will discuss learner orientation from a so cio-cultural
perspective, exploring what it means to understand language acquisition as a process embedded in
cultural contexts. Finally, the chap ter will present implications of these different approaches to learner
ori entation for the EFL classroom (cf. also chapter 11 in this volume). Learner orientation in FLT means
making language teaching adaptive to the learners by taking into account their individual psychological
dis positions (e.g. their learning styles) as well as their individual construc tions of identity (e.g. their
cultural and linguistic positionings) in order to foster learner autonomy with respect to its functional (i.e.
manage their own language learning) and critical (i.e. take up a reflected stance to school as an
institution) aspect. Definition 57 4 Language Learners—From Learning Styles to Identity 4.1 | EFL in the
21st century between learning andeducation Change: ›The only constant is change‹. Arguably, this
saying attributed to Heraclitus has never been more appropriate in its 2500 years of existence than in
the early 21st century. Social change is fuelled by migration and alternative constructions of social
identity. Globalisation and digitalisa tion have speeded up technological change dramatically and altered
the work place fundamentally. Technological change in turn has altered the patterns of the use of
foreign languages in that there is an ever increasing number of devices (e.g. electronic translators) that
support everyday communication across languages. Impacts on FLT: What has all this to do with foreign
language teaching and learning? A preliminary answer could be that it impacts on the goal of the EFL
classroom. Where there might have been a time when compe tence in the target language (i.e. English),
perhaps complemented by a smattering of intercultural skills, was the goal, this is not satisfying any
more. Today, English is the most important global lingua franca. Who dares to say that this will still be
true when today’s students are graduat ing or when they are at the peak of their career? Will it probably
be Chi nese by then? Or Spanish? We do not know. This is exactly the point. Learner autonomy: Target
language competence is the goal that teach ers will probably devote most of their time in the EFL
classroom to. But it is only learner autonomy which gives their students the opportunity of extending
their language competence in the best possible way for the course of their future life and career. On the
one hand, this means that learners become autonomous in terms of organising their own lifelong
language learning (cf. Benson 2011). On the other hand, it means that they become autonomous in
terms of understanding the biographical and political relevance of language and language learning (cf.
Fair clough 1999). Both elements, functional autonomy to be able to partici pate and reflexive autonomy
to be able to become critical and emanci pated, are two sides of the same coin. The question, this
chapter is going to address then, is: How do learners become autonomous in these two respects?
Language learning: The first path to autonomy is looking at TEFL as language learning. Learners have
long been considered trivial machines imitating interlocutors and making transfer mistakes that need to
be erased by drill exercises. Selinker’s seminal paper (1972) has taken seri ously that learners are by no
means trivial machines but intelligent pro cessors of input constructing and testing language
hypotheses. For the f irst time, learners became a relevant object in foreign language research in their
own right. This coincided with the communicative turn, shifting attention from form to message and
content. Following from an ever increasing conceptualisation of language ac quisition as a constructive
process, learners were re-conceptualised as acting rationally or even strategically and therefore in need
of an ex tended amount of reflexivity. Parallel to this, learners were no longer reduced to solely
cognitive creatures but also considered having emo 58 4.2 Language learners from a psycholinguistic
point of view tional needs. This led to looking at the emotional aspects of language acquisition, taking
into account aspects of anxiety, motivation or self efficacy. Summing up this strand of research,
language learning is consid ered a constructive and strategic activity of processing input, negotiating
meaning and producing output to bring about a complex cognitive and emotional deep structure.
Languageeducation: The second path to autonomy is looking at TEFL as language education: Historically,
there have always been educators such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, who foregrounded the educational
po tential of foreign languages. While Humboldt still had a somehow cogni tive approach to what
constitutes the educational potential of foreign languages, he arguably paved the way for taking the
learners into account in a holistic way. This led to reform pedagogical approaches to language learning
that stressed the educational potential of foreign languages rather than functional language
competence (e.g. the Steiner movement that introduced foreign language learning at elementary level
in the early 20th century already). It was the cultural turn (i.e. the notion that cul tural context strongly
influences human actions), though, and the emer gence of understanding language acquisition as
intertwined with learn ers’ identity constructions that led to viewing learners as human beings with
complex biographical and cultural roots and resources that strongly influence their language acquisition.
