The Horse, the Water, And the Horse’s Reflection: Understanding Language Learner Narrative Identity in the Classroom
Stephen Ryan, Senshu University, Tokyo
Stephen Ryan is a professor in the School of Economics at Senshu University, Tokyo. His research and publications cover various aspects of psychology in language learning, with his most recent book being The Psychology of the Language Learner Revisited, co-authored with Zoltán Dörnyei (2015, Routledge).
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Introduction
A brief diversion: revisiting my own past
The story of the self
Telling a story changes that story
Mental imagery and the brain
Looking forward
Looking back
Believing our own stories
The imagination in learning
Classroom relevance
References
In recent years there has been a profound shift taking place in how we think about language learners and how they direct their own learning. Much of this change has been informed by key concepts from educational psychology, such as self-concept, vision, and new understandings of the role of the imagination in learning. Unfortunately, to date this has largely been an abstract theoretical debate; fortunately, we are now beginning to see signs of this debate being extended to include teachers, with several new publications looking at the practical applications of this theoretical shift (e.g., Arnold, Dörnyei, & Pugliese, 2015; Hadfield & Dörnyei, 2013; Williams, Mercer, & Ryan, 2015) . In this article, I hope to build on this momentum by first providing an overview of what I consider to be some of the most exciting recent theoretical developments and secondly by arguing that these theoretical developments also represent key practical concerns for busy language teachers. It is my firm view that an understanding of psychology is an essential part of the job; an awareness of key psychological processes can enable teachers to develop meaningful, effective classroom activities designed to promote more positive approaches to learning, which should ultimately lead to more successful language learners.
Language teachers may regard discussions of the psychology of learning as an unnecessary, unwanted theoretical distraction. I hope to show that this is far from being the case since good teachers already intuitively know a lot about psychology; the numerous everyday classroom decisions teachers make—from which learning activities to employ with a particular group of students, how to organise the students doing the activities, to when to start and stop the activity—all these decisions are informed by an understanding of psychological factors. I would contend that teachers may derive great benefits from systematically exploring and better understanding the psychological factors informing their practice. Since learning or using a new language can be so entangled with issues of personal identity, it may be the case that an understanding of the psychological dimension to learning is even more important for language teachers than for teachers of other subjects.
Before moving on to a discussion of the specifics of recent developments in thinking about the psychology of language learning, I would like to share a short personal story that gave me cause to reflect on some of the issues discussed in this article. Recently, I happened to be clearing out some boxes full of old belongings and came across some drawings I had done as a teenager. The surprising thing is that these drawings were actually quite good; they were detailed, thoughtful and sophisticated. Since I now struggle to draw even the most basic matchstick figures, I did not recognise myself as the person behind these drawings—if I had been asked who I thought had drawn them, I really would have had no idea. It was only my signature in the corner that convinced me that they were mine. I had to think long and hard to remember a time when I would have been capable of producing something so meticulous or creative. After a considerable amount of time trawling through long-abandoned corners of my memory, I was able to recall a phase in my mid-teens when I spent all my time drawing. I even remembered that, for a while, I had ideas of going on to study art seriously. I also recalled a crucial examination at around that time—an exam that would have been critical to my plans of studying art seriously. The format of the exam was that students were given a broad theme to consider but had time to plan and prepare their ideas before actually having to produce the artwork within a timed examination situation. My plan was a good, though very ambitious, one, but I did not know how to implement it; I wanted to try something new, to challenge myself, so I came up with the idea of an intricate illustration set against the background of a dramatic explosion of colour—I should point out that I had only ever really worked with black and white drawings to this point. I had a clear vision in my head but I lacked the know-how required to get that image on to paper. The most obvious solution would have been to share my vision with my teacher and seek his advice on how to achieve my goals. However, I was unable to do that, and to the best of my recollection I decided to use water colours—something I had no experience of— and the final submission resembled nothing more than a soggy, murky piece of paper. I think that proved to be the end of my artistic ambitions.
