Beauty and Challenge in Diversity

Of all the innumerable factors that we can think of, personality, I think, is the one of most influential when it comes to the learning of a child. This factor has become very influential because it either causes a big help or a big dilemma in learning.

As teachers who interact with students with different personalities, we should be in the front line in knowing our learners. Personality enters here as a dilemma if we don’t know our learners, how they learn and how we can teach them. I am not an expert with regard to personality issues, but I think everybody agrees that in a class of 50, there are more or less 100 personalities, and these 100 personalities need more than 100 strategies to learn. This is just the superficial dilemma in our classrooms, because when we delve deeper, we will find bulks of reasons and factors on why our learners choose the personalities that they have. We, teachers, should not let these factors hinder their learning, but rather redirect these factors to help them.

Looking at some of the personality factors in language learning, choosing just three from them is difficult since all are really influential; so I have to reflect and force myself to reminisce the past when I had headaches and heartaches caused by my students who did not understand what I was teaching.

First is motivation.

Hall (2011) suggests that motivation is a key factor in order to accomplish a particular activity. He states, “It is difficult to imagine anyone learning a language without some degree of motivation” (ibid: 134). Moreover, teachers often ascribe that language learners’ achievements or disappointments mostly depend on the absence or presence of motivation.

While it’s true that our learners go after extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation, we cannot still erase the fact that learners learn because of such reward. I would often hear my students say “may plus points sir?” whenever I remind them to bring their e-books or books the next day; and it might be insulting on my part for them to always ask for something in return for doing something that would benefit them, but I still take that chance as an opportunity for them to learn.

In teaching writing (feature, news or editorial), it has always been a puzzle for me to let them realize its value at the moment, because I observed that students are more engaged in doing tasks which are of immediate use than doing tasks which they can still use in the future.

It’s good that our department head shared to us that we can present their articles in our school paper for publication. The tasks or projects that we give them should be used after they make it. Slogans should be posted, artworks should be exhibited/displayed, and articles or writings should presented in school publication or put in the library for them to see. These may be simple things to us but for our students, these are already what they call success.

Second is anxiety.

We were once learners and we are still learners even up to these days. As learners we always encounter this feeling, when given a task that involves a certain degree of challenge can expose us to feelings of self-doubt, uneasiness or fear. Behind these emotions lies the question: shall I succeed? As second language learning is a highly demanding task, it is very likely to raise anxiety in the learner. Anxiety can be considered a negative factor in language learning, and several teaching methodologies in modern approaches indicate that anxiety should be kept as low as possible.

An example of negative use of anxiety is when you have the right answer in mind but you don’t want to speak it, because of fear that there is grammatical error or that it is not the correct answer. This often happens to our learners and even to us. Now we think, how can we let students learn if there are unattended anxieties as such?

There are lots of studies regarding anxiety issues in language learning and while reading some of them, I had a funny reflection when I found out that teachers too sometimes contribute to our students’ anxiety; I asked myself, “am I a contributor of anxiety to my students?” I hope not.

Anxiety cannot be removed from our students anymore, so we try to teach them how to use this anxiety to become a better language learner. We teach them of facilitative anxiety or what we call positive use of anxiety. If students use these lots of anxieties as driving force to learn better, then there will be a clear possibility that language learning becomes easier for them.

The third is introversion vs. extroversion.

Second language acquisition may be more difficult for some people due to certain social factors. One highly studied social factor impeding language development is the issue of extraverts versus introverts. Studies have shown that extraverts (or unreserved and outgoing people) acquire a second language better than introverts (or shy people)

According research, personality traits, and in particular extroversion and introversion have a major effect on second language acquisition process. It seems obvious that extroverted learners, who use the second language to interact without inhabitation, talk more fluently, tend to take actions with less reflection, work better in groups and excel during classes with high levels of activity. It is to accommodate their need to communicate outside of class time without the pressure of the classroom. Extroverted students easily communicate in the second language even though they might not produce accurate output. These characteristics influence their ways of learning in the second language so it is believed that extraverts are more successful in communication. On the other hand, introverts tend to be exerts talk less and reflect more before acting, like to be quiet, like to work independently or with one or two other people.

They tend to be more passive rather than actively social. In addition, many introverted students have an obsession with producing accurate grammatically sentences with native-like accent.

Since many studies have shown that extroverts or unreserved and outgoing people acquire a second language better than introverts or shy people, it seems also important for second language learners to develop personality. That is to say, they should try their best to be extroverts to acquire the second language effectively. It is believed that individuality is one thing and personality is another. Personality is built after one is born.

With all these in mind, (we could say that the job of a teacher is really out of this world) we could say that understanding personality types is helpful for appreciating that while learners are different, everyone has a value, and special strengths and qualities, and that everyone should be treated with care and respect. They just behave differently because they are unique.