Personality Is Of What You’ve Became!

Sensing–thinking it is the sensing and thinking combination, you probably are oriented toward facts and experience and want practical solutions to tangible, current problems. As a student, you are likely to want a stable, firm base of knowledge before moving on and usually appreciate information that is presented sequentially for you to process one step at a time. You may not respond well to approaches that seem overly theoretical, unrelated to the problem now, or ingenious at the expense of practicality. It is likely that you do not want to be involved in the design of your program – that is the teacher’s job, and you want to learn in a logical sequence, not through the random access that some other students prefer. You may tend to reject appeals to your feelings. If you find yourself in a non-ST classroom, there are ways you can help yourself. For example if you find yourself in situations where you are missing a logical sequence, you might ask for a backtrack, either in the class (there may be others who want it too) or, if you think that would be intrusive, privately with the teacher or other student. You can take the material you are getting and outline it later, to bring it into better order. If there seems to be little or no lesson plan, see if you can negotiate some time for more structured learning, and treat the rest of the time as practice for when you are in real language use situations, where you can expect a lot of unpredictability. Intuition–thinking (NT) is based on intuition and thinking. The learners are probably relatively oriented toward possibilities, future potential, strategy, theory, and systems thinking. If you are an NT, then, like the ST, you will probably be put off by things you consider to be “touchy-feely.” You may get interested in the system or set of constructs underlying what you are learning, such as how the verbal system works, at the expense of using it (i.e. including a range of verbs in your speech), because you enjoy the intellectual challenge. NT learners want to feel that their program is designed by and in the hands of competent staff; if you are an NT, you may become cynical if you don’t trust the competence of your teachers. If you prefer NT, you probably want more learning autonomy than many of your classmates and may like random-access, non-linear learning strategies. If you find yourself in a non-NT classroom, keep in mind that there are a lot of ways to learn. Two of the authors are NT, and we both find learning through experiences like role plays and immersions to be extremely useful. Keep in mind that you can probably do the analyses and cognitive organization for yourself or with a reference of some sort. The experiential learning you get is something that you may not be able to manage on your own. If there seems to be too much mechanical drilling, bear with it, and see if you get anything out of it. If it really seems less than useful, you might negotiate with your teacher to do something else that is not disruptive to the rest of the class, such as self-study, working on reading, or the like.

Sensing–feeling (SF) it is sensing and feeling (SF) and you probably are fact-oriented, care about the everyday concerns of people (yourself and others), and gravitate toward providing practical help to others (teaching, health care). As a student, you are likely to prefer to learn carefully, systematically, and methodically, but you also enjoy the occasional people-related surprise, such as birthday parties and other social events. You probably enjoy field trips and other practical learning activities that involve other people. SFs frequently bring a kind of joie de vivre to their classrooms and learning. You may tolerate ambiguity somewhat more than your ST classmates, possibly because your orientation to people and people’s needs leads to more flexibility in general. Some ways that SFs can get into trouble in language classes are through lack of interest in abstractions that seem unrelated to people, boredom with what seems like dry information, or difficulties with setting priorities. If you find any of these to be the case for you, find some way to relate what you are learning to people (make up a story and keep adding to it as you get new language, for example, or find a pen-pal or friend on the Internet to get to know as an example of a speaker of the language who is real to you). The key for intuition and feeling is usually personal authenticity, expressing who you really are. If you are one of the NF types, you are likely to want to understand and communicate with others, so language is a natural medium for you and for your self-expression. Like the intuitive thinking types (NT), you are probably oriented toward possibilities. As students, you especially enjoy creativity both in how you are taught and in your learning activities. A real advantage for you as an NF language learner can be your natural interest in communication and your relative flexibility in learning activities. When you get into trouble, though, it is often because you may take in so much that you get inundated, and you may not make important distinctions (that is, you may level too much and not do necessary sharpening). If this happens, you might get your teacher or someone else to help you develop some sharpening exercises, starting gradually with relatively easy distinctions and working your way into harder or more complex ones. You can do some of this for yourself by finding a text passage with some synonyms in it. Try to see if you can make the distinctions in meaning. (You can do this in your native language or the foreign one.) Similarly, do the same thing with deciding what is most important for you. Sensing–judging (SJ) - SJ learners have many of the same qualities as the ISTJ described above. If you prefer sensing and judging, you probably tend to be factual, practical, and interested in “reality.” SJ personality types are also called guardians because they tend to be conservative and to pass down cultural values from one generation to the next. Responsible membership in a community and service to it is a deep motivator for you. As students, you will probably like rules, things (including language features) in their places, and you will want more predictability in activities and subject content than many other learners. This means that you are likely to appreciate program structure because you know that you can count on the structure to help you avoid being overwhelmed with information and choices. If you find yourself in an unstructured program (though this is rather rare), you may need to build in some structure for yourself. Much of what was said above for STs will also apply to you, especially if you are an STJ. You may find it helpful to outline material, find organized references, and negotiate with the teacher for some more sequentially organized activities. Similarly, if you are an SFJ, much of what was written above about SFs will also apply to you, though you may be less bothered by the lack of formal structure than your STJ classmates. You will need to find ways to make the learning personal and people-related.

If you prefer sensing and perceiving, you probably like freedom of action – not that you need to be taking action all the time, but you want to be able to act immediately when it is needed. You may find outdoor or outdoor related activities and occupations appealing. You also may find arts and crafts a mechanism for learning. For this reason, sensing–perceiving types are also called artisans. As a student, the chances are that you enjoy activities like hands-on experiments, creating various products (drawings, projects, musical pieces), and field trips, where you can move relatively freely and take action more readily as you see the need for it. Although you are usually comfortable with a moderately structured syllabus, you probably also enjoy surprises and diversions more than your SJ classmates.

Summing up if you find yourself in a highly structured or a highly intellectual classroom, you may feel dissatisfied. In this case, you can seek ways to bring in both some surprises and some concrete learning experience. Field trips and immersion are often a good way to do this (you would need to talk to your teacher about these). You can also suggest language learning games and try to find fun ways to use the language, like informal competitions, or go ahead and do some creative extra-credit work, such as making a craft item from the culture you are studying. The main thing for you is to avoid too much routine.

Bibliography:

1.    Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,

2.    S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,

3.    Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP

4.    B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

§  ©