Herbert Puchta

Colombia September 2004

If you can teach teenagers, you can teach anyone!
Motivating adolescent students
It was Michael Swan who said that language is teaching. We certainly could not
disagree with that. It is and has to be the first and foremost objective of our profession
to ensure that our students get up-to-date and high quality professional language
training that helps them to achieve good language proficiency.
As teachers of teenage students, however, some of us may occasionally feel that
they dont quite get to the point of teaching language properly. As a teacher in on of
my workshops in another country put it My students couldnt care less theyre just
too busy growing up! And anyone who has ever taught teenagers will possibly agree
that teaching teenagers is, shall we say, quite a challenge! So we probably also
agree with Michael Grinder who says that if you can teach teenagers, you can teach
anyone! Or, as a teacher recently put it: Theyre angels when you first meet them,
and then they gradually turn into MONSTERS!
For us, as professional language teachers and educationalists, the question is Why?
The answer is certainly not that they hate their teachers. Quite the contrary: they
often quite like their teachers, but of course they cannot show that. They have to be
indifferent. They have to act cool. They cant or dont want to show their feelings.
Theyre so busy growing up that they are often not even aware of the social
implications of their behaviour and it is often behaviour, or rather lack of it, that we
are talking about when we complain about the difficulty of teaching teenage students.
In this paper, I am going to discuss the issue of teenage behaviour, but I shall go
beyond the mere behavioural aspects of the challenges we face and look at some of
the powerful forces behind that behaviour. Earl Stevick claims that success depends
less on materials, techniques and linguistic analyses, and more on what goes on
inside and between the people in the classroom (1980: 4). This implies that there is a
wide range of factors that influence the outcomes of the teaching / learning process.
Whereas Stevick does not maintain that materials and the skills and techniques that
teacher training generally tends to focus on are insignificant, he stresses the even
greater importance of less obvious processes in language learning. As we will see,
these less obvious processes play a vital role especially in the teenage, classroom.
In this paper, it is these less obvious processes that I am mainly going to look at. I will
stress the focal role that the development of the students sense of self, or identity,
has on their learning outcomes because of its determination of their motivation and
the way it influences their self esteem, together with their positive and negative
beliefs about themselves and their learning capabilities.
As mentioned earlier, the key problems in teenage classrooms are most often
noticeable in the form of behavioural symptoms. Students show lack of interest,
indifference, provocative and / or disruptive behaviour, they try to ridicule their
classmates or their teachers; they are sometimes at least verbally aggressive
towards their peers or their teachers, especially but not only in inner city schools.
They show a limited concentration span, refuse to do their homework, forget to learn
for test you name it!
Obviously, it is these behavioural symptoms that frequently hinder us from doing our
real job, that is teaching language properly. But we also know that telling them to stop
their behaviour is not enough. Its a negative imperative, and psychologists
convincingly tell us these are a tricky tool to use in behaviour modification. In many
teenage classrooms, they have the same powerful effect that I would achieve if I told
you Dont think of a red apple now! It doesnt work. If you say to a teenage group
Dont do that, all they hear is Do that! We know that, in adolescence, quite a few
boys and girls show polarity responses to such teacher intervention. They hear what
you say, and do the opposite! Well come back to some of the reasons for this
phenomenon later.
In order to understand more about teenage behaviour, we need to consider the
complexity of human thinking from a systemic point of view. Following on from the
work of the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, Robert Dilts developed a model that
specifies the different levels of influences on the human thinking process and shows
how these different levels organically influence one another.
Dilts claims that human thinking is organized on five different logical levels. The basic
level of influence on an individuals thinking is his or her environment.
What are the factors that can be regarded as environment in the foreign-language
class? Examples include the seating arrangement, the size of the classroom, the
number of students, the availability and quality of technical equipment, the teaching
materials, the structure of the timetable, and so on and so forth.
These are all important factors, although some may be more influential than others.
The teacher and the students (inter)act in that classroom environment through their
behaviour. Behaviour, in this case, does not mean only disciplinary behaviour,
although any teacher of teenage students will certainly agree that this is an important
element that does have a serious impact on learning outcomes. Behaviour implies
more it implies everything that the teacher and students do in the foreign language
class. It also implies all the teaching and learning routines: We know that they are
important. Does it, for example, take you ten minutes every lesson to collect the
homework books from your laid back and reluctant students, or have you established
a routine by which the students put their homework books on your desk at the
beginning of the lesson without you having to beg for it every time? Well established
behavioural routines that are accepted by students do make a difference!