This chapter will first elaborate the two perspectives in terms of their central concepts and their
conceptual isation of the foreign language learner and second provide examples of teaching strategies
and classroom activities putting these conceptualis ations into practice. 4.2 | Language learners from a
psycholinguistic point of view: learners as non-trivial machines processing language Learner features:
From a cognitive point of view, language acquisition is a process that is relatively similar across
individuals, which runs through comparable states in a similar order and which is influenced by individ
ual features of learners in a systematic way (cf. Wolff 2010a, 293). It is considered a mental activity of
receiving and processing input, negotiat ing meaning in interactions with interlocutors and generating
output that aims at reaching the speaker’s communicative goals. The underlying mental activity is seen
as a constructive process of generating linguistic hypotheses and learners are seen as testing these in
interaction. From this point of view, learner orientation means optimising the language acquisi tion
process by taking into account different learner-specific variables that influence this process. There are
various ways of organising and relating these different fea tures. In his concise overview, Wolff (2010a,
294ff.) compares different attempts of defining relevant categories and comes to the conclusion that 59
4 Language Learners—From Learning Styles to Identity researchers have agreed on most of the
categories and that there is very little that is still contested. It does not make sense to present all the dif
ferent taxonomies here, because they partly overlap or give different names to similar concepts.
Therefore, it might suffice to identify the rele vant areas. According to the literature, learners are
significantly different with respect to different domains. Key points ■ Dimensions of learner differences
age ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ affective state, i.e. their emotions in the course of acquiring a for eign language,
influenced by features such as anxiety or uncertainty tolerance aptitude attitudes towards (learning)
foreign languages strategic repertoire beliefs about language acquisition and favourable conditions of
the language classroom motivation to learn foreign languages cognitive style, such as a rather analytic or
holistic way of approach ing problems An introductory text does not allow going through all the features
in turn, hence one of the particular features will be dealt with in more detail. This will demonstrate (1)
that each of the features is complex in itself and can be conceptualised in different ways, (2) that these
features are not fixed but can be influenced by individual ways of teaching and (3) that looking at the
different features allows for drawing very practical consequences with respect to managing a specific
classroom. Because of its importance, the topic chosen is the concept of motivation. Motivation:
Dörnyei, one of the most prolific experts on motivation in the foreign language classroom, begins one of
his books by saying that »strictly speaking, there is no such thing as ›motivation‹« (2001, 1; italics in the
original). Of course, the point he wants to make is not that the phenomenon known as motivation does
not exist. He rather wants to stress that it is very complex and needs to be approached from various
angles to get a grip on what it means or even take it into account in the classroom. He goes on defining
it as an »aspect of the human mind [...] related to what one wants/desires [...], in contrast to
characteristics re lated to what one rationally thinks [...] or feels« (ibid., 2; italics in the original). Early
research into motivation: Having established this, the question is where do these desires come from?
According to self-determination theory (cf. Deci/Ryan 1985), they can originate from internal driving
forces such as a positive attitude towards foreign language learning or foreign languages or they can be
instilled externally by positive rewards or threatened punishment. With respect to foreign language
learning the specification of this by Gardner and Lambert (1972) is a very useful tool 60 4.2 Language
learners from a psycholinguistic point of view to show how motivation can vary across individuals based
on their indi vidual attitudes. In their model, an integrative orientation is given if learners have a positive
attitude towards the foreign language and the assumed community of speakers of this language, which
they want to interact with. In contrast to this, an instrumental orientation means that a learner wants to
acquire a language because of non-linguistic goals, such as success in the labour market. Motivation and
the self: Moving into the 1990s and 2000s the concept of motivation has become increasingly complex.
It may suffice here to introduce one other important aspect, the concept of self-efficacy (cf. Bandura
1997). It describes the effect that even if an individual may have an instrumental orientation towards
the foreign language, this may not lead to high motivation if the individual considers him/herself not
capa ble of mastering the language. The important point about this concept is that self-efficacy and
actual performance in the classroom have a recipro cal relation, i.e. they are two sides of the same coin.
On the one hand, high self-efficacy leads to high persistence and high intensity of a learn er’s activities,
which in turn is likely to have a positive influence on the learner’s performance—a self-enforcing cycle.
On the other hand, low performance and failure reduce a learner’s self-efficacy, which in turn lowers
persistence and intensity of activities—a vicious circle. Anxiety: An aspect of this specific to the foreign
language classroom is the notion of anxiety. It is considered a major factor influencing to what extent a
person is able to process input or to engage in interaction, which in turn helps to clarify the learner’s
linguistic hypotheses. Again, it can be said that anxiety and comparable phenomena such as uncertainty
toler ance are acquired in early stages of a person’s biography: students bring this disposition to the
classroom. Nevertheless, anxieties are not fixed. They have been learned and they can be transformed.
