PERSONALITY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING

2. PERSONALITY AND LANGUAGE LEARNING Drs. H. Suparman, M.A., Ph.D. Magister Pendidikan Bhs. Inggris Program Pascasarjana Universitas Prof. Dr. Hamka Jl. Limau II, Kebayoran BaruJakarta Lampung University Email: suparman@unila.ac.id

3. AFFECTIVE DOMAIN OF SLA • Intrinsic factors of affectivity: personality factors within a person that contribute to the success of language learning • Extrinsic factors: sociocultural variables that emerge as the SL learner brings not just two languages into contact, but two cultures

4. AFFECTIVE DOMAIN • Affect refers to emotion or feeling. • Affective Domain is the emotional side of human behavior and it may be put side by side to cognitive side. • The development of affective states or feelings involves a variety of personality factors, feelings both about ourselves and about others with whom we come into contact.

5. Extended definition of Affective Domain • Benjamin Bloom et al (1964) provided an extended definition of affective domain, outlining 5 levels of affectivity: • Receiving: a person must be aware of the environment surrounding him, be conscious of situations, phenomena, people, objects; be willing to receive, willing to tolerate a stimulus, not avoid it, and give a stimulus his controlled or selected attention.

6. Responding: committing himself to a phenomenon or a person, a person is willing to respond voluntarily without compelling, and to receive satisfaction from that response. • Valuing: placing worth on a thing, a behavior or a person. A person does not only accept a value to the point of being willing to be identified with it, but commit himself to the value to pursue it, seek it out, and to want it, finally to the point of conviction.

7. 4. Organization of values into a system of beliefs, determining interrelationships among them, and establishing a hierarchy of values within the system. • Finally, an individual becomes characterized by and understand himself in terms of his value system. The individual acts consistently in accordance with the values he has internalized and integrates beliefs, ideas, and attitudes into a total philosophy or world view. At this level, the problem solving, for example, is approached on the basis of a total, self-consistent system.

8. Personality Factors in Human Behavior • Egocentric factors – one’s view of self and its relevance to language learning • Transactional factors – how the self is transacted to others • Motivational factors

9. Egocentric Factors • Self-Esteem • Inhibition

10. 1. Self-Esteem - Definition • Carl Rogers defines self-esteem: The self-concept or self-structure may be thought of as an organized configuration of perceptions of the self which are admissible to awareness. It is composed of such elements as the perceptions of one’s characteristics and abilities; the precepts and concepts of the self in relation to others and to the environment; the value qualities which are perceived as associated with experiences and objects; and goals and ideals which are perceived as having a positive or negative valence. (Carl Rogers, 1951: 136-37)

11. Another definition of self-esteem by Coopersmith (1967: 4-5): • The evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself; • it expresses an attitude of approval or disapproval, • and indicates the extent to which an individual believes himself to be capable, significant, successful and worthy.

12. Definition of self-esteem (cont) • Self-esteem is a personal judgment of worthiness that is expressed in the attitudes that the individual holds towards himself. • It is a subjective experience which the individual conveys to others by verbal reports and other overt expressive behavior.

13. Types of self-esteem: • General or Global • Situational or Specific • Task self-esteem

14. General or Global self-esteem • General or global SE is thought to be relatively stable in a mature adult, and resistant to change except by active and extended therapy.

15. Situational or specific self-esteem • Refers to one’s appraisal of oneself in • certain life situations, such as social interaction, work, education, home, • or on certain relatively discretely defined traits (intelligence, communicative ability, athletic ability), • or personality traits (gregariousness, empathy, and flexibility).

16. Task self-esteem • Relates to particular tasks within specific situations (eg. Within educational domain: refers to particular subject matter areas). • In athletic context, skills in a particular sport or even a facet of a sport (eg. net play in tennis). • Specific self-esteem might refer to SLA in general, and task self-esteem might refer to one’s self evaluation of a particular aspect of the process: speaking, writing, or a special kind of classroom exercise.

17. Research on self-esteem • Little research has been carried out on the relationship between SE and SLA. • Adelaide Heyde (1979) studied the effects of the three levels of SE on performance of an oral production task by American college students learning French as an FL. • She found that all three levels of SE correlated positively with performance on the oral production measure, with the highest correlation occurring between task SE and performance in oral production. • That is students with high SE actually perform better in the foreign language.

18. 2. Inhibition • The concept of inhibition is related to and subsumed under the notion of self esteem. • All human beings build sets of defenses to protect the ego. • The newborn baby has no concept of his own self; gradually he learns to identify a self that is distinct from others. • In childhood, the growing degrees of awareness, responding and valuing begin to create a system of affective traits which the person identifies with himself.

19. Inhibition (cont) • In adolescence, the physical, emotional, and cognitive changes of the pre-teenager and teenager bring on mounting defensive inhibitions to protect a fragile ego, to turn aside ideas, experiences, and feelings that threaten to take to peaces the organization of values and beliefs on which appraisals of SE have been founded. • The process of building defenses continues on into adulthood.

20. Inhibition (cont) • Some people – those with higher SE and ego strength – are more able to withstand threats to their existence and thus their defenses are lower. • Those with weaker SE maintain walls on inhibition to protect what is self-perceived to be a weak or fragile ego, or a lack of self-confidence in a situation or task. • The human ego encompasses language ego to refer to the very personal n, egoistic nature on SLA.