The students behaviour is, to a certain degree, influenced by their capabilities, their
mental maps. A student who has efficient learning strategies will learn better and
faster than a student who lacks them. Students who have learnt to accept and
understand that people do not only act in different ways, but also think in different
ways, that it is absolutely normal for humans to have individual strengths and
weaknesses in their learning capacities, that people are intelligent in different ways,
are less likely to give up when they come to impasses in their learning. Once they
have learnt to appreciate where their own cognitive strengths lie and how they can
draw on them in the best possible ways and where their potential weaknesses lie and
what they can do to improve in those areas, they are far less likely to develop
negative beliefs about their capabilities or their identity.
I am referring to beliefs here, because as we can see, the students capabilities are
organized by their belief systems. Beliefs are on the same psychological level as
motivation, and that is why they are so powerful. Have you ever tried to successfully
teach a class of students who were completely de-motivates? Its not impossible, but
its hard work! We have to start working on their beliefs first, and respectfully try to
influence them so that the might become ready to change their beliefs, before we can
even start thinking of doing our job as language teachers properly. And that might
take a long time or we might even fail! Beliefs are strong perceptual filters. They
serve as explanations for what has happened and they give us a basis for future
behaviour. This is why sports professionals, for example, regularly work on the
development of positive beliefs. Picture the state of concentration of professional
skiers before the start of a run. They engage in meditative mental routines,
visualization techniques and positive affirmation exercises aimed at releasing as
much of their resources as possible.
The effect of learner beliefs on learning outcomes, often materializing in negative or
positive self-talk, has been discussed in various studies, for example by Seligman
(1991), Oxford & Shearin (1994), Ehrmann (1996), and, most recently, Arnold (1999).
The latter stresses the impact that such negative belief patterns exert, without
students (and teachers I may add) being aware of the power that such beliefs
commonly have. Many learners, especially low-achievers, have been strongly
affected by years of negative self-talk, much of it on a semi-unconscious level.
(1999:17).
What is important for us is the question of how beliefs are formed and maintained.
Beliefs have an important function because they serve as our guiding principles. They
are generalizations about cause and effect, and they influence our inner
representation of the world around us. They help us to make sense of that world, and
they determine how we think and how we act. There are certain beliefs that have a
high level of testability and stability. These are beliefs about the physical world. They
are based on laws of nature. We do not need to find out every day anew that we need
to look right and left (or left and right) before we cross a road, for example. Beliefs like
that are learned at a very early age, and we can trust them and rely on them.
However, there are other beliefs about identity or capability, where the evidence we
use in order to form them can be much less reliable. And yet, once we have formed
such beliefs, we take them as reality.
When we believe something, we act as if it is true. And this makes it difficult to
disprove. Beliefs are strong perceptual filters of reality. They make us interpret events
from the perspective of the belief, and exceptions are interpreted as evidence and
further confirmation of the belief. In contrast to the conclusions we draw about the
laws of nature, however, many limiting beliefs are not based on reality. How then are
they formed? Primarily through the modeling of significant others, especially when we
are young, and through conclusions we draw from repetitive experiences.
According to OConnor and Seymour,
The expectations of the significant people around us instill beliefs.
High expectations (provided they are realistic) build competence.
Low expectations instill incompetence. We believe what we are told
About ourselves when we are young because we have no way of testing,
and these beliefs may persist unmodified by our later achievements. (1990:
93).
It was as early as 1966 that Rosenthal and Jacobson stressed the significant
influence that the teachers expectations have on the results of their students
learning. Although their work was initially criticized for major research design flaws, a
vast number of articles, documents and dissertations published since about the
phenomenon of the so-called self-fulfilling prophecy have shown beyond any doubt
that, as Babad put it, expectancy bias is an undisputed phenomenon (1985: 75). An
excellent overview of such studies can be found in the recent book Self-fulfilling
Prophecy by Tauber (1997).