Therefore, your classroom needs to be a place which not only reacts to students’ disposi tions but tries
to influence them positively. This aspect will be taken up in the final section of this chapter. Multiple
intelligences: This closer look at motivation has already demonstrated that viewing learners’
individuality as a programmed set of f ixed features is very questionable. Therefore, there are models
that look at learners’ individuality in a more flexible way. One such approach is the model of multiple
intelligences (Gardner 1993). It assumes that human intelligence does not only consist of cognitive
capacities, but that other areas such as aesthetics or movement are of equal importance, i.e. that
humans possess multiple intelligences with individual strengths and weaknesses. It is certainly
questionable whether individuals could be put into a box according to their particular mode of
intelligence. This would create the same problems as assuming that a lack of aptitude is the end of the
story of learning a language for an individual with this assumed deficit. The point rather is that the
model of multiple intelligences shows to what extent EFL classrooms have a cognitive bias, particularly if
fol lowing the prevalent form-orientation of textbooks. Learning styles: Another way of dealing with
individuality without putting learners into individual boxes (perhaps at the price of using col 61 4 62
LanguageLearners—FromLearningStylestoIdentity lectiveboxes,
though)wasdevelopedinthe1990saspartofabroader movement totake thecultural embeddednessof
learners’ individuality intoaccount.OxfordandAnderson(1995)summeduptheexistingliter
atureandidentifiedthefollowingeight learningstyles:
Learningstylesandculture:OxfordandAnderson’spointwasnottoopen
justanothertaxonomy,butratherthatthecombinationoflearningstyles tosetsisculture-
specific.Thismeansthatcertainlearningstylesmaybe preferredonthebasisof one’scultural background. If,
for example, a persongrowsupwithinasmallnuclearfamilywithastronglyindividu
alistandemancipatoryorientation,s/hemayfinditdifficult toadjust to
ateachercentredinstructivistclassroom. Ifateacherdoesnotsharethe students’background,
s/hemayfinditdifficult tounderstandthestu Learningstyles Description globalvs.analytic
thedispositiontostartwiththewholepictureratherthan
lookingatdetailsfirst,goingalongwithaverbalorientation
andlikingoflinguisticformratherthanavisual/spatialori entationandlikingofcommunication
fielddependentvs. fieldindependent »thedegreeofabilitytoseparateinsignificantbackground
detailsfromtrulysignificantdetails«(205),goingalongwith
thedispositiontounderstandasituationthroughlogicanal
ysisratherthanthroughinterpersonalcommunication feelingvs.thinking
thedispositiontobaseone’sdecision-makingonsocialand emotionalfactorsratherthanonlogicandanalysis
impulsivevs. reflective thedispositiontocommunicatespontaneouslyandfastwith
ahighacceptanceofinaccuracyratherthantocommunicate slowly,deliberatelyandwithgreataccuracy
intuitive-randomvs. concrete-sequential thedispositionto»buildamentalmodelofthesecond-lan
guageinformation«(207),goingalongwithcreativity,the
applicationofcompensationstrategiesandhighacceptance
oftopicaldeviation,asopposedtoanalysingandcombining linguisticinformation,goingalongwithtask-
andteacher orientationandavoidanceofcompensationstrategiesand topicaldeviation closure-orientedvs.
