Bryan Meadows

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch04 

ABSTRACT

Foreign language classrooms are places where students can develop language knowledge (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation) and communicative skills with a goal to participate in language communities of the language being studied. But what if that wasn’t everything that students could gain from a language classroom? When we, as language educators, integrate humanistic principles into our teaching, we create spaces where our students feel encouraged to explore who they are and who they will be. In this chapter, you will learn about core humanistic principles and their applications in the field of English language teaching. You will also be invited to consider the added benefit that humanism can provide to your language students. 

Keywords: humanism, humanistic teaching, language communities, communicative skills

How to cite this chapter: 

Meadows, B. (2023). Humanism in English Language Teaching. In V. Canese & S. Spezzini (Eds.), Teaching English in Global Contexts, Language, Learners and Learning (pp. 69-76). Editorial Facultad de Filosofía, UNA. https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch04

INTRODUCTION

A language classroom is focused on human communication, and this makes it unique from other school subjects such as mathematics or history. For example, in their English classes, students develop new skills for participating in English language communities. Effective methods for English language teaching (ELT) involve people talking with other people, such as through dialogues and roleplay activities. Measures of success in the language classroom (e.g., exams and performance tasks) are often situated in imagined scenarios of one-to-one communication. This focus on human communication embodies unique potential for students’ personal development such as opportunities to develop who they are and who they will be. This is the humanistic side of language teaching. By approaching your language teaching through this humanistic lens, you can capitalize on the inherent focus of human connection. In this chapter, you will learn about why humanism is a welcome presence in the ELT classroom. You will also learn specific things that you can do to make your future classroom more humanistic.

Background

The philosophy of humanism is anchored in western philosophy. The Greek philosophers of humanism took the fundamental premise that each individual human being has inherent goodness (McNeil, 2015). In the 20th century, education psychologists in the United States explored ways to apply humanism to classrooms. They formalized several principles for humanistic education: 

• Humans are inherently good. 

• Humans possess free will. 

• Humans carry a responsibility to one other. 

• Self-concept and growth are central to the human experience. 

Inspired by these humanistic connections, language education scholars in the United States adopted these principles for language classrooms in the 1970s and 1980s. Moskowitz (1978) explained that the foreign language classroom was the ideal place to explore the interests of humanism such as self-identity, self-worth, and self-efficacy. In Moskowtiz’s view, the foreign language classroom is all about people connecting with people. As teachers and students, we often utilize the foreign language classroom as a space where we can express ourselves, learn about one another, and connect with new places and communities. 

At about that same time, Stevick (1980) noted that language students are uniquely positioned to benefit from humanistic classrooms. This is because learning a new language is a direct assault on one’s ego and self-confidence. Consider your own experience as a language student. You may have felt a loss of agency when unable to express what you wanted or needed to say. This can feel particularly challenging when expressing yourself was such a simple task in your home language environment just minutes before entering the foreign language classroom. As Stevick explained, this can lead to negative thoughts that weigh on one’s sense of self-efficacy and self-worth. Thus, the principles of humanism can guide students to confront critical self-talk and experience the language classroom not as a challenge to their self-concept but a chance for personal growth. 

These ideas gave rise to three humanistic-based ELT methods: Community Language Teaching, The Silent Way, and Desuggestopedia (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2011). Because of not adapting easily to language classrooms in academic settings, these methods had lost popularity by the 1990s. However, although these three methods might have lost ground, strong evidence exists for re-visiting humanistic pedagogy and for reconsidering how humanism can contribute to language classrooms. With that goal in mind, this chapter invites you, as a future English teacher, to embrace humanistic pedagogy in the 21st century.

MAJOR DIMENSIONS

When based on humanistic pedagogy, ELT classrooms foster and promote affect, social relationships, self-directed learning, and self-actualization.

Affect

Affect refers to feelings and emotions. In a humanistic approach to language teaching, affective learning targets are positioned alongside conventional linguistic and cognitive learning targets. When teaching through a humanistic approach, integrate affective learning into your primary curriculum design. Here is an example of combining affective and linguistic targets: Participate in increasingly longer conversations in the target language while using self-relaxation strategies to reduce anxiety. Once learning targets are in place, establish classroom instructional time to prepare students for success in reaching these targets. For example, as part of your lesson, help students identify their anxiety levels. Next, guide them through recognized techniques for self-regulating anxiety. Finally, prompt them to use techniques of identification and self-regulation when using the new language. 

Social Relationships

As described above, language classrooms are ideal places to exercise social relationships because human communication is at the center of classroom activity. In your humanistic classroom, integrate opportunities for students to communicate with one another about who they are and who they wish to be. Weave this into routine language practice exercises. Imagine, for example, that students are learning occupational terms in the new language. To add a humanistic element to this exercise, ask students to share which professions intrigue them and why. In this kind of personal sharing, students can form a greater sense of shared community and connection with one another. 