Tauber (1997: 17-31) also gives an overview of various studies into how the patterns
of self-fulfilling prophecies manifest themselves. Teachers have certain belief
systems, and these belief systems influence their expectations. If a teacher is to
teach a class that she has strong and positive beliefs about, her expectations will be
different from those she will have for a class that she does no think very highly of.
The next step in the pattern is that we do not leave our expectations in the staffroom.
We take them with us into the classroom, just as we take with us the teaching
materials that we need. And we communicate our expectations to our learners. Some
of this communication is done verbally, but most of it works on an unconscious or
semi-conscious level, because it is carried out in non-verbal ways. This
communication is done verbally, but most of it works on an unconscious or
semi-conscious level, because it is carried out in non-verbal ways. This
communication in turn evokes certain behavior on the students side. If this process is
repeated, over time what we get is that the students actual behavior comes close to
what we initially expected. If we look at how expectations are communicated to
students at the micro level, various studies show the following pattern of interaction
between teachers and so-called lows (students of whom we expect little), on the one
hand, and Highs (students of whom we have a high level of expectation), on the
other:
We tend to smile more often and have more eye contact when we interact with
Highs than with Lows.
Lows get less time to answer a question, whereas we tend to give Highs more
time to think. While we wait for an answer, we tend to send out non-verbal
signals to the Highs that are perceived as supportive for example, we nod
our head or smile. Lows often do not get any non-verbal communication in this
phase at all, or they get signals that can be interpreted to mean that the
teacher is impatient or is skeptical that the student can provide a good answer.
When a High gives a wrong answer, the teacher tends to reframe it. For
example, Thats an interesting answer. Its not quite correct, but Or the
teacher repeats the question, and gives hints that enable the student to
self-correct the answer. Or the teacher asks another question. When Lows
give wrong answers, they more frequently get negative feedback from the
teacher, often followed by a reprimand.
When Lows give a correct answer, teachers frequently do not react at all. They
call upon the next student without giving the learner previously called upon any
feedback at all.
Lows generally get less challenging tasks. It often seems we have given up on
them. Interestingly, Highs not only get the more challenging tasks, they also
seem to get more support from the teachers in solving them.
Let us return to the concept of logical level for a moment. Dilts stresses that the
model is a hierarchical system. The higher the logical level that we operate on, the
more influential it becomes on the outcome of a thinking process or an act of
communication. Change on a lower level might influence a higher one, but change on
a higher level will always have some effect also on the levels below. Somebody might
study under very poor environmental conditions and might not have very effective
behavioral and mental strategies. Such a person might still be successful in achieving
the planned outcome as long as they have strong and supportive beliefs that they can
be successful and an identity that is in line with the outcome they want to achieve.
This person will probably also gradually develop proper behavioral procedures and
find the proper mental strategies to help to achieve the aim.
The argument can also be turned on its head: students in the most comfortable
classroom with the most modern equipment will nevertheless remain unsuccessful if
their level of motivation is low or if they identify themselves as poor foreign-language
learners. This will be the case in spite of attempts by the teacher to teach them
efficient behavioral routines and learning strategies.
According to a dictum of Albert Einstein, one can never solve a problem on the same
level as that on which it occurs. This is another reason why, as teachers of teenage
learners, for example, we are often confronted with the fact that if a student
misbehaves, it does not help at all to try to tell him or her to stop the behavior. We
need to consider that what lies behind disruptive behavior is frequently conflict at the
level of belief / motivation or, even more strongly, issues of identity. Telling a
teenager to stop behavior that we find disruptive is about as effective as advising
someone who wants to give up smoking not to put cigarettes into their mouth any
more. For many people, giving up smoking is difficult not because of the behavior that
they engage in itself, but as a consequence of that behavior being a part of who they
perceive themselves to be their identity or alternatively of limiting beliefs that
make it seem to them impossible to be able to stop the behavior they want to be rid
of.
What we have here is a confusion of logical levels something that also frequently
occurs as a consequence of insensitive error correction in the classroom. When we
correct a students error, the student may interpret our feedback as a negative signal
about his or her capabilities or identity. Over time and through repeated similar
negative experiences, the student develops a higher-level limiting belief and this
pattern can then have detrimental effects on his or her learning outcomes. As
OConnor and Seymour put it.