open thedispositiontodotasksontimeandtoavoid»ambiguity,
uncertaintyorfuzziness«(ibid.)asopposedtooperatingon flexibletime-
managementandpossessing»hightolerance forambiguity«(ibid.) extrovertedvs. introverted
thedispositionto»gaintheirenergyandfocusfromevents
andpeopleoutsideofthemselves«(208)leadingtoaliking ofco-
operativeinteractionalactivities,asopposedtobe »stimulatedbytheirowninnerworldofideasandfeelings«
(ibid.)anddislikingcontinuousworkingreatgroups visualvs.auditoryvs. hands-on
thedispositiontoprefervisualstimulationleadstoanxietyin
thefaceofmerelyoralinput,whereasthedispositiontopre
ferauditoryinformationdoesnotcausethisproblem;the dispositiontopreferhands-
onexperienceleadstoanin creasedneedofphysicalactionandthemanipulationof
»tangibleobjects,collagesandothermedia«(209) Table4.1: Learningstylesac cordingtoOxford/
Anderson(1995) 4.2 Language learners from a psycholinguistic point of view dents’ difficulties in
adjusting. S/he may therefore attribute learning dif f iculties to a student’s lack of aptitude or
intellectual capacity rather than to a difference in learning style. Therefore, a teacher’s awareness of the
potential differences in learning styles and their cultural roots is required to correctly identify learning
difficulties that could be reduced by re sponding to the learners’ different styles. If this is not done, the
»foreign language classroom becomes a place of inequity, where some students receive what they need
and others do not« (Oxford/Anderson 1995, 201). This culture specificity opens up a point of view, from
which »cross-cultural style conflicts« (ibid., 210) become visible. A relevant study by Wallace and Oxford
(1992) in North America showed that the teachers were significantly more oriented towards
introversion and think ing, whereas their ESL students seemed to be much more oriented to wards
extroversion and feeling. The study also shows that these differ ences negatively influenced grades,
most intensely when it comes to writ ing. The authors conclude from their data that the style
incongruities originate from cultural differences and recommend more awareness and sensitivity in this
area. Stereotype threat: One possible criticism of this approach is that the seeming complexity of
describing individual dispositions in eight differ ent categories is significantly reduced by the authors
themselves. By con stantly establishing connections and interdependencies between catego ries they
create an overarching dichotomy between analytical-reflex ive-uncertainty tolerant learners as opposed
to global-impulsive-uncer tainty intolerant learners (cf. Bauer 2015, 23). This simplifies the complexity
they created in the first place and may lead to put learners into boxes too readily and inappropriately.
Another possible criticism concerns the application of this list in the classroom. Their suggestion is to use
questionnaire-like style inventories to establish students’ styles and teachers’ styles as well. Could there
be anything wrong with this? The authors say no, because: »A questionnaire is by nature non-
threatening« (Oxford/Anderson 1995, 210). There are researchers, however, who would be rather
unhappy with this (cf. Steele/ Aronson 1995). They draw on the finding that students’ performances in
the classroom are influenced if features of their identity, such as gender or ethnicity, are made salient.
This phenomenon is called ›stereotype threat‹ and was first discovered in the context of post-
segregational col lege education in the United States. There, African-American students in an ethnically
diverse setting performed significantly worse in tests that were introduced as achievement tests as
compared to tests that were in troduced as research tests, for example in order to measure the co-
ordina tion of hand and eye. Also, the effect was found when students were asked to name the relevant
feature, such as ethnicity or gender, in the header of the test, as opposed to if they were not.
Howstereotype threat works: The explanation of this phenomenon is that people tend to accept the
stereotypes attributed to the social group they are identified with, i.e. the stereotype that minority
students are less competent or that women can’t do maths. When the stereotype is made salient in a
classroom situation, students implicitly or even explicitly 63 4 Language Learners—From Learning Styles
to Identity spend cognitive and emotional capacity on dealing with the social expec tations that the
stereotype evokes. This can mean that students’ stress levels rise because they are anxious not to
conform to the stereotype by performing badly; which sadly enough is what happens in this situation.
And this is exactly what could happen if style inventories are used in the classroom, because these
inventories—even more so if their presumed cultural background is mentioned—may well be
threatening by empha sising cultural stereotypes. Othering: The discussion of different concepts has
shown the com plexity of the problem. The concept of learner styles even tries to account for cultural
effects. Besides the stereotype threat problem, however, it only works under the assumption that
certain orientations are stable. Combining this assumption with the cultural attribution underlying the
concept may enhance stereotype-threat. It may even lead to attributing individual differences to an
assumed cultural and therefore collective background. And this in turn positions a student in a minority
position, a phenomenon social scientists call ›othering‹. Where, with good inten tions, a teacher wants
to acknowledge a student’s individuality, s/he ac tually excludes him or her by stressing that the
difference is cultural and not just individual. In order to take this into account, the following sec tion will
look at approaches that view learner orientation from a so cio-cultural angle. 4.3 | Language learners
from a socio-cultural point of view: learners as human beings and meaning makers Cultural and bio
graphical resources andlimitations Whereas psycholinguistic approaches argue that learners can be
charac terised with respect to features they possess and that are stable across situations, socio-cultural
approaches refute this assumption. They argue that language acquisition is a culturally and
biographically embedded process and learners are acting on the basis of their cultural and bio graphical
resources and limitations. They also argue that foreign language classrooms are situated in institutions
and thus objected to institutional as well as personal power relations. Because of this, language acquisi
tion can hardly be described solely by sets of cognitive and affective var iables, which leads Krumm
(2011, 79) to »distrust typologies of language learners« (translation AB). Context-sensitivity: An example
of this is that students may use and value the languages they speak totally differently in different
contexts: multilinguals may consider and use their heritage languages as cultural capital at home and in
their community, whereas they feel forced to hide them at school where they may be considered a sign
of social and cogni tive deficits. That is why Krumm (2011) argues that learner orientation has been
proposed for decades but has never been achieved, neither in research, nor in the classroom. What
would have to be done, to make EFL 64 4.3 Language learners from a socio-cultural point of view
classrooms learner-oriented in a sense that multilingualism is looked at very carefully and seen as a
resource where this is appropriate. Socio-cultural approaches: First of all, one needs to understand what
exactly is meant by the idea that language acquisition is a situated and socio-cultural phenomenon. This
can be done by looking at what Norton, one of the pioneers of identity and foreign language learning,
observed time and again with minority students of ESL (English as a second lan guage) (cf. Norton 2013).
