Psychological Insights on How to Encourage Healthy and Strong Beliefs about Language Learning

Maggie Dunlop and Dr. Sarah McElwee specialize in psychology at Cambridge Assessment English. These experienced educators have presented a webinar, where they shared their findings on how to develop a growth mindset about language learning. This article presents a summary of their pearls of wisdom.

While there is no magic trick to get the students engaged in learning if they get lazy, the motivating learning environment proves to be extremely important. Actually, it’s a more important contributor to students’ success than abilities and effort, as the research has shown. 

We all have worked with students who, at some point, give up learning a language. They might say: “Well, I’ve tried. I can’t do that”. Such a belief will not develop if a teacher minds the following aspects: 

Language practice and scaffolding: create little wins

The research shows that people learn faster and feel most satisfied when they have to do tasks that are a little challenging, but not too challenging. A Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky called this ZPD – the zone of proximal development. The term “proximal” refers to those skills that the learner is “close” to mastering. In other words, a teacher’s job is to create little wins. A task to use some of the new words speaking about the topic your students know is much more efficient than a really easy familiar task or a task with too many complicated instructions. This involves giving “conversation structure support” (scaffolding) for low levels and letting students be adventurous with their attempts to use English.

If you work with a mixed ability group, make sure you differentiate the tasks. Everyone should have some stretch and challenge. Plan additional tasks for fast finishers.

Assessment: measure and describe success

By assessment, we mean observation, not evaluation. First of all, students should be aware of the task’s assessment criteria: what it means to complete the task successfully. Think about what counts as success on a task: to get a good grade or to use several new words or a key grammar structure?

If a student thinks that success means getting a good grade, they will choose to be on the safe side and use maybe just a couple of not-so-new words from the given list. Such a student is not psychologically prepared for challenges. Their focus shifts from the learning process to getting grades. Share success criteria, then knowing how to complete the task is no longer a mystery.

Praise: use a bit more complicated phrase than saying “Good job!”

Do you praise your students for the fast completion of a task or for being smart? If yes, know that it does not build a safe environment where students can make mistakes. Your students want to win your approval. This means you should show that you value their willingness to do challenging tasks, their efforts, their active thinking. 

Good words of commendation would be:

“Your ideas were very original!”

“You used lots of keywords”

“I was impressed by how you kept going when you got stuck”

“You managed to use new vocabulary in a natural way”.

Remember to praise specific actions or attitudes rather than success. If you work with a group, notice everyone’s personal efforts.

Overcoming anxiety: anxious students hesitate to communicate, therefore they don’t reach their goal

Some students are more anxious by nature, some struggle with past experiences or beliefs about their own ability. Anyway, you can tell they are anxious by their mumbling, their body language, their phrases like “I can’t do that”. Such students are less likely to communicate, though expressing themselves in English is the reason why they are learning in the first place. How to support such students and boost their confidence?

Tip #1. Emphasize communicating rather than perfect performance. Be really careful correcting some of their mistakes, always show what they’ve done well and praise their ideas, not their correctness. Discuss the value of mistakes: they highlight the next steps for improvement.

Tip #2. Share the challenges you faced in your learning journey. Don’t be an unreachable perfect superhero, be a real person. After all, you yourself are on the road of professional development, aren’t you?

Talking to students about their own beliefs: a striking percentage (72%) of teachers have had students with fixed beliefs that they cannot be changed.

Which expressions do you hear more often from your students: 

A: I’m just not good at English.

I can’t learn English.

B: If I work harder, I’ll succeed.

I just need more time to study.

If you chose ‘mostly B’, you are in those 28% of the lucky ones, because most of the teachers who attended the webinar chose ‘mostly A’. 

Those who say phrases from the A group feel helpless when work becomes challenging. They are quick to give up on tasks. They want to prove how smart they are.

Those who say phrases from the B group are ready to build on the feedback they get and are more likely to ask for help. They realise that their mistakes are not a reflection of their intelligence in English.

This is a teacher’s responsibility to develop a growth mindset in their students. Raise this topic. Involve your students, let them suggest how to become motivated by challenges. Again, share your own point of view and your own challenges. It might be really motivating for your students to get to know their teacher’s learning journey.

The webinar presented some ideas on various ways of helping to set our students up for success in language learning by developing positive beliefs. If you have noticed any mistakes in your teaching methods while reading this article, it’s a good chance to analyse your personal beliefs: are you a bit discouraged or happy to see where to grow? If you would like to dig deeper, please read more!