Class-room interactions

Your personality and your feelings are both influenced by your relationships with others, and in turn they influence how you play out those relationships. To continue our example of a learner with a strong need for orderliness, that learner might want to interact only with other students who make few mistakes. That could be because the learner does not want to have to sort out what is right and wrong, but would rather put energy into learning the vocabulary that is so hard to retain. We will talk about some ways learners interact with teachers, other students, and with themselves. In a foreign-language classroom, there can be a number of ways of interrelating. We call these levels of interaction. While not all levels of interaction that exist in real life are present in the foreign-language classroom, at least three are. These include:

·        Within the individual (intrapersonal processes)

·        Between two individuals (processes or relations)

·        Among members of a group (group dynamics)

Individual dynamics are reactions to outside stimuli that you experience but do not share with or express to others. These show up as likes and dislikes, tension, anxiety, and other emotions. You may find yourself feeling sick when you need to open your textbook or go to class. There are positive aspects of individual dynamics, as well. These are when you can hardly wait to open your textbook and feel a sense of belonging in class and a feeling of euphoria after class. If you are not experiencing the positive forms of intrapersonal processes, you might want to analyze what is missing – and add that to your experiences. If you are experiencing the negative forms of intrapersonal processes, you might want to find the source (often your teacher or a counselor can help you with that) –and eliminate that.

Interpersonal dynamics are quite different. When two people interact, they influence each other in many ways, and are normally unaware of most of those ways. For example, in a pair with different talents and interests, one may become the “social” member of the pair, and the other the “practical” one. Then consciously, the “social” one takes over most of the arrangements with friends, whereas the other looks after the practicalities like paying bills or getting the furnace fixed. At the unconscious level, though, the individuals may come to identify with these roles and eventually believe that they do not have the capacity to take the other role. You can work to avoid this by keeping aware of all your abilities and knowledge. There are almost certainly things you know better than the teacher: one of them is what you need and what you know and don’t know.  Intragroup dynamics are very important to your feeling comfortable in your foreign language classroom. Intragroup dynamics can take at least three forms that can create dysfunctional classrooms: division into subgroups, scapegoating, and group reaction to the teacher. For example, when you make a joke, you may be attempting to establish a connection with another person, or you may be expressing veiled hostility. Your joke may serve as a defense against anxiety; or it could function as a bid for group leadership. Furthermore, for members of a group or pair, multiple perspectives can be a source of conflict. If two subgroups view the same situation differently, achievement of cohesion can be more difficult.  There can be subgroups within your class (this is not desirable, but it does happen) that have positive, or, more likely, negative, feelings toward each other. Perhaps several of the students in your class come from the same city or the same high school and are used to working together; without knowing it they could be excluding the other students from their relationships. You might talk with them about the importance of whole-group cohesion and how you can help each other with your learning efforts. It may be that they are not even aware of their subgroup. Even better, you might ask your teacher to explain group dynamics to your class, emphasizing the importance of harmony and cohesion to the language-learning process. Sometimes the subgroup is only one person, and that person is uniformly disliked. In these cases, the students in your class might make fun of that student. This is called “scapegoating,” and it is very detrimental to the development of group cohesion and to the ability of any one in the class to learn well and comfortably. If you find that you have a scapegoat in the class, talk to your classmates about how this is not helpful to your learning process. If you have, for some reason, become the scapegoat, talk to your classmates and explain how they make you feel.

The relationship between the teacher and the class can be positive or negative. On the positive side, students like the teacher and a bond forms. In some cases, this bond can last years. You probably have elementary school teachers of whom you are fond to this day. On the negative side, you may have been in situations where no one liked the teacher and perhaps the class as a whole formed an opposition to the teacher. You may well remember teachers who fell into this group, too, and if you analyze the kinds of learning that went on and what you took away from the classroom, you may find that this kind of relationship was dysfunctional and impeded your learning.

 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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