Although they spoke more than one language and showed high metalinguistic awareness, these
students would not participate in the ESL classroom and thus underperform as compared to their
majority peers. Why? Exclusion of multilingualism: From a psycholinguistic point of view, the students
would be looked at as motivationally deficient. So, the first step was to establish their motivation for
foreign languages. As opposed to what researchers expected, it was high. In the interviews conducted
with the students it showed that the students felt excluded from the classroom because they were
constantly addressed as problematic as their multilingualism would cause problems in ESL and they
were ex cluded by being addressed as representing a minority and thus different and not belonging. This
led the students to withdraw from classroom activities although their motivation for foreign languages
and for cultural learning was high. Investment: This is why Norton introduced the concept of
investment. It describes the degree to which a person mentally and physically en gages in a foreign
language classroom or—more broadly speaking—in language learning activities. The punch line of this
concept is that it ac knowledges that a person’s investment and his/her motivation can be quite
different. That raises the question what a student’s investment orig inates from. This can be understood
by looking at Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of identity and investment in the foreign language class
room. They argue that investment is constituted at the intersection of identity, capital and ideology.
Identity: Identity denotes »how a person understands his or her rela tionship to the world, how that
relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the
future« (Norton 2013, 45). The term ›understand‹ does not mean that a person is necessarily aware of
all this. One might as well say how a person enacts his or her relationship to the world. This means how
a person positions him- or herself and how that person is positioned with respect to his or her languages
and cultural identity but also with respect to gender, age or political or religious beliefs. Capital: The
concept of capital refers to sociological theory, here Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of habitus. It describes
that in a given society, each member of this society possesses valuable commodities that help everyone
reach their goals. Whereas economic capital is easily under stood as money or other equivalent assets,
such as real estate or shares in a company, two other types of capital are of equal importance but easily
overseen. Social capital refers to the set of relationships a person has. Even in a seemingly meritocratic
society, these relationships strongly in 65 4 Language Learners—From Learning Styles to Identity f
luence whose support someone can draw on and what access a person gets to the labour market.