There are two key points from this story that I would like to carry into our discussion of psychology in language learning. The first concerns self-concept, how it changes over time and how it guides our efforts as learners. Clearly I have changed over time—which is to be expected—but this story illustrates the point that how we see ourselves now influences how we remember our pasts. As an adult, I have never had any creative interests or belief that I have any artistic talents, but when I was younger, I clearly had a very different understanding of myself. As an adult, my attempts at drawing tend to be restricted to occasional matchstick illustrations haphazardly scrawled on the board during class—attempts that are often abandoned unfinished to the accompaniment of laughter and amused derision from students; as a rule of thumb, I avoid drawing whenever possible. However, as a young person I must have seen myself as someone good at drawing, and drawing was most likely an important part of who I was, therefore I spent a considerable amount of time absorbed in painstaking practice. The analogy with language learning should be clear; learners are more likely to make focused efforts when they see learning a language as an important part of who they are, and when they believe it to be something in which they can excel.
The second point I wish to explore relates to the role of vision in the learning process. In my example, I had a very clear, vivid mental image of what I wanted to create, but I was unable to realise this vision on paper. Looking back I would say that my failure was primarily due to an inability to share that vision. Not sharing the vision with others had two detrimental consequences; firstly I did not develop the vision—talking with others and listening to their input would have given me more ideas and these may have led to a mental image more closely aligned with my own capabilities at the time—and secondly, not sharing my ideas denied me access to the various tools and resources necessary to realise the vision—talking to others might have elicited suggestions as to which techniques may work and practical advice from others, including teachers.
Visions and mental images are not fixed objects in our brains, they are constantly evolving and the ways in which these images evolve—or fail to evolve—can have a significant impact on learning outcomes. In the case of language learners, these images are more than mental pictures that they want to reproduce on paper, they are visions of themselves in future states, visions of the people they hope to become one day. Although the process is somewhat different, the basic principle remains essentially the same - that sharing mental imagery enables learners to develop their visions in ways that facilitate learning and to gain access to the tools and information necessary to realise their visions..
Discussions of the ‘self’ span a vast range of theoretical perspectives. Here, I will focus on just one of those, the notion of the self as continuing story we create within ourselves and stress the fundamental point that this story lies at the heart of how we see ourselves, our place in the world around us, and how we interact with that world. This is true for everyone, but for language teachers an understanding of how the self-concept of our learners develops over time and how this affects learning can be a huge asset in the classroom. My interests in this article are with how the self-concept of language learners can change over time, the pedagogic possibilities—and potential risks—associated with such change, and the role teachers can play in facilitating that change.
A simple way to think of self-concept is that it represents the various answers people come up with in response to the question “Who am I?” In a cold, calculating, rational world these answers would be based upon detached, common-sense assessments of events, of our successes, of our failures, of our aspirations, and of our fears. However, we do not live in such a world and this means that our self-concept can be inconsistent and even contradictory. Our self-concept is not the same across all areas of our lives; for example, I may see myself as a spoilt, negligent son, yet a dedicated, dutiful father, and I could simultaneously consider myself a lazy, uncommitted learner but a conscientious, hard-working teacher. Furthermore, there is always a strong emotional foundation to the development of our self-concept; we form strong emotional attachments to certain things or certain people and these attachments affect how we see ourselves, who we want to become and who we do not want to become.
So how are teachers to make sense—and make use— of something as powerful, dynamic and unpredictable as a learner self-concept? One way to do so is to consider self-concept as an ongoing internal narrative; rather than a set of still photographs, the self-concept is closer to an unfolding, continuing drama being played out in the minds of learners. In recent years, the idea of the self as a narrative has become the ‘root metaphor’ (see Dörnyei & Ryan, 2015) of psychology and in educational settings this means that learners are simultaneously the authors of this drama, the principle actors, and the audience.
If this drama is being played out in the minds of learners, then what role is left for teachers? Of course, it would be undesirable, and probably unethical, for teachers to attempt to coerce learners into becoming people they did not want to be; teachers cannot simply force goals, dreams or aspirations into the minds of learners. The role of teachers is a much more indirect, though still crucial, one based around understanding the principal plot lines available to learners and the processes shaping the development of these plots. Understanding these processes can help teachers play a more active, constructive role in the development of their learners’ self narratives.
