P is for Personalization

Childhood tragedy?

In his novel, The Folding Star, Alan Hollinghurst (1994) recounts how the protagonist, a young Englishman recently arrived in a Belgian town, sets himself up as a private English tutor. One of his pupils suffers from asthma, and our hero idly asks him if he knows how he got it.

“I didn’t quite make the story out at first, I was chivvying him and making him repeat words without knowing I was taking him back, like some kinder and wiser analyst, to the scene of a childhood tragedy” (p. 20)

Inadvertently uncovering childhood tragedies is one of the risks of what has come to be known as personalization: “When you personalise language you use it to talk about your knowledge, experience and feelings” (An A-Z of ELT). Personalization has connotations of self-disclosure, even confession. But it hasn’t always been so.

Long ago...

When I first encountered personalization it was of the type: “Write 5 or more true sentences about yourself, friends or relations, using the word ago“.

This is taken verbatim from Kernel Lessons (O’Neill et al. 1971), one of the first coursebooks I taught from. The fact that the sentences had to be ‘true’ was regularly ignored or overlooked by both teacher and students. The point was not to be ‘truthful’ but creative. Creative and accurate.

This little personalization task invariably came at the tail end of a sequence of activities whose rationale was the learning and practice of a pre-selected item of grammar. The personalization was really just a pretext for a little bit of creative practice, as well as serving as a first, tentative step towards translating the language of the classroom into the language of ‘real life’. I don’t recall ever having used these carefully contrived sentences as a conversation starter, and certainly never uncovered any childhood tragedies (that I was aware of). In fact, in Kernel Lessons this ‘transfer exercise’ was relegated to the Homework section of the book, thereby obviating any potentially awkward moments in the classroom.

But very soon personalization was re-invented, not as a form of language practice, but as the context and stimulus for language learning.  Within the humanist paradigm, where the ultimate aim of education is self-actualization, teachers were urged to ground their lessons in the lives, experiences, and feelings of their learners:

In foreign language teaching, we customarily begin with the lives of others, with whom students may not easily identify, and then expect students to transfer the material to their own lives.  However, transfer to the textbook is easier when the content starts with the student himself and then leads into the materials to be learned… Let the students first discover what they can generate on the subject from their own personal thoughts and feelings.  By drawing on their own experiences and reactions, the transfer to the textbook will be more relevant and more apparent.

(Moscowitz, 1978, p. 197)

Personalization, as we have seen, is not without its risks, and it’s arguable whether assuming the role of analyst – wittingly or unwittingly –  isn’t exceeding one’s brief as language instructor.  Yet there is a general acceptance in the profession that these risks are worth taking, and even teachers who don’t susbcribe one hundred percent to a humanist philosophy tend to think that personalization is ‘a good thing’. And, of course, basing the content of the lesson on the experiences, interests, desires and even fears of the people in the room also happens to be a core principle of the Dogme approach.

But, irrespective of whether we think it’s good for them, do learners actually like it? Do they like being quizzed about what they or their relatives were doing 10 days/months/years ago? Do they expect it? Do they see the value of it?

...and far away.

All the more reason, therefore, to ask whether or not the theoretical underpinnings for personalization are well grounded. Hence, I’ve been looking outside the (arguably too narrowly focused) domain of humanistic pedagogy for other sources of validation. Recently, research into the way second language learners are ‘socialized’ into communities of practice has shed new light on the notion of personalization, even if it’s not named as such. Bonny Norton (2000, p. 142), for instance, concluded her study of immigrant women in Canada thus:

Whether or not the identities of the learner are recognised as part of the formal language curriculum, the pedagogy that the teacher adopts in the classroom will nevertheless engage the identities of learners in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways.  It is only by understanding the histories and lived experiences of language learners that the language teacher can create conditions that will facilitate social interaction both in the classroom and in the wider community, and help learners claim the right to speak.

From a related but more ecological perspective, Dwight Atkinson (2010) argues that language learning is a process of adapting to a social-cultural-linguistic environment, in which meaning is distributed throughout the system rather than being locked into individual minds, and that what learners pay attention to – what they notice – is that which is potentially important to their integration and survival:  “What really matters to a person – what is adaptive – is what gets attended” (p. 35). Arguably, by foregrounding ‘what really matters to a person’, personalization both motivates and scaffolds these adaptive processes.