Finally, and this is where foreign languages come into play, there is cultural capital. It refers to the
languages a per son speaks or the soft skills s/he possesses. Ideology: The important point to note is that
cultural capital is defined by ideology. In other words: the value of a person’s linguistic assets de pends
on the value a language is given by society and its reigning ideolo gies, i.e. the ideas that most of its
members share. In many Western countries, the reigning ideology is as follows: multilingualism is consid
ered an asset, if it concerns high-prestige languages such as English or Spanish, but considered a threat
and a problem if it concerns minority languages such as Arabic languages or Turkish. Informed by a still
pre dominantly monolingual habitus (cf. Gogolin 2008), this is mirrored in the educational system, which
favours monolingual instruction in the majority language or in high-prestige former colonial languages,
whereas it sidelines low-prestige minority languages. Inclusion of multilingualism: This may create a
rather schizophrenic situation: A multilingual student may perceive his/her heritage language as an
acknowledged asset and thus cultural capital in his own commu nity. This leads to himself/herself feeling
a strong sense of belonging and cause investment into this language. The same student may be given
the impression that his/her heritage language and culture are a burden in school, and the monolingual
practice rejects and gradually alienates him/ her from the foreign language classroom, leading to
disinvestment into and underachievement in English. This frequently observed pattern re quires change
on the side of the teacher by acknowledging students’ multilingualism, valuing their heritage languages
and thus welcoming these in the foreign language classroom (cf. chapter 3 in this volume). This will lead
to increased investment and subsequently participation. A developmental perspective: Looking at a
second very powerful model of students’ identities, a sine qua non becomes visible—a condi tion that
applies to both minority and majority students, because beyond their mono- or multilingualism they are
all children or later on adoles cents. There may be the case that cultural and linguistic identity is ac
knowledged, that motivation for foreign languages is there and that a student still does not engage in
the FL classroom. Why may this be the case? It may be, because the student unconsciously prioritises
other is sues than those dealt with in class over what the teacher has on offer. This is particularly true
when students enter adolescence. Developmental tasks: This phenomenon has given rise to the concept
of developmental tasks. It was first introduced in the 1950s by Havighurst and conceptualised as follows:
A developmental task is a task which arises at or about a certain period in the life of the individual,
successful achievement of which leads to his happiness and to success with later tasks, while failure
leads to unhappiness in the individual, disapproval by the society, and difficulty with later tasks.
(Havighurst 1953, 2) The tasks originate from the interaction of the individual with society. In terms of
the investment model, one could say that they reflect the indi 66 4.3 Language learners from a socio-
cultural point of view vidual’s need to position him- or herself relative to reigning ideologies, such as
ideologies about gender, about culture(s) and language(s), about sexual orientations, about careers, to
name just a few. Over the last dec ades, research has focussed on the developmental tasks of early
adoles cence and a list of these issues has been compiled. Havighurst’s initial list has been criticised for a
strong white-protestant-middle class-bias. There fore, in the German context, the list has been
reworked and empirically tested. The psychologists Dreher and Dreher (1985) have empirically es
tablished a very influential list, which has been updated by the educa tional researchers Hericks and
Spörlein (2001). The following develop mental tasks can be considered accepted state of the art:
Developmental task peer role body independence partner/family Description establishing new and
deepened relationships to peers of both sexes establishing a gender identity and relating to social
expecta tions of male and female behaviour accepting one’s own body and its physical transformations
gradually becoming independent of one’s parents developing ideas about future partners and potential
family structures desire s job values tarting close and increasingly sexual relationships with a boy- or
girlfriend developing job aspirations and understanding the compe tences one needs to achieve one’s
goals future d eveloping a perspective of one’s own future, targeting goals andplanning their
achievement creating a set of values by dealing with moral, political, religious or other ideologies self
developing a self-concept How do developmental tasks relate to teaching foreign languages? There are
two options to you as future teachers. If you consider them, they may be your allies: introducing
content, such as coming-of-age-fiction, that offers students the opportunity to deal with their
developmental tasks in the foreign language classroom, you can cash in on the motivation and
investment this creates. If, however, you ignore them, they may become your rivals: if you do not take
them into consideration, students will pursue their own activities in the foreign language classroom and
the teacher will have to compete for the students’ investment. Unfortunately for the teacher and
fortunately for the students’ personal growth, the teacher will lose this competition. Goal autonomy:
One may conclude that both the investment model and the concept of developmental tasks foster goal
autonomy and show two aspects of it: The first aspect concerns the students’ identity. It means that by
acknowledging their linguistic and cultural identity and by inclu sively reflecting on heterogeneity and
hybridity in the classroom, stu Table4.2: Developmental tasks according to Hericks/Spörlein (2001) 67 4
Language Learners—From Learning Styles to Identity dents become aware of what languages mean to
them. Bringing in the idea of capital and connecting this to developmental tasks such as finding a
personal vocational perspective leads students to become goal autono mous in that they connect
foreign languages to their personal aspira tions. Critical autonomy: The second aspect, i.e. the socio-
