Psychology for Language Teachers: a Social Constructivist Approach [antikvár]

IntroductionWhy a book on psychology for language teachers?This book is the result of several years of collaboration between two colleagues from very different professional backgrounds; one of us comes from the field of applied linguistics while the other is an educational psychologist. Several years ago we began to explore, somewhat tentatively, a number of different areas of educational psychology and to consider the possible implications of these for language teachers. The initial results of this work generated for us a tremendous feeling of excitement and we began to realise its potential value to teachers of foreign languages. Out of this preliminary exploration grew an increasing number of lectures, seminars and conference papers as we tried out our ideas with professionals in different parts of the world.To our surprise, the sense of discovery that this work had generated grew. The more we worked together with different groups of teachers around the world, the more our ideas took on new shapes and new meanings. After a while we found that we had aroused the interest of an increasing audience, many of whom encouraged us to put down our developing ideas in the form of a book.Spurred on by the interest and encouragement of the teachers with whom we worked in various teaching contexts, we began to commit our ideas to paper. Thus this book was conceived, heralding the beginning of a lengthy process of incubation which was at times stormy, but always professionally stimulating and increasingly exciting.As we wrote, our ideas continued to be reshaped, so that at the end of each chapter we felt the need to return to the previously completed chapters to revise and renew what we had written. This we have come to see as entirely appropriate, because it is an illustration in practice of exactly what we are writing about, the process of construction and reconstruction of meaning.The literature on language teaching provides comprehensive accounts of different language teaching methodologies and is rich with ideas and techniques for teaching a language. However, what has become increasingly clear to us is the fundamental importance to teachers of an understanding of