Language Immersion
The Dialogue Approach
Dialogue and the Four Language Learning Thresholds
The Psychological Threshold
2. How to Motivate?
To lead a learner to progress, it is not enough to lower his “affective filter” and give him self-confidence; every good teacher knows he must motivate the learner. To the extent the teacher caters to the student’s fundamental need, he keeps the motivation alive. All teacher involvement should have as its goal the maintenance of motivation. Let’s look at the method of giving feedback the student and reducing tension and defensive mechanisms.
Saying “bravo” to someone who needs validation, shaking the hand of a student who needs to be accepted, or telling him his contribution has value, congratulating the student who needs to see tangible progress, punctuating by an “it’s perfect” the performance of the person who needs security, are some of the ways a teacher can keep motivating the student. In contrast, it is not useful, even dangerous, to applaud a person whose goal in life is to show competence (need for security).
It is important to realize that some students need a bit of time before getting into the meat of the subject, while others prefer to jump right in. The reserved dominant doesn’t need much in the way of preamble. If the non-dominant reserved needs a little time, so does the dominant expansive, though the non-dominant expansive needs the greatest time buffer before getting into the subject. The teacher must work patiently with the latter, or risk turning motivation off.
To learn—the point is so obvious that it bears repeating—is to accept change, to de-structure so as to restructure. The process often generates a defensive stance on the part of the learner. The initial starting points for the learner in relation to a new language are—we cannot stress too much—critical. In every group one encounters four possible attitudinal combinations, depending on the student liking for or antipathy toward the target language combined with the level of self-confidence. We can summarize the tendencies in the following table:
Psychological conditions |
I like the target language |
I can speak it |
| Very difficult | ||
| Difficult | ||
| Good | ||
| Very good |
If the teachers puts himself in the place of the student he can anticipate the blockages that may occur. If he in addition remains flexible enough to realize that the needs of the students are more important than his own, he creates, in responding to those needs, whatever the students’ needs or defensive mechanisms, a climate conducive to study, concentration, and emulation. Hence to be effective he has to know himself, following Socrates, but also know the others and modify his own personal style accordingly. The table below summarizes the points needed to avoid de-motivating the student and to be able to, on the contrary, keep the motivating going on a constant basis:
| Needs | Strong Points | Try to Save | Interested | Under Tension |
| Appreciation | Opening | Comfort | Originality | Angry |
| Admission | Admission | Harmony | Relations | Depressed |
| Realization | Authenticity | Time | Benefit | Concerned |
| Security | Reliability | Face | Data | Guilty |
We can also manage student error by knowing student approach. Few students enjoy making what are called “mistakes.” It is not possible to promulgate a concept of perfection in a language without opening up the risk, at any given moment, of committing an error. Rather the teacher uses a strategy that leads the student to make as few errors as possible. He does not dwell on faults, or push learners to do what they cannot accomplish, but rather works with them in promulgating a model before asking that they reproduce it. In a climate of real confidence, learners make fewer errors.
Thanks to the Persona approach, the Dialogue “empowerer” (a better term than “teacher”), uses his flexibility to adapt to all the students’ affective aspects (feelings, motivations, interests, attitudes, values) as much as to the language itself, to each person’s cognitive attitude and different way of using memory, to differing rhythms of teaching.
Regardless of teacher and student style, successful motivation depends on effective lessons support. Because of this, the Dialogue program stresses an individual approach. Many schools promise just this, but Dialogue delivers on the promise, structuring as a matter of course everything around the needs and goals of the student. Lesson thematic subject matter is always relevant to the student’s life, profession, range of interests, and the student ability to apply vocabulary in the real world. In fact, with the goal of motivating through empowering, Dialogue gives the student tasks to accomplish, objectives to attain. This is accomplished, usually, through the following means:
- The instructor finds base material, illustrating concrete points, that directly relate to the student’s objectives. It is not enough here to use material that may be pedagogically adequate, but rather “authentic” themes relating to the life and thoughts of the target country.
- At every point the learner goes through a process of discovering and appropriating the material.
- The student is encouraged to apply his or her new abilities in the language with simulations that are as close as possible to real life situations (theme, content, etc.).
- As much as possible, Dialogue adds expertise in subject matters relevant to student needs and prepares them to interact with native speakers other than their teachers
It is only through task attainment and mission completion that the learner immerses himself in essential grammar and word use patterns. In distinction to many methods that claim the learner cannot learn to negotiate before a certain level, the Dialogue approach teaches the learner to negotiate and conduct vital communications from the first moments of instruction. Dialogue follows the tenet that a person can negotiate at any level of competence; for a beginning to say simply “yes” or “I agree” is certainly equivalent to an intermediate speaker saying the same thing in the form of “I’m thinking the same way as you” or an advanced speaker putting the thought in the form of “I share your point of view”.
With his back against the wall, faced with a task that must be accomplished, the learner will by necessity develop his or her own path to learning.
In putting the student into real-life situations, one stimulates the student, as much as possible, to be motivated; the student’s memory, be it visual, auditory, or kinesthetic, works at optimal strength.
We ought not to forget, however, following D. Thomières, “that spontaneity is learned slowly and through non-spontaneous means.” It is critical to put into place, in a systematized way, automatisms, which we discuss in detail in the section on the linguistic threshold.
A teacher who fails to take into account the cultural differences between himself and the learner risks creating damaging blockages for the student. All of us know there are certain taboo behaviors and subjects for given nationalities. It is not proper, for example, to ask a Chinese to speak about his health. It is not wise to insult an African by pointing out to other that he has not mastered the material he was supposed to study and review. It is also important to realize that for him to express such thoughts is fundamentally contrary to the values he was given by his parents and their tradition. Certainly, if the teaching milieu is one of real confidence, the learner will be less disturbed by these subjects or behaviors, but we know, at the cultural level, that it is best to act in a way that obviates the need to bring up these issues.