There are two ways in which to define a story. We can see a story as a fixed artefact, something printed on paper that remains unchanged no matter how many times it gets retold. The other way to think of a story is as something that emerges through the interaction between a narrator and an audience. The story of the self is a continually developing story that certainly falls into the latter category. As mentioned earlier, we function as both narrator and audience in our own stories of the self, and this creates tremendous internal pressure for that story to evolve and change. As a narrator, it is difficult to repeat the same story over and over again to the same audience, similarly as a member of the audience, it is not very interesting or entertaining to repeatedly sit through the same story. We need our stories to stimulate and excite us, so the self as narrator is constantly retuning this story to the demands of the self as audience; in effect, this means that each time we tell the story of our self, we make adjustments, the story cannot stay the same for long.
In mainstream psychology, there has been a lot of research conducted into how people process memories and past events, with much of this research being oriented towards counselling individuals after traumatic events. One key concept that may have an application in language education is known as retrieval induced forgetting. This sounds a little intimidating, but what it basically means is that each time we recall something from our past, we forget something else; the act of recalling an event necessitates some degree of forgetting. Since we cannot relive every possible detail of our lives, we edit and cut bits from our recollections, we tweak and experiment with those stories. Strangely, and somewhat counter-intuitively, since key life events and self-defining memories are the stories that get retold most frequently, these are the stories that change the most over time; our most important memories can also be our most unreliable. The possibility of creating more positive, more educationally productive, personal narratives through the retelling and reframing of those stories has clear implications for language teachers, which I will return to in more practical terms at the end of the article.
It is important to add that there is also a physical basis to the claims that reliving our past through mental imagery can change how we interpret that past. In recent years, technological developments have brought about great advances in what we know about the workings of the human brain. It is now possible to monitor the physical activity of the brain in ways that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. One of the things we are learning from these studies is that the brain reacts to imagined events in exactly the same way that it reacts to actual, lived events. In effect, this means that since the mental processes are the same, the brain finds it very difficult to distinguish between the things we actually did and the things we imagined doing; this is one reason people often disagree when they try to recollect a shared experience.
Our memories are not the reliable storage devices we like to believe they are, with the events we choose to remember and how we choose to remember them being largely shaped by how we currently see ourselves (see the earlier example of my current, unartistic self having difficulty recalling or recognising drawings done by an earlier, but very different, version of myself). When we mentally relive events from the past, we inevitably relive them through the current self, and the current self is likely to act differently to a past self; this simple act of reliving an event through the current self changes how our brain stores information about that event. Memories are far more volatile and malleable than we think.
It may be helpful here to return to the metaphor of the individual as author, actor, and audience in the construction of their self narratives. We have already considered the authorial and audience roles to some extent, but here we can think of the individual as an actor performing several takes of the same scene, unaware of which take will make the final cut, the final cut in this case being the story of the self that they carry into their everyday lives.
Our pasts, presents, and our futures are interdependent in the story of the self; managing ourselves across these timeframes can be a delicate balancing act, but it is something we all do. We have already discussed how our interpretations of the past are shaped by how we see ourselves in the present, and similarly, the ways in which we project our futures are mediated by current perceptions of the self. Furthermore, any reconstruction of the past or imagining of a future entails a corresponding alignment of the current self; how we see ourselves now very much depends on how we interpret past events or envision future directions. As I will explain later, there is a fundamental human need to keep these three timeframes in sync with each other.
By far the most developed area of research relating to the use of mental imagery by language learners concerns how they develop and use future visions of themselves as users of a language. Indeed, the dominant model of language learning motivation—Dörnyei’s L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2005)—is centred on the role of future imagery as a powerful motivating force. This is an area that has already received a lot of attention and has been discussed in depth elsewhere (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009), so I will just pick out a few of the points most relevant to the current discussion.
