The first talk was from Jill Hadfield, titled ‘Motivating our learners: actualising the vision’. It introduced some practical ideas from the book Motivation (Hadfield & Dornyei, 2013) which aim to help students turn visions of their future L2 self into reality.The second talk was by Jessica Mackay titled ‘The ‘ideal L2 self’: motivating adult EFL learners’. This talk focused more on the impact of visualisation in order to help learners develop into their future L2 selves.

The different L2 selves

Hadfield and Mackay mentioned the importance of thinking about the different possible L2 selves:

• the ideal self (what we’d like to be)
• the ought to self (what others/society expects us to be)
• the default self (how we’d end up with no intervention)
• the feared self (what we worry about becoming if things go wrong).

@jo_sayers & @Marisa_C felt that the focus on discrepancy between current and ideal L2 self is powerful, with @michaelegriffin thinking that a general focus on goals and achievements was a good thing. @kevchanwow highlighted that volition and the agency that the approach afford learners is a powerful tool for learning.

 

Visualisation 

Visualisation was mentioned in both talks, with suggestions as to what type of self the learners could be encouraged to envision: the tourist self, the career self, the citizen self, the community self. By using pictures and by exposing learners to other people’s visions and asking them what they identify with, teachers can make the process of visualisation easier for the students.There were some concerns about whether students (and teachers) have the necessary knowledge/training to be able to lead successful visualisations (@AlexandraKou, @cioccas), and others who thought some learners just wouldn’t be able to come up with a future vision (@TomTesol).  Mackay did mention a few techniques to help students with visualisations (e.g. getting students to breathe with eyes closed for one minute and count breaths, then doing another minute and asking them to take fewer breaths – focuses attention on breathing and sets up the visualisation well). And @AlexandraKou added that this process can be started in class with simple exercises and then continued at home as a writing activity.

The 4 stages of actualising the vision

Hadfield mentioned four stages that aim to help learners see their vision through to achievement:

• Vision to Goals – Breaking the vision into long and short term goals, checking reality, deciding whether it’s a goal for in/out of class etc.
• Goals to Plans – Making a study plan, breaking goals into tasks
• Plans to Strategies – Achievement strategies, realising possible barriers and deciding how to deal with and overcome them (time management, rewards etc.)
• Strategies to Achievement – Making intentions public, making contracts, validating effort

 

@michaelegriffin and @esolcourses thought it important to break the vision down into more specific, personalised goals, with @jo_sayers and @AlexandraKou adding that the checking with reality and constraints was an important step in the process, especially as unrealistic goals generally have a negative impact on motivation.There were questions raised as to whether there was too much of an explicit focus on motivation in this approach (@OUPELTGlobal) and whether we should be doing these things on autopilot (@Marisa_C). However, in order to justify the time spent on visualisation etc, maybe the aim of increased motivation needs to be explicit (@jo_sayers).

Use in class

  

There was some concern over how easy it would be to use the approach in class.

@AlexandraKouk said it would involve a lot of learner training and presupposes a level of student maturity with @jo_sayers adding that there would need to be a degree of self-awareness and a willingness to be motivated on the part of the students. There was also concern over the fact that students have to determine the linguistic content of actualising whatever visions they may have (@Marisa_C, @michaelegriffin).@kevchanwow said that having used this approach (on a smaller scale) in class he found it easy and helpful in getting students to concentrate on task at hand. He also mentioned that it could be used in micro-situations such as ‘how long do you want to speak for without pausing’ before a session on interview skills.

Overlap with existing ideas

Some eltchatters thought that the concept was actually just a misnaming of an ongoing needs analysis (@Marisa_C, @hartle). @jo_sayers thought that the focus on the visualisation of the future made it slightly different, as well as the inclusion of the idea of ‘feared self’ and ‘ought to’ self. With @Michaelegriffin highlighting that there was also a group dynamics element to the approach.

The approach was also thought to overlap with the ‘language coach’ approach (@yearinthelifeof). A few people mentioned that Duncan Foord has done some work in this area; his blog is here.

Age and level of students

The questions was raised as to whether or not this techniques would be suitable for all ages. With @louisealix68 thinking that a different approach was needed for teens and tweens as there would be problems setting their own goals. @AlexandraKou thought it would be difficult to get YLs to stay still long enough to do any meaningful visualisation and @kevchanwow mentioned that young people have very fluid ideas of what their ideal future selves look like. The general consensus was that this technique was more suited to adults and perhaps young adults.
There may also be problems of low level learners struggling to put their visions into words (jo_sayers).

Mackay study findings – Does the approach work?

 

In her talk Mackay showed the results of the studies she had carried out with a group of students in Barcelona. The results showed that the group who had done visualisations increased speaking and reading of English outside class; and while the motivation levels in the control group decreased over the course, those of the intervention group stayed the same.

There was some mistrust of these results due to the variables (louisealix68) and due to the nature of the study possibly leading students to answer in a way that helps the researcher (their teacher) find what they are looking for (Marisa_C). There was also mention of the phenomenon that the act of being observed and researched is in itself motivating (@yearinthelifeof).

Conclusion

The general thoughts from the chat seemed to be that the approach highlighted some useful ideas and that the focus on future selves would be motivating. The main concerns were that it may take up a lot of class time, may well not be for everyone and may in fact be an existing idea with a new name!

Further Reading:

• @kevchanwow’s post on Jill Hadfield talk
• Two posts from @yearinthelifeof’s on motivation here and here
• Duncan Foord’s blog

Let me know if I’ve missed anything out, I’ll add it in!