ELT News Think Tank

This Month's Think Tank Panel

Curtis Kelly

Marc Helgesen

Chuck Sandy

Chris Hunt

Panelists: Curtis | Marc | Chuck | Chris
Date: January 2006

Topic: "What was the best idea you had in the last year?"

Marc Helgesen

Page 1 | Page 2

I was in the audience at Think Tank LIVE last October, sitting next to Rob Waring, my co-chair of JALT2005. It was Rob who asked the question, “What is the best idea you’ve had in the past year.” As soon as he said it, everyone in the room realized it was a brilliant question. It gave all the Think Tankers a chance to share the most exciting thing they are working/playing with. These could be works in progress, not fully developed ideas.

“Education should help people live better lives. The answer is incredibly simple, but it has important ramifications.”

Now, a few weeks later, we are supposed to write up our own best ideas. A minor problem with the one I want to share: we already did. The most exciting thing I’ve been doing over the past year is applying the ideas from “positive psychology” to the classroom. We wrote about that in the June Think Tank. But, as I said, I’m very excited about this. So having another chance to write about it is wonderful.

“Positive psychology” is a fairly new development in that discipline. Time magazine calls it “The science of happiness.” I prefer that term because it is easier for students to understand. For years, psychologists have studied mental illness. Makes sense. That’s where the big problems are. Recently however, researchers have started looking at mental health. They are asking what behaviors mentally healthy, happy people engage in. The main “guru” is probably Martin Seligman, whose book Authentic Happiness has done so much to inform the discussion. (Seligman’s web site is here. You can find the book at amazon.co.jp or in bookstores).

Please understand that “positive psychology” is not just happy talk or the “power of positive thinking.” It really is looking at specific behaviors that are useful.

In the June Think Tank, I shared a few ideas that I’m using in my own classes to try to make these ideas connect with ELT. I’ll share a couple more here.

In the June column, I listed eight behaviors that happy people engage in. Great, we know what they are. How do we get this information to our students? In class, we regularly do positive psychology activities. I recently wrote a pairwork (download PDF file here) which gives students some of the basic ideas. This works as it is but also gives them a way to understand how some of the other things we do fit into a larger process.

One thing we clearly know, both from positive psychology and from education theory, is that self-fulfilling prophesies are powerful. They work for good or bad. A few years ago, I learned a simple technique from Tim Murphey. He has his students form circles of 8 or 10 (or however many is convenient.). They walk in a circle, hand on the neck of the person in front of them. It is sort of a peer massage task. Last January, I went to a lecture on motivation by my editor, Mike Rost. He pointed out that our beliefs govern our motivations. He went on to identify four “self talk” patterns of motivated, successful language learners. They are:

• “English makes me feel good.”
• “I’m addicted to English.”
• “English is my language.”
• “I believe I will learn English.”

So I combined the two ideas. Now I regularly have my students massage each other’s necks, leaning forward saying positive statements into their classmates’ ears.

We often do this before quizzes. It relaxes students before the quiz (and there is clear evidence that relaxed students learn more and do better). By the way, the students do say the phrases in the first person (“I am…”, not “You are…”). They act as their partner’s innervoice while talking positively to themselves at the same time.)

Page 1 | Page 2

Panelists: Curtis | Marc | Chuck | Chris

<<Back Number | Top | Recent Issue>>