So, how do we accommodate the need for personalization into our classes? And – more importantly – how do we deal with learner resistance to it?

References:

Atkinson, D. (2010) Sociocognition: what it can mean for second language acquisition. In Batstone, R. (ed.) Sociocognitive Perspectives on Language Use and Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hollinghurst, A. (1994). The Folding Star. London: Chatto & Windus.

Moskowitz, G. (1978). Caring and Sharing in the Foreign Language Class. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Norton, B. (2000). Identity and Language Learning: gender, ethnicity and educational change.  London: Longman.

O’Neill, R., Kingsbury, R., & Yeadon, T. (1971). Kernel Lessons Intermediate. London: Longman.

V is for Visualization

Pep Guardiola, coach of ‘the best team of the world’ [sic] describes how he prepares his players:

I ask the players what they are capable of doing so that, above all, they feel confident before they go out on to the pitch. This is what I did when I was a player: before going out I would see the game up here (he taps his brow). With my eyes shut I could see the game clearly. That way I had it all wrapped up, and I enjoyed it¹.

I was reminded of this last week on getting the following email from Zahid Sheik:

I’m writing to ask you about your thoughts on an idea that has recently popped into my head.  I’ve noticed that on several occasions, some of the best lessons that I’ve had were lessons where I simply jotted down a few cursory points about what I’m planning to do in class without going into the detail that’s often required on a typical lesson plan, followed by a brief visualization of the class in my “mind’s eye”.  I was wondering if any research has been conducted in relation to the benefits of visualization and lesson planning.  How do you feel about this phenomenon?

As can be seen by the Guardiola quote, in the sports world there’s a healthy tradition of visualization as preparation for performance. The story of the pentathlon athlete, Marilyn King, who, after a debilitating accident, ‘visualized’ herself back into Olympic-standard performance, is often cited in this respect.

Visualization has impacted on language learning too. Jane Arnold (e.g. 1999, 2007) has written extensively on this subject. She recalls that her interest in visualization in language learning was prompted by an account of “an American scholar who, before going to a conference in Europe, eliminated blocks about speaking French and Italian by working with imagery”.  After visualising himself travelling through these countries and speaking fluently to everyone he met “it was found that his fluency improved notably and with his Italian his accuracy did also” (1999, p.269).

More recently, visualization has attracted the attention of theorists of motivation, specifically those who argue that the (language) learner is driven by the need to reconcile his or her present self with some idealised, imagined future self. As Dörnyei & Ushioda (2009, p. 4) put it: “If proficiency in the target language is part and parcel of one’s ideal or ought-to self, this will serve as a powerful motivator to learn the language because of our psychological desire to reduce the discrepancy between our current and possible future selves”.

Accordingly, visualization has been recommended as a means of bringing into sharp focus one’s ideal self image – the better to realise it.  ‘The first step in a motivational intervention… is to help learners to construct their Ideal L2 Self, that is, to create their vision’ (Dörnyei, 2009, p. 33).

This might involve visualizing a situation in which you, the learner, are successfully using the target language for the specific purposes for which you have been learning it, whether social, business, academic, or whatever. The visualization is likely to have more motivational power if it is clearly and concisely elaborated, with details of time, place and people explicitly articulated.

Subsequent phases in the visualization process (as outlined in the literature) include: substantiating the vision, keeping the vision alive, operationalising the vision, and counterbalancing the vision. Of this last, Dörnyei says, “In language learning terms this would involve regular reminders of the limitations of not knowing languages” (p. 38).

Zahid’s email, (above), however, raises the intriguing question as to how visualization might apply to teacher development. Could it be a tool on a teacher training program, for example? Does it assume a degree of familiarity with lesson planning and classroom teaching that might preclude its use with novice teachers? Do the so-called ‘foreign language lessons’ on many pre-service courses (wittingly or unwittingly) offer newbie teachers a vision of their ‘ideal teaching self’?  To what extent are our ideal teaching selves modelled on charismatic teachers from our past – or even from Hollywood?