Behavior is often taken as evidence of identity or capability, and this is how
confidence and competence are destroyed in a classroom. Getting a sum wrong does
not mean you are stupid or that you are poor at Math. To think this is to confuse
logical levels, equivalent to thinking that a No Smoking sign in a cinema applies to the
characters in the film. (1990: 90).
Thus, both up-to-date educational theory and classroom experience support the idea
that many of the problems teachers of teenage learners face problems that
manifest themselves in the form of difficult behavior are in fact caused and
influenced by problems on higher-order thinking levels in the sense of the
Dilts-Bateson model: a lot of the behavioral and motivational problems come from
belief issues, are influenced by students negative beliefs about themselves, and
have to do with doubts as to their sense of self and the serious identity crisis that
many of them go through.
Here is a quotation I found on the Internet, on a counseling websites for teenagers.
When we look at them, we notice something amazing. In spite of the image we often
get of teenagers being with their peers all the time, writing a hundred text messages a
day, being on the phone for hours and all that, many of the problems they air if they
talk about them at all, that is are about feeling lonely. Let us look at this quotation
from that teenage website.
What makes you feel lonely/depressed?
I feel lonely when Im ignored, and then some days I just feel down in the dumps. also,
when everything keeps building up and I cant do anything about it.
What images do you associate with loneliness/depression?
Its all about aloneness, my inability to say anything about it, and who would miss me
if I were to die, also, ways i could make myself feel better, though i know ill never try
them. Im the kind to keep everything to myself
How do you feel there could be a better awareness and support for teenage
problems?
I think if teens were to talk it more, more ppl wd know. That simple. I believe that and
yet I cant bring myself to talk about it to anyone, so it probably isnt a good idea.
i dnt tlk abt it unless sum1 asks me n even then Im selective abt wot I say coz I know
ppl r quick 2 judge n it all amounts to my trust in pplma mates know I find it hard 2
trust ppl easily n i guess its true.
The next piece of text comes from an EFL classroom. It was written by a
fourteen-year-old pre-intermediate student in a free poetry-writing session. I think I
should say that the teacher did not just go into this class and say Alright. Today you
are going to write a poem. He had worked a lot on the rapport between students and
on a positive classroom culture, and there was obviously a very high level of trust.
Here is the poem:
MYSELF
I am poor.
I have no friends,
No love!
Who could help me?
That I am not be alone?
Happiness is far away!
In all my dreams
I look for love,
But I dont find!
Why just am I alone?
If I think about this,
Some tears run down my face!
Would you be my friend?
I need you!
Then Im going to be happy
and I have not reason to weep!
You need love,
all members need love.
I would be quiet,
If you tell me something
and I wouldnt disturb you!
Please be my friend
I need you!
The teacher then asked the students to put their poems in envelopes. These were
kept in a safe place in the class, and at the beginning of the next lesson, the
envelopes which hadnt been signed or anything were handed out at random, so
that each student got a text written by someone else. The teacher asked the students
to read the texts and react by writing a letter to the person who had written the poem.
This was later followed by another round of reading and then a whole class discuss.
Here is the letter that the girl who had written the poem quoted earlier got:
Dear Monika,
I think your text is very expressive. Your text gives me not a good feeling. I
know you have a big problem and sometimes I have this problem too. I think
you need not weep. I think you have enough friends. You are a lovely girl and I
like you very much.
Gabi
Obviously what both texts, and also the letter to a certain extent, have in common is
this notion of loneliness that many teenagers seem to experience in spite of being
surrounded with friends all the time. For us this may be surprising, so we might want
to find out where this loneliness comes from.
An interesting educational theory by Kieran Egan claims that when children become
adolescents, they go through a phase that he calls the romantic period. It has got a
beautiful name, but it is not always a beautiful phase in ones life, as some of us may
well remember.
The romantic period roughly starts at age 9/10, and lasts until students are about
15/16, or even much later. In fact Kieran Egan stresses that some people never grow
out of their romantic thinking. It depends on their education whether they can
overcome the limitations of this period and go into what Kieran Egan calls the
philosophic layer at all.
What are the key features of the romantic phase? First and foremost it is the age
when adolescents confront the task of developing a sense of their distinct identity.