political dimen sion as foregrounded by Fairclough’s (1999) concept of ›critical language awareness‹ is
particularly fostered by the element of ideology as part of the investment model. If students reflect on
the linguistic and cultural ideologies of their classroom and if they compare this to their everyday
experience, they see how the majority society conceptualises them. They understand how they are
influenced by stereotypes or implicit rules of access to institutions such as higher education. In this
respect, students (and teachers) become critically autonomous. This in itself is a fruitful way of dealing
with students’ developmental tasks. The perk of this is that teachers’ professional development can be
described in terms of de velopmental tasks as well, and that acknowledging students’ develop mental
task is a powerful source of successful professional development (cf. Hericks et al. 2018). The final part
of this chapter will deal with how the principles explained above can be put into practice. 4.4 |
Implications for the EFL classroom Of course, there is no way of dealing with all the principles and there
is no way of giving you simple tools to take with you to the classroom to morrow. Some of the following
illustrations and explanations will provide some general ideas. Starting from the assumption that
learning a foreign language is a very individual, even idiosyncratic endeavour, it becomes clear that the
individual’s needs as well as their (and the teacher’s) social embeddedness need to be taken into
consideration. The following conclu sions could give directions as to how to achieve this (cf. also chapter
11 in this volume). Psycholinguistic aspects will be looked at first: Enhancing motivation Motivation
theory provides very useful suggestions and mentions all sorts of consequences, which Dörnyei (2001)
has put together in a very hands-on manner. The key point is: do not simply react to students’ mo
tivation, but shape it. Three examples may suffice in order to illustrate how to do this: ■ ■ ■ Try to
positively transform students’ motivational orientation. This can be done by influencing their attitude,
for example by inviting positive role models, such as senior students or adults who used their foreign
languages in an inspiring way or by having gained instrumental bene f its from their FL mastery such as a
job. Try to increase students’ self-efficacy. This can be done by very care fully adjusting and preparing
tasks, providing scaffolding and making the goals as transparent as possible. Also, negotiate FL goals
with your students to make sure that they accept the classroom goals. The ultimate prerequisite for
motivation is that the students see the 68 4.4 Implications for the EFL classroom relevance of any
classroom activity. This can be achieved by explain ing how which classroom activity contributes to
which goal. It can also be achieved by taking into account students’ interests. It sounds as if the
developmental task model could come in handy here (cf.table 4.2). Emotionality: Whereas motivation is
linked to the students’ emotionality, which should be taken into account in general, it is worth
highlighting anxiety as a particular factor. In order to minimise this, students need to be dealt with in a
very individual way. This is beyond the scope of this chapter. There are three measures, however, that
reduce anxiety in a sys tematic way. First of all, it requires a classroom that welcomes mistakes and that
encourages students to test their linguistic hypotheses by partic ipating in classroom communication.
Second, it requires message-orien tation before form-orientation in order to provide the opportunities
for communication and in order to direct students’ attention away from ac curacy and towards
communicative goals. And it requires a differentia tion between phases of learning and phases of
assessment in order to help themswitch onandofftheir accuracy monitor depending on whether it is
required or not. Third, it requires mastery goals (i.e. success is de f ined as making progress towards a
defined and shared competence goal), rather than performance goals (i.e. success is defined as
performing bet ter than others). Eliminate stereotype threat: Anxiety can also be influenced positively
by eliminating elements that cause stereotype threat. This can only be done by identifying the relevant
features of your students, such as a mi nority status and by being very careful about how to address this.
The line between positive acknowledgement and negative othering is very thin. The rule of thumb is to
address students as individuals and not as members of an assumed cultural group. It makes a lot of
sense to ask each student how they spent their weekend or celebrated a festivity and let them decide
how much they conceptualise this as a result of their cultural background. It is rather detrimental,
though, to address students as members of a minority group in the first place and make them an ex pert
for this cultural group. Their expertise for this group comes at the price of not belonging to the majority
of the classroom. A price you should not make them pay. Create relevance: The all-important aspect of
relevance can best be addressed by allowing for the students to work on their developmental tasks. On
the one hand, this can be done by facilitating extended social learning in co-operative settings. This gives
students the opportunity to develop their peer-relations and to put to the test their values like solidar
ity or justice. On the other hand, this can be enabled by dealing with topics that directly address
selected developmental tasks. This could mean dealing with literature, particularly with adolescent
fiction, in a learner-oriented mode (cf. chapter 10 in this volume). Coming-of-age novels or other fiction
that explicitly addresses issues like gender roles, intimate relationships or child-parent-relationships,
offer opportunities to discuss these issues in the safe space of communicating about fictional characters.
69 4 Language Learners—From Learning Styles to Identity Create ownership: Dealing with literature in
this open way also sets the principle of participatory teaching. Asking students directly or fol lowing their
ideas in discussions (bottom-up adaptivity) is even better than choosing content on the premise of
expected interests (top-down adaptivity). Therefore, learner orientation means asking for the students’
participation in determining the content of the EFL classroom and thus creating a sense of ownership.