At a more pragmatic level, is it possible to imagine one’s way into a lesson, in the way that Pep envisions a successful football match? When I asked Zahid to expand on his use of visualizations as a planning strategy, this is what he said:

Basically, I visualize the different stages/activities that I cursorily wrote down on my lesson plan, what the students might respond with, and I keep going through the lesson with whatever comes to mind.  I see myself and my students in the classroom interacting etc… and I sometimes close my eyes to do this.  I’m pretty much picturing the whole lesson in my mind in its different (planned) increments and potential asides, the latter point being related to the “potential problems” section of the CELTA lesson plan.

Has anyone else experienced visualization as either a language learning or a lesson planning strategy?

¹Thanks to Jessica Mackay for this quote.

References:

Arnold, J. 1999.  ‘Visualization: language learning with the mind’s eye’. In Arnold, J. (ed.) Affect in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Arnold, J., Puchta, H., & Rinvolucri, M.  2007. Imagine That. Helbling Languages.

Dörnyei, Z. 2009. ‘The L2 motivational self system’. In Dörnyei & Ushioda (2009).

Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (eds.) 2009. Motivation, Language Identity, and the L2 Self. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Illustrations from Hartley, B., & Viney, P. 1978. Streamline English: Departures. Oxford University Press.

B is for Bad language learner

Mayor Bloomberg

As a precaution against the recent hurricane that threatened his city, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, “issued warnings and press statements, often in basic, un-accented [sic] Spanish”.  This prompted a Spanish-speaking New York resident to launch a Twitter feed that  caricatured the Mayor’s “broken Spanish”. “The feed soon went viral and has attracted a large online following” (according to the BBC’s website).

As a second language user myself, and as a language teacher,  teacher trainer and methodology writer, it offends me when anyone who attempts to communicate in a language that is not their own (whether they be mayor, football coach, actor, ex-pat, or student) is mocked in this way. However ‘bad’ his Spanish is, surely the mayor should be congratulated, not caricatured?

I tweeted to this effect – that I didn’t find it particularly funny, and that this seemed to be a case of ‘damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t’. However, a fellow tweeter in Brazil, Higor Cavalcante, went so far as to blog his disagreement, arguing that, as mayor of a city with a large Hispanic population “Mr. Bloomberg has the obligation to speak excellent Spanish”. (Not to mention Chinese, Greek, Yiddish and Korean either, I suppose).

Excellent Spanish.  Not just good, or passable, but excellent.

I suspect Higor is a good language learner.  He certainly writes beautifully in English. But maybe Mayor Bloomberg is not a good language learner. I’m sure he would love to be able to speak excellent Spanish, but maybe for him excellence comes at a cost – a cost that even his billions can’t meet.  Yet  should he be penalised for trying?

Good language learners often find it difficult to understand what it’s like to be a bad language learner.  They think you can just flip a switch and out it flows. As a bad language learner myself, I run up against this constantly.

Ok, I said it. I am a bad language learner. I am a bad language learner for a variety of reasons, biographical, psychological and maybe even physiological (I have terrible ‘phonemic coding ability’ – maybe related to the fact that I can’t sing in tune either!).

It’s not that I haven’t tried. I’ve been to classes, I’ve done conversation exchanges, I’ve studied the grammar, I’ve memorised lists of words, and I read five to ten thousand words of Spanish daily.  Yet I’m still barely B2-ish, speaking-wise, exacerbated by an uncompromising anglo accent.

But I get by.   I’ll always sound like a guiri (or gringo) but I can live with that, despite the scorn heaped on me by other, more proficient Spanish speakers. (Once a Californian woman, on hearing me speak, held up her arms in the shape of a cross, as if to ward off evil spirits). As I said, good language learners seem to think that anyone can learn a language to C2 level in a matter of months – and that the failure to do so betrays some moral weakness.  But for us drones, it will take years and years, and we may still never  get beyond B2 (or even A2 for that matter).  However, we shouldn’t be discouraged from trying. Mockery doesn’t help. Nor the implication that our lack of success is a moral failing.

I took this photo

Besides, how many hundreds of hours would it take to bring Mayor Bloomberg’s Spanish up to a level that would satisfy his critics?  And doesn’t he have better things to do with his time? He’s the mayor of New York City, for heaven’s sake.  His time is cut out just getting the trash collected and the subway running on time. If New Yorkers want a Spanish-speaking mayor, let them vote for one.