They begin to ask themselves who they are, and who they are going to be. They ask
themselves serious and existentially threatening questions that they cannot find
answers to: Who am I? Who am I going to be? Will I be successful in life? Will I be
able to go to university? Will I have a job when I grow up? Will I fail? Will I be able to
survive? Will I have a partner? Will I stay alone forever? Will I have a family? When
am I going to die? When are my parents going to?
All these and other questions amount to a lot of insecurity, and lead to a feeling of
being threatened by the world. Consequently, they feel overwhelming emotions. But
they are afraid of other peoples reactions should they show those emotions, so they
repress them. They defend themselves against them through extreme outward
conformity. This outward conformity manifests itself in styles: the same style of
clothes, the same style of music they like, the same kind of behavior anything that
makes them part of a group and distracts themselves and the people they are with
from the fact that they are individuals. For us as linguists, there are some especially
interesting aspects of how teens express themselves. Language is of course another
way of belonging to a group.
As James Banner has observed, some speech patterns that are real cool and young
include:
1) The frequent and varied use of so as a intensifying adverb (especially in
a negative context):
Its so uncool!
I am so not looking forward to Christmas!
I heard a young girl complaining about Penelope Cruz getting off with
(starting a relationship with, starting dating) Tom Cruise She is so not good
enough for him!
This can also be use ironically: I am so looking forward to Christmas, I dont
think!
2) Question formation, usually ending in that, as intensifiers:
He still lives at home with his parents. How sad is that?! (meaning: How pitiful!
How inadequate!)
How means is that?!
How cool is that?!
How dumb is that?!
3) The use of like to introduce speech or as signposting rather than as a
comparative:
He is so, like, uncool.
I was, like, wow, man, thats cool.
My teacher was, like, no, you cant do that.
He said, like, thats real sweet, (cool)
Everybody was having, like, such a wicked time. (a good time)
4) Ironic contradictory statements:
I am so looking forward to Christmas I dont think!
You look so cool in those straights I dont think! (straight jeans are out, flares
are back!)
That is such a good idea not!
5) Question forms expressing irony or exaggerated incredulity in a very
affected manner if someone says something you dont like or dont
agree with:
Parent: Isnt it your turn to do the dishes?
Child: Like, Excuse me???!!!!
As we have said, cool speak is another way of being a member of a peer community.
It is as we have stressed a means of distracting attention from ones own
insecurity. Its a way of making ones own feeble position stronger through the
bonding with a group. Needless to say, adolescents hate nothing more than parents
or teacher trying to imitate this style. That is seen as real cool not!
This, I believe, is the right moment to talk about the choice of content in language
teaching. Adolescents dont want to have to deal with themselves because that
would confront them with their insecurities and their worrying emotions. This is, by the
way, also the reason why attempts by teachers to make the teenagers themselves
the topic of a lesson will often fail unless they have already managed to establish a
high level of rapport and trust, as in the example of the class where the poem that I
quoted earlier was from.
So we have these young people who feel existentially threatened, often rather
insecure, dont want to stick out from their peer group, and who therefore will be
interested in anything that is far away from their own world. That is why they are
fascinated with extremes and realistic details. The more different from their own
experience, the better. It is the Guinness Book of Records age those bizarre, mad
and strange records are interesting for the adolescent because dealing with them
helps to forget about ones own rather threatening reality.
Another and very crucial aspect of content that adolescents are interested in has to
do with idols. Teenagers need heroes and heroines who they can identify with, who
embody the qualities necessary to succeed in a threatening world, such as courage,
nobility, genius, energy, creativity, love, tolerance, etc. Eminem, Inspiral Carpets,
Britney Spears, System of the Down (the best Metal band of 2003) and all those idols
are adored not only because of their music (and in some cases in spite of their music,
one might add), but because from a psychological point of view they serve as
projection screens. Adolescents project onto them all those qualities that they feel are
needed in order to succeed and survive in this threatening world: qualities, as I have
just mentioned, like courage, genius, love, tolerance etc. These stars may or may not
have the qualities ascribed to them but there is a huge industry doing everything to
support a belief among adolescents that they do!
Hence, also the term romantic understanding of the world. It is the romantic period in
our students lives that poses the biggest challenges for us, and and we must never
forget this for themselves! It is a period where they are inevitably heading for
trouble.