Plurilingualism: The movement towards plurilingualism in the foreign language classroom has also come
up with many suggestions that make EFL classrooms relevant to students. On the one hand, there are
methods that highlight individual multilingualism, such as multilingual picture books. Reading them
acknowledges multilingualism in an inclusive way. Making them creates opportunities for using target
and heritage lan guages in a productive way and providing creative opportunities of rais ing language
awareness. The same is true for using linguistic landscap ing in the classroom, in the school and in the
community. It creates an authentic product orientation and again provides opportunities to acquire
critical language awareness. Openness Uncertainty and sense construction: This is the moment to raise
the question, why—although accepting the need and wanting to do it—teach ing often does not offer
the required openness, why opportunities of indi vidual sense construction are closed when they occur.
There are two im portant reasons: One has to do with a teacher’s tolerance towards uncer tainty.
Individual sense construction is necessarily unplannable and to a certain extent subversive. It perturbs
the teacher’s plan. This is by no means a phenomenon exclusive to the EFL classroom. Gruschka (2013),
who has done extended classroom research in various subjects, almost always observed the following
pattern. Whenever individual sense con struction led to students uttering creative thoughts that showed
lateral thinking but led away from the lesson’s immediate goal, these contribu tions were not taken up
but postponed and forgotten, sidelined or openly dismissed. This may well be a sign of the ubiquity of
assessment. Research on teachers introducing co-operative learning (e.g. Bonnet/Hericks 2014) shows
that innovation raises uncertainty and in turn creates anxiety on the teacher’s side. Whenever teachers
leave the planned route, they ask them selves: Will I reach the required goals? How do my colleagues
feel about this? Will I cover all the necessary content the curriculum tells me to teach? Are my grades
valid? AssessmentandCo-operation: One way of dealing with this is consult ing the state curricula and
probably being surprised that they are not the place of endless lists of mandatory content (cf. chapter 2
in this volume). With respect to some aspects, even the opposite is true. The state curricu lum of
Hamburg is a case in point. It extensively asks for co-operative, participatory grading and self-
assessment of the students. Another is to realise that the persistent teacher-centredness is something
that cannot be overcome individually. It strongly calls for teacher co-operation to pave ways for the
learner to be at the forefront. As far as assessment is con cerned, co-operatively developing criteria-
referenced-assessment is called for (cf. chapter 14 in this volume). When developing the grids, teachers
70 4.5 Conclusion discuss and negotiate goals and expectations and thus reduce uncertainty. As far as
the assessment of products that students are familiar with—such as presentations—is concerned, the
students can join in developing the grids. This empowers students and enhances transparency.
Reflexivity: This is also, where the classroom becomes reflexive of its own institutional framework and
where students can become critical of the educational machinery that permanently acts in a catch 22
between creating and selecting a qualified labour force and fostering students’ critical thinking and
emancipation. If a classroom can be said to have brought this about, and if students are at some point
able to discuss this in the target language, teacher and students deserve to be congratulated. 4.5 |
Conclusion Teacher-centred and instructivist teaching made an important contribu tion to overcoming
education being a privilege to the rich and powerful. At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, though,
it became apparent that this way of teaching and learning needed reform. Although stu dent-centred
teaching and learning have by no means become an educa tional reality, they are considered an ideal to
aspire to. In this chapter, learner orientation is approached from two different perspectives. From a
psycholinguistic point of view, learner orientation means taking into ac count learner specific features,
such as aptitude or motivation and adapt one’s teaching to these. Also, this approach highlights the
importance of cultural aspects that may overtly or covertly influence individual learning and
performance. A socio-cultural point of view explains how individuals are influenced by societal or
institutional norms. Also, attention is drawn to the fact that while the individual’s biography is a strong
influence to reckon with, there are models—such as the idea of developmental tasks— which allow
teachers to see patterns, which at first glance seemed to be idiosyncrasies. The principles, highlighted by
the different approaches, can be put into practice by applying motivational strategies, taking seri ously
students’ developmental tasks (e.g. by dealing with coming-of-age f iction), reducing anxiety by putting
accuracy in its place, welcoming minority languages and identities and by giving students ownership (e.g.
by way of co-operative- or self-assessment). Further reading Bauer, Viktoria (2015): Englischlernen—
Sinnkonstruktion—Identität. Opladen/