Essentially, the L2 motivational self system argues that learners are motivated by the need to realise powerful visions they have of themselves in future states, so for language learners the visions they have of themselves as successful language users in the future will motivate and guide them through the long, often frustrating, process of learning a language. These visions are not simply future goals since they contain an element of living, or experiencing, the future state, and, to simplify the theory somewhat, the more elaborate or vivid a vision, the more powerful and effective it becomes as a motivator. Of course, this is an altogether more substantial theory than a naïve belief in the power of wishful thinking, as certain key conditions, such as the plausibility of the vision, or the existence of counter-balancing negative consequences for failing to realise the vision, need to be met before a vision can be said to be truly motivating. To summarise, we are seeing a broad acceptance that an understanding of mental imagery can help teachers develop both effective language learning activities that incorporate and encourage this imagery and a deeper insight into their own practice (see Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014).
In contrast, mental imagery connected to our past has been relatively neglected. As teachers, it is important to remember that learners—like all people—are continually recreating their own pasts and that this can have profound effects on how they approach learning in the present. In traditional educational psychology, the term attribution is used to refer to the assessments learners make of their perceived successes and failures. There has been a considerable amount of research into the powerful consequences of these attributions, with some attributions—those outside the control of the learner, such as luck or natural ability—being seen as detrimental to learning, and others—those within the control of the learner, such as the nature and amount of effort expended—being seen as empowering for learners. The general consensus within the psychology literature has been that there are clear educational benefits to encouraging learners to make more empowering attributions for their own successes and failures.
In the same way that the L2 motivational self system has appropriated the concept of goals and incorporated them as part of the future visions learners have of themselves, it may be possible to reframe attributions within the context of a continuing internal narrative. Rethinking attributions in this way may offer a more effective way of encouraging language learners to explore their own behaviour than simply asking them to reflect on past successes or failures in a detached, analytical manner. When these attributions are considered as part of an internally constructed narrative of the self, this encourages learners to feel a degree of emotional investment and belief in their stories. A detached, rational understanding of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways in which to learn may raise awareness but not necessarily change learning behaviour; belief in a positive language learning story may be a far more powerful way of effecting behavioural change.
The best stories are the ones that we can believe, the ones with which we can feel engaged or involved. Most of us have had the experience of watching some film or television programme and being put off by an improbable, inconsistent storyline or plot twist. The usual reaction of a viewer to this is to lose interest. The same applies to the stories we tell ourselves; we need to believe them. Whether looking back or looking forward, we need to build coherence into our story; our past, our present, and our future should form a coherent narrative, and we are constantly adjusting our internal narrative in response to external events in order to keep that narrative consistent. At a very basic level, the plot of our story must be temporally coherent, put simply, things must happen in the correct chronological order; so, for example, a learner of French cannot believe a story in which she goes to France, using French effectively and fluently, and then returns to school to struggle with the basics of the language—such a storyline makes no sense at all. Stories also need to be thematically coherent, and this term explains that feeling we sometimes have when watching a film of losing interest because the actions of a character appear inconsistent with that character’s previous actions, that feeling of thinking to yourself “He (almost always ‘he’) would never have done that!” The themes of our internal narratives relate to various judgements we make about ourselves, our personality, and our various abilities. If we refer back to my earlier story of the drawings I did as a teenager, the present-day me found it very difficult to believe they were my drawings because such drawings are not thematically consistent with how I see myself now; my initial reaction to seeing those drawings was “I wouldn’t—or I couldn’t—have done that.” I do not see myself as an artistic person now; therefore, I found it difficult to believe that I was capable of producing anything of artistic merit in the past. Similarly, a language learner with a story full of negative, unsuccessful language learning experiences is unlikely to be able to develop a successful future narrative immediately. Developing positive future mental imagery is now widely accepted as an essential part of language learning success, but developing such imagery is only possible if it is somehow consistent with the ongoing internal narrative stretching back into the individual learner’s past. There needs to be a coherent narrative thread connecting the past, present, and future.
The central argument I am making here is that our sense of who we are emerges from a storyline that we develop by connecting the present to mental recreations of our past and to imagined, possible futures. Since this constantly evolving story plays a significant role in shaping attitudes towards learning, there is a strong incentive for teachers to encourage an adaptive story of the self in learners. In everyday language, the name we give to this process of connecting the here and now to mental images of other possible states is simply the ‘imagination’.