So, a plea on behalf of the bad language learner: never, never, never mock a second language speaker – even if it’s someone (like George Bush or José María  Aznar) whose politics you disagree with. It’s a cheap shot. And, if you are a language teacher, it ill becomes you.  It’s your job to encourage second language use, however non-target-like. What’s more, ridicule is counterproductive.  There is nothing more de-motivating than being laughed at.   As Earl Stevick (1980, p. 130) eloquently put it:

When two people speak with each other in a language that is foreign to one of them, either or both may be laying their lives on the line – at least their lives as speakers of that language. Such an understanding therefore calls for sensitivity on both sides. Sensitivity here means more than just seeing the dangers and shying away from them. It includes sensitivity to what the other person is able to do, and is ready to try.

On the plus side, I think that being a bad language learner has made me a good language teacher. I am very, very sympathetic to the drones.  I know what they’re going through. I am endlessly patient and encouraging. I would never mock them, because I know how de-motivating it can be.

So, Señor Alcalde, all power to you  – I applaud your bad Spanish!  At least you are trying.

Reference:

Stevick, E.W. 1980. Teaching Languages: A Way and Ways. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

H is for Humanistic approaches

Crescent City Books, New Orleans

While attending the annual TESOL Conference in New Orleans last week, I took some time out (as is my wont!) to look for books.  In this second-hand bookshop in the French quarter (left), I came across a copy of Gertrude Moscowitz’s classic text on humanistic teaching techniques, Caring and Sharing in the Foreign Language Class (1978) – a title that clearly evokes the ethos of the period, but which, in these more hard-bitten times, elicits not a little gentle mockery, or even, dare I say, derision.

This book was a core text in our Diploma (now DELTA) library back in the ’80s, and even then many of its suggested activities were rated as having a high ‘cringe factor’. Here’s one, taken more or less at random:

I LIKE YOU BECAUSE…

The students are told that there are many positive qualities about others that we are aware of but often do not take the time to express.  Tell students that today they will have the opportunity to let each other know what some of these positive thoughts and feelings are.  Instruct the students to tell the partner they are facing some positive things they like or feel about each other.  After about a minute, have the students move to a new partner and continue the process until each student speaks with a number of different students.

(p.80)

While appreciating the good intentions of an activity like this, most experienced teachers will be alert to its potential problems and risks. First of all, will the students have the necessary language to do the task? If not, what kind of preparation will they need? What is the intended outcome of the task – an oral or written report, or just a general sense of well-being?  More importantly, perhaps, will they know each other well enough to find things to say? Will they be both cognizant of, and comfortable with, the aims of the activity? What happens if a student is unable – or reluctant – to voice a positive sentiment? What impact will the learner’s cultural background have on the task? And what is the teacher’s role in all this?

Even this one taster is enough, I think, to indicate the assumptions on which the book (and humanistic teaching in general) is based. These are spelled out in the introduction:

• For learning to be significant, feelings must be recognised and put to use.
• Human beings want to actualise their potential.
• Having healthy relationships with other classmates is more conducive to learning.
• Learning more about oneself is a motivating factor in learning.
• Increasing one’s self-esteem enhances learning.

(p. 18)

While we might accept that these claims are self-evident, we may be less inclined, nowadays, to construct a pedagogy around them. Nevertheless, as I revisited this book, I couldn’t help but be struck by the fundamental soundness of many of the principles on which it is based – principles that are somewhat obscured by its relentlessly upbeat and touch-feely tone.  Take these statements, for example:

Connect the content with the students’ lives

By connecting the content with the students’ lives, you are focusing on what students know rather than what they are ignorant of.  From the learner’s standpoint, there is quite a psychological difference in dealing with what is familiar to him rather than what is unknown. …

Use students’ responses in the lesson

As the exercises you develop take form, plan to make use of the responses of students.  Have the students note similarities and differences in each other’s reactions or experiences and refer to them in processing the activity.  Since the students will be sharing of themselves, utilise what they share by asking the class questions relating to what has been exchanged in the interaction. …

Yours students have ideas, too

Don’t overlook an important resource of ideas for humanistic techniques.  Who can tell you what interests them better than your students themselves?…  Bringing the students’ lives to the content brings life to the content!

