Temperaments

There are many other models of personality type. They come and go with the fancy of the reading/using public. Among the more stable ones are the old Greek temperaments that have endured for centuries. The four-temperament model of personality type proposed by Hippocrates and Galen in the days of Old Greece is still followed in many countries today. The model is not all that unlike contemporary theories of personality type. It describes four personality types: phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, and melancholy. The phlegmatic personality is that of a person who is slow to emotional arousal and, therefore, rarely moody. Impressions made upon him or her are not strong, and he or she is slow to take action or to react to situations that are positively or negatively exciting. The phlegmatic personality often prefers play to work. When he or she does work intensively, it is in a slow but sure way. To some extent, those who have a phlegmatic personality are unflappable. They are not often particularly ambitious. Individuals who test phlegmatic usually also test as introverts on questionnaires based on Jungian personality types. If you are a phlegmatic learner, you may find it helpful to have things repeated to you more often than your teacher is wont to do. In that case, you can repeat for yourself. Those with a sanguine personality are easily but not strongly excited. Their interests, like their tempers, are generally short-lived. They are quick to move from one interest to another, and their moods can change equally quickly. They are also more likely to be attracted to the external world – communicating with others, communing with nature – than the internal one – introspection. The processing strategies of the sanguine tend to be surface ones. Those who test as sanguine often exhibit sharpening skills, extraversion, and a preference for sensing (rather than intuition). Sanguine individuals are typically highly optimistic and outgoing. They tend to be of good humor. If you are a sanguine type of personality, you might want to spend some time in developing deep processing strategies, which may not come easily to you. You might also want to seek out foreign-language teachers who make extensive use of small-group instruction and cooperative learning. Choleric individuals tend to be impetuous. They are quickly and strongly emotionally aroused by events and ideas that surround them. They want to excel and work hard to do so. They prefer to lead rather than follow, and are by nature extraverts and thinkers in the Jungian model of personality types. They are also often ambitious and perfectionists. Their impulsivity, however, often works against them since they miss important details in their haste. If you are a choleric personality and working in a cooperative classroom, you may find that your natural proclivities for leadership often cast you in the role of group leader, mentor, guide. On the other hand, you may find yourself annoyed with the plodding pace of the group and need to restrain your tendency to show that annoyance. Like levelers on the E and L scale, cholerics may need to develop some sharpening skills in order to succeed in foreign-language classrooms. The fourth temperament, melancholic, refers to individuals who are inclined to reflection. Generally introverted, individuals with a melancholic personality like silence and independent work. A classroom with whispering students can distract them, and cooperative-learning situations can sometimes overwhelm them until they acquire some skills for interacting in small or large groups – often through predicting activities ahead of time and rehearsing a role for themselves in them. If you are melancholic, you may find that you are sometimes confused when called upon by a teacher or slow in your response when compared to classmates who are not melancholic. For dealing with this characteristic, too, as well as with the melancholic’s tendency to feel self-conscious, prediction and rehearsal can be of great advantage. Melancholics are rarely sharpeners, and learning to notice details can also be very important to their success in foreign-language learning.

Another important personality variable is that of ego boundaries. People vary with respect to their fluidity of mental categories, especially those that relate to one’s identity and one’s relation to other people and other ways of perceiving the world. There are two directions a personality can take, toward:

• thin ego boundaries or
• thick ego boundaries.

Thin (relatively permeable) ego boundaries are associated with tolerance of ambiguity, flexible categories, and learning by osmosis (without being aware of the learning). What this means is that if you are a thin boundary person, you will probably be able to accept the fact that in immersion and communicative classrooms there will be many words and much grammar that you do not understand, especially in the beginning, and that sometimes a word will have multiple meanings in a foreign language, some of which do not equate to the same range of meanings in English. You are relatively likely to “go with the flow” and try to figure out what you can as you go along. Sometimes, you may learn new things and not know for sure where they came from. So, if you have relatively thin boundaries, you have a good start for language learning, as long as you do not let yourself “drown” in all the input. Moreover, the flexibility of thin ego boundaries probably promotes empathy, which also helps with accepting and absorbing another language and culture. Nonetheless, there are probably instances in which you run into difficulty in language learning precisely because of your thin boundaries. You may need to set up new categories to make sense of what you are taking in. For example, in watching a foreign-language film, you may encounter fifty new vocabulary items that you understand on the spot but cannot recall without some system for filing them in your memory. Field-independent learners tend to do this naturally. If you are not field independent, there are some things you can do to develop the techniques used instinctively by your field-independent peers.

Thick (relatively impermeable) ego boundaries relate to a desire for clear categories, compartmentalization of information and lifestyle, and relative intolerance of ambiguity. What this means is that if you are a thick-boundary person, you may be irritated and confused when you cannot figure out clear rules for the grammar you encounter in class or clear meanings for the words you hear. Sometimes, thick-boundary students will try to translate words literally from their native language into the foreign language. It is understandable why they do this: they want everything to have a clear, predictable place in their mental organization. Generally, few teachers would recommend this as a helpful strategy; however, for some students, it does help them understand grammar better. For example, translating a Russian sentence with a participial structure that does not exist in English into literal English (e.g. the walking-down-the-street man saw the just-opened-by-his-neighbor store) can make the structure very clear to a thick-boundary learner in need of clarity.  Learners with thick ego boundaries can learn languages well, especially in instructed settings. Once experienced at language learning, they do well in setting up their own kinds of instruction that take into account their own learning styles. Some thick-boundary learners are very good at independent study and at using native speakers for obtaining the language information they need and/or want. (If you are a thick-boundary learner, you might consider taking some courses in linguistics, especially field methods. Not only might courses in linguistics help you with your language learning endeavors, but also you may be fascinated by the ways in which they categorize languages, language features, and language change.) As a learner with thick ego boundaries, a major strength for you is your ability to ensure that you do not get lost in data, something that can be a problem for thin-boundary learners. If you cannot tolerate less-than-neat surroundings, you might also find frustration in languages, which are by nature not very neat. After you have found a number of the “systems” and “categories” in the language you are studying, try dealing with the exceptions by seeing in what ways they differ from “the system.” When presented with confusing language elements, try to associate them with things you already know in the language, in another language, or, if you have studied linguistics, in linguistic theory.

Try putting yourself in the place of a person from the culture you are studying. Before you can do that well, though, you may need to learn something about the cultural values and typical reactions to various situations. You may also want to watch some native speakers in action (in real life or in films) and discuss with your teachers the reactions that you noticed (and did not notice). After you have built up some of these insights (which may not come as intuitively to you as they do to thin-boundary individuals), you should be able to hold your own with your thin-boundary peers when it comes to understanding native speakers and being able to put yourself in their place.

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.

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