Unfortunately, the traditional role of the imagination in education has been a peripheral one, an optional extra to be permitted once the serious business of learning has been done. The imagination is often regarded as a mere frill or decoration, strongly associated with notions of creativity, or escaping reality. While there is an interesting debate to be had about the role of creativity in language learning, for the purposes of the current discussion I will focus on a more functional, practical view of the imagination in language learning. Over the years, a powerful voice advocating a greater role for the imagination in education has been Kieran Egan (2005), who refers to the imagination as the ‘workhorse’ of learning, and I would like to borrow this more positive metaphor as it places the imagination at the heart of the learning process. (For those not already familiar with the work of Kieran Egan, his writing is always entertaining, thought-provoking and classroom-oriented.) If we regard education as the business of realising potential in learners, within this framework the imagination functions as a bridge, or a link, connecting current reality to a world of possibilities. Without the imagination there is no connection, there is no journey.
So what relevance do the ideas discussed in this article have to actual classroom practice? Perhaps the best way to consider this is to recap some of the ground we have covered so far. We have argued that learner self-concept is a key factor in how learners direct their efforts to learn; there is very little language teachers can do with learners who do not regard learning a language as either relevant or possible. We have also seen that this self-concept is constantly evolving and that the best metaphor for understanding this evolution is that of an ongoing internal narrative. Finally, we have seen that language learners—like all people—connect their pasts, their presents, and their futures through the use of the imagination, which, far from being a distraction or escape from reality, should be regarded as the engine room of learning.
From a practical teaching perspective, this is all very positive and hopeful. It tells us that learner self-concept—the story learners tell themselves about themselves—is constantly evolving and that a key mechanism in that evolution is the telling of stories about key events in their lives. It suggests that even in cases where learners have a negative self-narrative that discourages them from learning, change may be possible. In the case of language learners, this change is most likely to come from the twin pull of interpretations of past success or failure and future visions of a language-using self. Our goal as language teachers must surely be to encourage our learners to create a credible narrative of the self that supports language learning. The question then is how we do that.
It is crucial that we understand that our role in the development of learner self-narratives must always be an indirect one; simply encouraging a more positive outlook in learners will not lead to immediate language proficiency gains. Attempting to influence this internal narrative in a direct, obvious way is likely to encounter resistance; the story of the self is only meaningful when the individual feels ownership of that story. As teachers, our role is to create an environment and develop learning activities designed to foster a more adaptive narrative of the self, and this more positive, optimistic outlook on the part of learners is likely to result in greater, more focused learning efforts and a heightened sense of commitment towards language learning. Only through the learner’s own efforts can learning occur.
Since all teaching contexts—and most teachers for that matter— have their own particularities, there is no magic, one-size-fits-all formula for developing a more positive narrative of the self in language learners. Therefore, in this final section, I will simply outline a few guiding principles which teachers should be able to adapt and develop in accordance with the needs of their own context and teaching styles.
1) Exploring key learner narratives
The area of language learner narrative identity is still a relatively new one and research here is limited. This means that teachers can take the initiative and conduct their own mini-research projects by observing learners they come into contact with. From these observations, it may be possible to identify and plot a number of core learner narratives. The aim here is simply for teachers to build up an awareness of the most important narratives in their classrooms and to reflect on how these may be influencing learner behaviour.
The next stage is to develop this same awareness in learners, encouraging them to think about their own internal narratives and exposing them to alternatives. As discussed earlier, this should come in the form of an indirect approach on the part of teachers. The collected key learner narratives could be developed into learning materials, perhaps in the form of case-study readings. Engagement with these narratives through reading may encourage learners to reflect on how these stories differ—or otherwise—from their own, and perhaps prompt some internal retelling of their own stories as language learners; as we have already discussed, retelling entails some degree of change. These case studies could be further developed through role-play activities in which learners take the role of one of the cases with a positive learner narrative and consider how they might act in certain situations. Such activities may be particularly useful with learners who are, for whatever reason, reluctant to expose themselves and their perceived failures to the scrutiny of their classmates; talking about their own experiences under the cover of discussing someone else may disinhibit some learners. One of the great attractions of the narrative approach is that stories are already an integral part of the language classroom therefore existing methods and materials can be easily adapted; the guiding principle is simply that teachers should consider the ways in which engagement with stories may encourage learners to reflect on their own stories as language learners.