(pp. 197-200)

“Bringing the students’ lives to the content brings life to the content” might well be a Dogme slogan. Certainly, the notion of incorporating learners’ contributions into the fabric of the lesson – not merely as personalization, but as the core content –  is a mainstay of the Dogme philosophy. This makes me wonder to what extent I was – consciously or unconsciously – influenced by the ‘humanistic turn’, as popularized by Moscowitz and others, in the development of my own philosophy of teaching.

And it also makes me wonder if it’s not time to put aside some of our postmodern cynicism and to re-visit these seminal texts in search of the good sense that they have to offer.

Reference:

Moskowitz, G. 1978. Caring and Sharing in the Foreign Language Class. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

I is for Identity

In one of a series of moving articles in the New York Review of Books, the historian Tony Judt, terminally ill with motor-neuron disease and reflecting on his life and work, admits to a feeling of never having had a narrowly defined sense of identity —  whether geographical, political or religious.  There is no single social grouping that he strongly identifies with. But this is not a source of anxiety. On the contrary:  “I prefer the edge: the place where countries, communities, allegiances, affinities, and roots bump uncomfortably up against one another”.

Having myself lived most of my life “on the edge”, one way or another, I share something of Judt’s preference for  rootlessness. I’ve lived twice as many years away from my country of birth as I ever lived in it. And, despite having been granted Spanish citizenship, I don’t feel a strong affinity for my elective new ‘home’. (The test may come if New Zealand and Spain face one another in the World Cup!)  On the downside, however, this reluctance to forge an alternative Spanish identity probably accounts, in part at least, for my less than native-like fluency in Spanish.

Because, as I point out in An A-Z, the notion of identity has now moved to the very heart of second language learning theory.  As Norton and Toohey (2002) argue: “Language learning engages the identities of learners because language itself is not only a linguistic system of signs and symbols; it is also a complex social practice in which the value and meaning ascribed to an utterance are determined in part by the value and meaning ascribed to the person who speaks” (p. 115).  Becoming a member of what Lave and Wenger (1991) term ‘a community of practice’ assumes the capacity – and willingness – to identify, and be identified, with the  members of the target group (and, by extension, to relinquish membership, even temporarily, of one’s own group).

In fact, a post-modern gloss of Tony Judt’s condition (and of mine) is not that we have no identity but that we have multiple – and often contesting – identities, and it’s the business of the second language acquisition project to find a match between an existing identity and the target one.  This at least is the thinking that underlies the concept of ‘the ideal L2 self’ as promoted by Zoltan Dörnyei in his compelling new theory of motivation: “If the person we would like to become speaks an L2, the ‘ideal L2 self‘ is a powerful motivator to learn the L2 because of the desire to reduce the discrepancy between our actual and ideal selves” (2009, p.  29). But being an ‘edge person’ means that this ideal L2 self is elusive.

In the absence of having the identity of a real or potential L2 user, one possibility might simply be to manufacture one. This strategy, at least, seems to underlie the practice, in Suggestopedia, of assigning learners new, L2 speaking, identities, including giving them new names and biographies.  Larsen-Freeman (2000) comments that this is based on the assumption “that a new identity makes students feel more secure and thus more open to learning” (p.82).

Olivetti Oh, my Second Life avatar

More recently, the construction of an idealised identity is at the heart of computer gaming and of virtual environments such as Second Life (SL). My avatar in SL (see picture), for example, allows me to interact there in ways that  – arguably – out-perform my ‘real life’ personality.  Does online identity creation offer advantages to language learners, then?

James Paul Gee would argue most emphatically that it does. In his book What Video Games have to Teach us about Language and Literacy (2007) he suggests that, by allowing gamers to customise their virtual identities, video games “encourage identity work and reflection on identities in clear and powerful ways” (p. 46). Such identity work is crucial, he claims, since “all learning in all semiotic domains requires taking on a new identity and forming bridges from one’s old identities to the new one” (p. 45). Video games and virtual environments would seem to offer learners the opportunity to design ‘ideal language-using selves’.  The question remains, of course, as to whether these games and these environments provide the kind of language-using opportunities that these ideal selves can usefully exploit.

References:

Dörnyei, Z., and Ushioda, E. (eds.) 2009. Motivation, Language Identity and the L2 Self. Multilingual Matters.