Self-Directed Learning

In a humanistic classroom, students participate in opportunities that guide their path for learning a new language. This is based on the belief that students will grow intellectually when they are exploring answers to questions that matter most to them. This also stems from a belief that each person is the individual ultimately responsible for their own learning and development. Yet, the principle of self-directed learning does not release the teacher from their leadership position. What is different under a humanistic lens is that the teacher guides the students through the learning space created by the teacher; yet the students remain in control. Let us consider a hypothetical example. In a language unit on family, provide vocabulary and grammatical forms for talking about families in the new language. From there, invite your students to explore representations of family in the new language and through various multimedia sources (e.g., videos, websites, movies, textbooks, promo advertisements). Students select representations that interest them. In doing so, they cultivate their own language content to study. The words, expressions, and grammatical features that students find then become the source for their language study about family. 

Self-Actualization

As a humanistic teacher, establish regular classroom routines that encourage students to take inventory of their personal, social, and emotional needs and then to make tangible steps towards meeting their needs. By doing so, students experience personal growth. To help your students along their path of personal growth, provide external supports. Examples include classroom routines that prompt students to identify their immediate needs, strategies to help them meet their needs, and different ways to conduct self-inventories. Through these external supports, guide each student in internal work based on how self-actualization is a personal process. Students who have previous experience with self-actualization will need less external support. Students without previous experience will need more external support from you, the teacher, for doing their self-actualization. From a humanistic standpoint, the important thing is that you have planned for and attended to each student’s personal development journey within your ELT classroom.

PEDAGOGICAL APPLICATIONS

If you wish to incorporate humanistic principles in your language classroom practices, consider following these tips. 

Cultivate a Safe, Welcoming Classroom Atmosphere

As of the first day, cultivate a classroom atmosphere that is safe, welcoming, and encouraging for all students. Aim for cultivating a space where students feel safe to express their authentic selves and where they feel respected enough to pose challenges to the teacher, to the content of study, and even to one another. Make intentional efforts to continue cultivating an atmosphere of mutual respect. The ongoing maintenance of such respect requires thoughtful action and counteraction around respectful and inclusive behavior in the classroom setting. When addressing breaches to the classroom climate, keep the conversation focused on the actions and on the impact those actions have had on community members rather than on speaker intent. 

Address Student Anxiety and Stress

Address the anxiety and stress that students often experience when studying another language. Start by setting aside structured time in class for students to complete self-assessments of their anxiety and stress levels. For example, this could be a simple checklist immediately before or after a classroom activity or presentation. Also consider something more formal such as the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (Horwitz et al., 1986). Give this to students at selected points during the semester. After students have identified their personal levels of anxiety, introduce them to anxiety-reducing strategies. These may include breathing exercises, visualizing exercises, mindfulness (i.e., hyper-awareness of the present moment), and expressions of gratitude. Encourage students to use these strategies when interacting with the target language and then assess the impact on their anxiety levels after having participated. Whenever time permits and presupposing a climate of respect, allow students to share in groups (or with the full class). In this supportive setting with peers, students share personal reflections regarding their own anxiety levels and their progress towards moderating them. 

Practice Daily Affirmations

Practice daily affirmations with your students, which, though seemingly small, can have a big impact. Affirmations are statements of self-worth such as “I can do hard things” and “I was born to learn.” Select from among different options and incorporate them into your regular classroom practices. For example, have students select a self-affirmation statement from a list. This could be done on a weekly basis or before an exam or major performance task. The important thing is that students choose an affirmation with which they personally identify. Have students move around the room repeating their personal affirmation to one another. Verbally enunciating this affirmation carries a powerful force to help students personally identify with their affirmation. These affirmation exercises can be completed in the target language, home language, or a mixture of both. 

Include Storytelling

Include storytelling in your lessons. Storytelling is a valuable classroom practice based on how we, as humans, are uniquely attentive to narrative. Through stories, we can understand ourselves and the past. As such, narrative is an important tool to use for self-actualization. Make your language classroom into a space for students to share their personal stories with one another: who they are and who they wish to be. Conventional foreign language textbooks often provide storytelling prompts. Consider starting with a prompt such as these: What do you feel most grateful for in your life? How would you like to be remembered? (StoryCorps, n.d.).  

Teach Language Learning Strategies

Teach your students how to use language learning strategies. Such strategies can foster self-directed learning which is integral to humanistic pedagogy. Language learning strategies can be grouped in four sets (Echevarria et al., 2016): metacognitive (i.e., identifying what we know and don’t know); cognitive (i.e., monitoring our own thinking); affective (i.e., monitoring emotions, feelings, and anxiety); and interpersonal (i.e., utilizing classroom partners for needed support). Explicitly explain and demonstrate these strategies to your students and clarify the functions of each set. Provide your students with opportunities to practice these strategies in classroom activities and guide them in adopting their favorite strategies as their own. Although language learning strategies have been widely used in classrooms, humanistic teachers are interested in learning strategies for how they support student autonomy (i.e., self-directed learning).

