Person-oriented approach to foreign language teaching.

Plan:

1. Person-oriented approach to foreign language teaching.

2. The measurement of personality.

Those who have been active of late in measuring intelligence have made great progress in the development of measuring scales but very slight progress in the actual definition of intelligence. In dealing with the elusive term " Personality" we may well expect still less satisfactory clarity of definition, no matter what success we have in its measurement. In the measurement of intelligence we have at least the advantage of scales of performance in various mental functions standardized into age or point scale groups. We have, in other words, a means of comparing an individual with his fellows in certain abilities, even though we may not be so bold as to term those abilities intelligence. We may seek, more­over, for a person's mental level in his relative success of adjustment, ei­ther to the problems of the school curriculum or to the general problems of life. In this manner a quantitative statement of at least a hypotheti­cal intelligence may be obtained.

The measurement of personality, however, embraces none of these advantages. Individual differences are so great and personal traits so vaguely related to the solution of problems that the notion of an age scale in personality has no significance. Moreover, personalities of di­vers sorts succeed equally well in the general adaptation to situations of practical life. It may be added that differences of personality are of a qualitative rather than a quantitative sort. These difficulties stand in the way of the development of a personality measurement based, on the correlation between tests and familiar objective criteria such as those of intelligence. We must strive toward a descriptive treatment rather than quantitative. Our aim is personality study and description rather than personality testing.

Since, however, description itself demands a definite point of view, and a definite appraisal of elements, it is necessary to seek some criterion of these elements - some means of stating as objectively as possible the personality as an entity apart from the tool of analysis which we employ. The true criterion of personality is without doubt to be found in the field of social interaction. We are incapable of giving a complete popular description of personality without indicating the manner in which the personality in question stimulates or influences other human beings and the manner in which the behavior of other human beings produces ad­justments or responses in the personality in question. In describing this personality we inevitably take the view-point of those " other human be­ings." Robinson Crusoe, alone on a desert island, undoubtedly displayed a very measurable degree of intelligence in his adaptation to his envi­ronment. It was only with the advent of Friday, however, that his per­sonality could be said to stand forth in its full significance. Not only is the language of personality a social one, but, the problems arising from the interaction of various personalities are in the truest sense social problems. They include every form of social maladjustment - from the whims of the eccentric to the worst deeds of the criminal. In general it may be said that the aim of personality measurements is the establishing of adjustments between an individual and his fellows which are a benefit to both.

If the way in which the self is perceived has as close and significant a relationship to behavior as has been suggested, then the manner in which this perception may be altered becomes a question of importance. If a reorganization of self-perceptions brings a change in behavior; if ad­justment and maladjustment depend on the congruence between per­ceptions as experienced and the self as perceived, then the factors which permit a reorganization of the perception of self are significant.

Our observations of psychotherapeutic experience would seem to indicate that absence of any threat to the self-concept is an important item in the problem. Normally the self resists incorporating into itself those experiences which are inconsistent with the functioning of self. But a point overlooked by Lecky and others is that when the self is free from any threat of attack or likelihood of attack, then it is possible for the self to consider these hitherto rejected perceptions, to make new differentiations, and to reintegrate the self in such a way as to include them.

An illustration from the case of Miss Vib may serve to clarify this point. In her statement written six weeks after the conclusion of counseling Miss Vib thus describes the way in which unacceptable percepts become incorporated into the self. She writes:

In the earlier interviews I kept saying such things as, " I am not acting like myself, " " I never acted this way before." What I meant was that this withdrawn, untidy, and apathetic person was not myself. Then I began to realize that I was the same person, seriously withdrawn, etc. now, as I had been before. That did not happen until after I had talked out my self-rejection, shame, despair, and doubt, in the accepting situation of the interview. The counselor was not startled or shocked. I was telling him of all these things about myself which did not fit into my picture of a graduate student, a teacher, a sound person. He responded with complete acceptance and warm interest without heavy emotional overtones. Here was a sane, intelligent person wholeheartedly accepting this behavior that seemed so shameful to me. I can remember an organic feeling of relaxation. I did not have to keep up the struggle to cover up and hide this shameful person.

Note how clearly one can see here the whole range of denied percep­tions of self, and the fact that they could be considered as a part of self only in a social situation which involved no threat to the self, in which another person, the counselor, becomes almost an alternate self and looks with understanding and acceptance upon these same perceptions. She continues:

Retrospectively, it seems to me that what I felt as " warm acceptance without emotional overtones" was what I needed to work through my difficulties.... The counselor's impersonality with interest allowed me to talk out my feelings. The clarification in the interview situation presented the attitude to me as a " ding an sich" which I could look at, manipulate, and put in place. In organizing my attitudes, I was beginning to organize me.

Here the nature of the exploration of experience, of seeing it as expe­rience and not as a threat to self, enables the client to reorganize her perceptions of self, which as she says was also " reorganizing me."

If we attempt to describe in more conventional psychological terms the nature of the process which culminates in an altered organization and integration of self in the process of therapy it might run as follows. The individual is continually endeavoring to meet his needs by reacting to the field of experience as he perceives it, and to do that more efficiently by differentiating elements of the field and reintegrating them into new patterns. Reorganization of the field may involve the reorgani­zation of the self as well as of other parts of the field. The self, however, resists reorganization and change. In everyday life individual adjustment by means of reorganization of the field exclusive of the self is more common and is less threatening to the individual. Consequently, the individual's first mode of adjustment is the reorganization of that part of the field which does not include the self.

Client-centered therapy is different from other life situation inasmuch as the therapist tends to remove from the individual's m world all those aspects of the field which the individual can reorganize except the self. The therapist, by reacting to the client's feelings and attitudes rather than to the objects of his feelings and attitudes, as: client in bringing from background into focus his own self, making it easier than ever before for the client to perceive and react to the self. By offering only understanding and no trace of evaluation, the therapist removes himself as an object of attitudes, becoming only an alternate pression of the client's self. The therapist by providing a consistent atmosphere of permissiveness and understanding removes whatever threat existed to prevent all perceptions of the self from emerging into figure. Hence in this situation all the ways in which the self has been ex­perienced can be viewed openly, and organized into a complex unity.

It is then this complete absence of any factor which would attack the concept of self, and second, the assistance in focusing upon the percep­tion of self, which seems to permit a more differentiated view of self and finally the reorganization of self.

Control questions:

1. What’s Person-oriented approach to foreign language teaching?

2. What’s the measurement of personality?

Recommended literature:

1. Педагогическая психология. И.А.Зимняя, М., 1997

2. Психологические основы формирования личности в педагогическом коллективе. А.Коссаковски, М., 1961

3. Психологический справочник учителя. Л.М.Фридман, 1991