2) Recasting key events
A key theme throughout this article has been that stories change as we tell them; the more we tell a story, the more it changes. This suggests that even the most negative language-learning narratives may be open to change in some way. Going back to the concept of retrieval induced forgetting, it may be possible to adapt some of the techniques used in counselling and encourage learners to tell their stories in different versions. The key here is for learners to retell the story many times—this could be orally or in written work—and each time the story is told they are to imagine some key detail being changed. This approach is unlikely to produce a sudden, miraculous conversion from any negative, debilitative narrative to a positive, facilitative one, but it may loosen some of the more stubborn elements of a negative self narrative, paving the way for the development of a more facilitative narrative at some point in the future.
3) Recasting in the third-person
Another way in which stories can be retold is for the narrator to adopt a third-person perspective. Third-person imagery, seeing oneself perform as seen by others, is another technique that has been found to have significant motivational benefits. Once again, the key here is to encourage repeated retelling of the story, and to give learners the chance to recount the same story from different viewpoints. The retelling and reconstruction of the story from different perspectives encourages learners to reinterpret key events and their own role in those events.
4) Sharing stories
The final guiding principle I want to suggest relates to the need to share stories with others, especially peers. What is particularly important about an audience of peers is that, since narrators naturally adapt their stories to the demands of their audience, learners are forced to expose their stories to the outside world, and this can be a catalyst for development. A story that remains locked inside the individual may never grow, but one that comes into contact with others may evolve in accord with its environment. Sharing with peers can be especially useful in getting learners to accommodate more realistic, achievable future aspirations into their narratives. Furthermore, since people tend to try to present themselves favourably to others, to be regarded well, the social act of sharing with peers encourages learners to recast their perceived failures in a more positive light. Sharing stories offers more than just a great outlet for simple language practice or another opportunity to recreate their story through the retelling, since a further benefit of this approach is that learners are exposed to the stories of others, which may in turn encourage them to reflect and reconsider their own.
None of the above offers any shortcut to language learning success, but what they do offer is established language learning techniques slightly re-adjusted to fit a sound psychological base. The old adage about taking a horse to water is something of a cliché in discussions of motivation, so I thought I would end by reinterpreting that particular cliché. In this article I am saying that, although we cannot immediately make the horse drink, we can take that horse to water, let it look at the water, consider its own reflection in that water, then decide for itself whether it wants to drink or not. If at first the horse does not decide to do so, we can disturb those waters and encourage the horse to look again. The ultimate decision to drink rests always with the horse, but we can provide opportunities for the horse to reconsider how it sees itself, the water, and perhaps its intake of water.
Arnold, J., Dörnyei. Z., & Pugliese, C. (2015). The principled communicative approach: Seven criteria for success. London: Helbling.
Dörnyei. Z (2005). The psychology of the language learner. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Dörnyei, Z., & Kubanyiova, M. (2014). Motivating learners, motivating teachers: Building vision in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dörnyei. Z., & Ryan, S. (2015). The psychology of the language learner revisited. New York: Routledge.
Dörnyei. Z., & Ushioda, E. (Eds.) (2009). Motivation, language identity and the L2 self. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Egan, K. (2005). An imaginative approach to teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Hadfield, J., & Dörnyei, Z. (2013). Motivating learning. Harlow: Longman.
Dörnyei. Z., & Ryan, S. (2015). The psychology of the language learner revisited. New York: Routledge.
Dörnyei, Z., & Kubanyiova, M. (2014). Motivating learners, motivating teachers: Building vision in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, M., Mercer, S., & Ryan, S. (2015). Exploring psychology for language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Please check the Dealing with Difficult Learners course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.
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