Gee, J.P. 2007. What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Larsen-Freeman, D. 2000. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching (2nd ed.) OUP.

Lave, J., and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. CUP.

Norton, B., and Toohey, K.  2002.  ‘Identity and language learning’.  In Kaplan , R.  (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics.  OUP.

F is for Flow

Ozbek, the publisher’s rep, got on to the subject of ‘flow’. He was driving me from the airport into the centre of Istanbul, and it turned out that he was currently researching a Masters dissertation on motivation. He was attracted by the idea that intrinsic motivation is located in the present moment, and reaches a peak when you are so absorbed in a task that time seems to slow down or even to stop altogther (akin to what the art critic Michael Fried calls ‘presentness’, as in “Presentness is grace”).  This is also what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”.  It is the kind of ‘peak experience’ often reported by artists or sportspeople, when there is a perfect match between performance challenge and available skill. Here’s how a world-class figure skater describes a typical flow experience (from Csikszentmihalyi 1993):

I knew every single moment; in fact I even remember going down into a jump and this is awful, but thinking, “Oh gosh, this is so real!  I’m so clear in my thoughts.”  There was just a real clarity to it all… I felt such control of everything, every little movement, I was very aware, you know, like what was on my hand, I could feel my rings, I could feel everything, and I felt I had control of anything (p. 182).

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow experiences have the following characteristics:

1. they have concrete goals and manageable rules.

2. they make it possible to adjust opportunities for action to our capacities

3. they provide clear information about how well we are doing

3. they screen out distractions and make concentration possible

(Csikszentmihalyi 1993: xiv)

I had read about flow in the 1990s, and had been attracted by the notion that a task can be intrinsically motivating when one’s available skills are perfectly calibrated with the task’s degree of challenge.  The alternatives, such as too much challenge, or too little, are likely to result in either anxiety or boredom.

'Flow' as opportunity matched with capability (from van Lier 1996)

Appearing as it did around the same time as the popularization of task-based learning, the theory seemed to offer an elegant rubric for the design and management of second-language learning tasks.  The theory suggested that good tasks should stretch learners, pushing them beyond their immediate ‘comfort zone’, while at the same time providing them with sufficient support so as not to induce anxiety.  But since then Csikszentmihalyi’s theory seems to have lost traction, so I was intrigued to hear my Turkish friend (in gridlocked traffic that was the antithesis of flow!) update me on a couple of recent studies (copies of which he subsequently sent me) that have rehabilitated the notion of flow.

One of these – (Egbert 2003) – reports a study in which students rated their experience of various classroom tasks (such as reading aloud, group discussion, etc). The one task that seemed to have induced the greatest degree of flow, based on self-report data, was one in which the students (all US high-school students of Spanish) interacted freely in a chatroom discussion with Spanish-speaking contemporaries. The researchers concluded that tasks which are most conducive to flow are those in which the participants’ perceptions of challenge, control, and interest are optimal.

This leads me to wonder if the concept of flow applies, not only to learning, but also to teaching. That is to say, do teachers experience flow?  Of course, “flow” – in a slightly different sense – is a concept that has often been invoked by educators to capture a desirable quality of classroom management. For example, in a study of the metaphors that one teacher employed when describing her teaching, Munby (1986) noted the constant use of the metaphor of the “lesson as moving object”. E.g. “I keep it rolling all the time”, “I seem to move along real well with that class” etc. Flow, in this sense, is a function of having well rehearsed classroom routines, and it typically distinguishes the teaching of experienced teachers from the rather stop-start nature of novice teaching.

But, flow – in the optimal experience sense – is surely something more than just being a good manager. If so, what characterizes it, what kinds of teachers experience it, and what are its preconditions? And what might all this suggest for teacher education and development?

Refs:

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1990. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NY: Harper Row.

– 1993. The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium. NY: Harper Row.

Egbert, J. 2003. ‘A study of Flow Theory in the foreign language classroom’. The Modern Language Journal, 87/4.

Munby, H. 1986. ‘Metaphor in the thinking of teachers: An exploratory study’. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 18/2.

van Lier, L. 1996. Interaction in the Language Curriculum: Awareness, Autonomy & Authenticity. Harlow: Longman.