21. Transactional Factors • Transaction is the process of reaching out beyond the self to others. • The tools of language help to accomplish these feats. • A variety of transactional variables comes to bear on second language learning: imitation, modeling, identification, empathy, extroversion, aggression, styles of communication • Three of these variables is discussed here chosen for their relevance to a global understanding of SLA

22. 3 types of Transactional Factors • Empathy • Extroversion • aggression

23. 1. Empathy • It is a process of “putting yourself into someone else’s shoes,” of reaching beyond the self and understanding and feeling what another person is understanding or feeling. • It is the major factor in harmonious coexistence of individuals in society. • Language is one of the primary means of empathizing , but non-verbal communication facilitates the process of empathizing and must not be overlooked.

24. Definitions of empathy • “A process of comprehending in which a temporary fusion of self-object boundaries permits an immediate emotional apprehension of the affective experience of another,” (Guioria, 1972b: 142) • Hogan (1969: 309) defines empathy as “a relatively discrete social phenomenon recognizable in the experience of laymen and psychologists alike.”

25. 2 aspects necessary for empathy • There are 2 necessary aspects to the development and existing of empathy: • First, an awareness and knowledge of one’s own feelings • Second, identification with another person • In other words, you cannot fully empathize – or know someone else – until you adequately know yourself.

26. empathy (cont) • Communication requires a sophisticated degree of empathy • In order to communicate effectively you need to be able to understand the other person’s affective and cognitive states • Communication breaks down when false presuppositions or assumptions are made about the other person’s states • From the very mechanical, syntactic level of language, to the most abstract, meaningful level, we assume certain structures of knowledge and certain emotional states in any communicative act.

27. 2. Extroversion • Extroversion and its antithesis, introversion, are also interesting and outstanding variables in the acquisition of a second language. • It is a common belief among Western society that introversion is an undesirable behavior. • The outgoing, good tempered, kind hearted, talkative personality tend to be held up as axiomatically desirable and ideal. • This valuing of extroversion carries over into the language classroom as well. • Quiet, reserved personalities are treated as “problems” and language teachers seeks ways of encouraging extroversion.

28. 3. Aggression • Aggression can be defined in a number of ways ranging from “a sequence of behavior the goal of which ... is injury of the person toward whom it is directed” to more general definitions that include inference to responses that could injure if aimed at a vulnerable object. • There is some debate about the relationship of frustration to aggression.

29. Aggression (cont) • For example, Freud’s early theory of aggression mentioned that aggression is a “primordial reaction” to frustration (Freud, 1920) • Aggressive behavior appears in every human organism, and depending on the individual and his society, different manifestations and expressions of aggression will be observed.

30. Aggression (cont) • But aggression should not be defined only in a negative context. • Aggression, even in the “injurious” sense, is a behavior necessary for survival; e.g., consistent refusal to the aggressive in self- defense, physically and emotionally, could result in physical or mental illness and/or death. • Assertiveness is perhaps a more positive notion related to the construct of aggression.

31. QUESTIONS: • In what sense is aggressive behavior important in second language acquisition? • Do you have any experience in your environment in which aggressive behavior has positive and/or negative effects?

32. MOTIVATION • It is easy in SLA to claim that a learner will be successful with the proper motivation. • But this claim requires detailed understanding of what motivation is, what the sub-components of motivation are; what does it mean to say that someone is motivated? How do you create, foster and maintain motivation?

33. Basic Needs and Drives • Motivation is thought of as an inner drive, impulse, emotion, or desire that moves one to a particular action. • Human beings universally have needs or desires that are more or less innate, yet their intensity is environmentally conditioned.

34. 6 desires or needs of human organisms • The need for exploration, for seeing “the other side of the mountain,” for probing the unknown • The need for manipulation, for operating on the environment and causing change • The need for activity, for movement and exercise, both physical and mental

35. 6 desires (cont) 4. The need for stimulation, the need to be stimulated by the environment, by other people, or by ideas, thoughts and feelings 5. The need for knowledge, the need to process and internalize the results of exploration, manipulation, activity, and stimulation, to resolve contradictions, to quest for solutions to problems for-self consistent systems of knowledge 6. Finally, the need for ego enhancement,for the self to be known and to be accepted and approved of by others. (Ausubel, 1968: 368-79)

36. 2 Types of Motivation • Instrumental • Integrative

37. Instrumental Motivation Refers to motivation to acquire a language as a means for attaining instrumental goals: • furthering a career, • reading technical material, • translation, • etc.

38. Integrative Motivation • Is employed when a learner wishes to integrate himself within the culture of the second language group, to identify himself with and become a part of that society. • Spolsky (1969) found that integrative motivation generally accompanied higher scores on proficiency tests in a foreign language. • The studies can be concluded that integrative motivation may indeed be an important requirement for successful language learning. • Some teachers and researchers claim that integrative motivation is absolutely essential for successful L2 learning.

39. Other studies of motivation • Yasmeen Lukmani (1972), however, demonstrated that among Marathi-speaking Indian students learning English in India, those with higher instrumental motivation scored higher in tests of English proficiency • Braj Kaschru (1977) noted that Indian English is one example of a variety of Englishes which (especially in the Third World Countries where English has become an international language) can be acquired very successfully for instrumental reasons alone.

40. Other studies of motivation (cont) • The more recent findings point out that once again that there is no single means of learning an L2: some learners in some contexts are more successful in learning a language

41. THANK YOU