In this period they will find themselves draw to people who they are sure their parents
would not like, and using language and opinions that are at odd with theirs. They will
meet the opportunities to smoke, drink, take drugs and have sex and will have to
decide what to do, knowing that they can no longer please all of the people all of the
time. Whatever they do, someone, if they knew, would disapprove. No wonder that
they are drawn towards secrecy and tempted to lie, or that adolescence is a time of
inner fantasy and play.
(Guy Claxton, Live and Learn, p. 208)
Gradually, as adolescents grow out of the romantic period and move towards a more
philosophic understanding of the world, they begin to understand themselves as a
part of greater systems. Their attention turns away from individual pieces of detailed
information that are barely connected with one another. They become interested in
the general schemes that give control and order to the encyclopedic accumulation of
fact and detail from the romantic layer.
One result of this realization is that we reorient intellectual orientation somewhat, and
direct it energetically to these general, or philosophic schemes. We can see an index
of this reorientation in the relatively sudden appearance in students
vocabularies and in their intellectual engagements, of such very general concepts as
society, culture, evolution, human nature and so on. Politics, economics,
anthropology, psychology, at least in terms of their most general questions, become
areas of quickened interests.
(Kieran Egan, Romantic Understanding. P. 177)
I am coming back now to the initial claim that, if you can teach teenagers, you can
teach anyone. It implies that it is possible to teach teenagers successfully, doesnt it,
and many of us know that. Many of us, I am sure, have experienced how regarding it
can be to teach this difficult age group. It does not always work, however, and by
definition it cannot always work, given the difficult phases our students are going
through.
I would like to finish this talk by making two suggestions. The first one is not new, but
forms the basis of any successful classroom culture. The second one is a
consequence of findings related to romantic understanding in order to maximize on
our teaching.
1. Firstly, I would like to stress the need to establish a classroom culture of
rapport and mutual trust.
This is certainly not a new demand, but one that I believe awaits implementation in
many teenage classrooms. And that is small wonder, given the fact that teachers are
often under enormous pressure in dealing adequately with the challenges they are
faced with. When the students are accepted not only as learners but also as
individuals, and when the classroom culture is one that allows for the strengthening of
the students self-esteem and confidence, there is less danger of confusion of logical
levels. Then errors are more likely to be seen as what they are, signs of learning, and
not messages about ones capabilities or ones identity. Rinvolucri stresses the
specific role that the teacher has in such a classroom culture:
The teacher will be the sort of person who is aware she is teaching forty individuals,
not a mass. She is likely to be a good observer and a good, empathetic listener. If the
humanistic exercise is to be relevant and adequate to the task of offering students a
new experience of themselves, then the teachers attitude must be positive, her
interpersonal skills good, and her training adequate. (1999: 198).
2. Secondly, I would suggest considering the key concepts of romantic
understanding when choosing the content and determining the organization of your
students learning.
When we choose content, we need to keep in mind that romantic learners:
- seek out the limits of the real world, looking for binary opposites within which
reality exists. Thus, they are fascinated with extremes.
- are fascinated by realistic details the more different from their own world, the
better.
- prefer stories and story forms that incorporate realistic detail, and heroes and
heroines with whom they can identify, who embody the qualities necessary to
succeed in a threatening world.
When we decide on the organization of our students learning, we need to keep in
mind that
- learning can be successfully organized by starting with something far away
from the students experience, but connected to them by some transcendent
quality with which they can associate.
All this is especially important for the choice of text. Adolescents do not always and
only and mainly want to read about Eminem, Inspiral Carpets, Brittney Spears, and
System of the Down in their English lessons. Such an approach might soon become
pretty boring, and might be interpreted as a weak attempt by the teacher to make
himself or herself popular. The approach could fail, and we might thus achieve the
opposite reaction to what we want to achieve. They do want to explore texts that have
the qualities of depth in Earl Stevicks sense as mentioned earlier.
I would like to finish with a quotation from Diana Whitmore, who I believe emphasizes
perfectly once again the need to take teenage identity seriously.
It is not what we do with our students; it is who we are. No great teaching method will
be enough if we ourselves are not at home. We are all students and learners;
educators can educate only if they are willing to put themselves into question as well.
The answer does not lie in better classrooms, more equipment, new tools and
methods although these things may help. It lies in YOU!
(Diana Whitmore)
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