Have Students Assess Self and Peers

Finally, have students assess themselves and their peers. Self-assessment follows from the principle of self-directed learning. Allow opportunities for students to assess their performance in various language activities and assignments. For example, consider averaging your assessment score of a student’s performance together with the student’s self-assessment score. A related technique is peer-assessment where students have a chance to connect with each other’s learning journey. When assessing peers, students often indirectly self-reflect. To ensure the positive nature of peer-assessment, include it as a low-risk activity for formative assessment during a project’s design phase or for reflection following project submission. 

In this chapter, you learned about humanism in ELT. You learned how a humanistic classroom embraces affect, social relationships, self-directed learning, and self-actualization. You also learned how to incorporate several humanistic principles into your language teaching practices. By incorporating these suggestions, you will be able to promote humanism in your classroom.

Here are some key concepts about humanism in ELT:

• Anchored in western philosophy, the notion of humanism assumes the fundamental premise of goodness; in other words, each individual human being is inherently good.

• Although humanistic language teaching methods briefly found popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, ELT educators of the 21st century should reconsider humanistic pedagogy because its basic principles are still relevant.    

• Key humanistic principles for teaching a new language are affect, social relationships, self-directed learning, and self-actualization. 

• ELT educators can act on these key humanistic principles by (a) cultivating a safe and welcoming classroom climate; (b) teaching students to moderate feelings of anxiety; (c) guiding students in self-affirmation exercises; (d) capitalizing on the power of storytelling; (e) training students to use language learning strategies; and (f) incorporating self-assessment and peer-assessment techniques. 

Based on your new knowledge about humanism in ELT, answer these questions:

1. What principles of humanism have you experienced as a language student? Do you feel that your teacher’s humanistic techniques helped you with learning this new language? 

2. What principles of humanism do you feel would be easy for you to implement in your future ELT classroom? Which ones would be challenging?

3. What are additional ways to bring humanism to the language classroom that have not been discussed in this chapter? 

To practice using what you have learned about humanism in ELT, do the following:

1. Select a language unit of study and identify at least three different resources related to the topic (e.g., family, climate change, careers). Incorporate these resources as possible pathways for your future students to follow along their path towards self-directed learning. 

2. Make a list of at least ten affirmation statements to share with your language students. Select some from the internet and base others on your own experiences as a language learner. 

3. Develop several self-assessment checklists. Ask your English students to do one of these checklists before each unit of study. Start by creating one checklist for each of the four modes of language: speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

To expand your knowledge about humanism in ELT classrooms, visit these websites:

• Affirmations for language learners. https://ellii.com/blog/affirmations-for-english-learners 

• Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. https://dept.english.wisc.edu/rfyoung/333/FLCAS.pdf 

• Learning strategies. https://englopedia.com/learning-strategies-with-types-and-explanation/ 

• Storytelling prompts. https://archive.storycorps.org/great-questions-list/

Elements of humanism in ELT are also addressed in other chapters of this book: 

Chapter 5 Building Relationships With Language Learners by S. Montiel

Chapter 6 Supporting Learners’ Social Emotional Learning by G. Mendoza

Chapter 9 Empowering Adults for Autonomous Learning by M. Zalimben

Chapter 13 Designing Learner-Centered Classrooms to Promote Active Learning by H. Kaiser

Chapter 19 Incorporating Inclusive Education Practices in ELT by R. Mazzoleni

Chapter 20 Creating an ELT Classroom Community by B. Crosbie and D. Carter

Chapter 29 Using Theater to Teach English by C. Ortiz and M. Vaky

Chapter 32 Major ELT Trends in the 20th Century by C. Onatra and S. Palencia

Chapter 34 Alternative Approaches to English Language Teaching by G. Díaz Maggioli

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2016). Making content comprehensible for English learners (5th ed.). Pearson. 

Horwitz, E., Horwitz, M., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. Modern Language Journal, 70(2), 125–132.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1986.tb05256.x  

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2011). Techniques and principles in language teaching (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 

McNeil, J. (2015). Contemporary curriculum: In thought and action (8th ed.). John Wiley & Sons. 

Moskowitz, G. (1978). Caring and sharing in the foreign language class. Newbury House.

Stevick, E. (1980). Teaching languages: A way and ways. Newbury House.

StoryCorps. (n.d.). Great questions list. Archive StoryCorps, Inc. https://archive.storycorps.org/great-questions-list/ 

Bryan Meadows is an ESL instructor with South River Public School District (New Jersey, USA). Bryan holds a master’s degree in second language education (University of Houston, Texas, USA) and a doctorate in second language acquisition and teaching (University of Arizona, USA). He has previously led teacher education programs in teaching English to speakers of other languages and intensive English programs in universities in the United States. Bryan’s published work addresses issues of power in the context of language education and can be found in peer-reviewed and professional journal publications. 

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4310-6337 

Email for correspondence regarding this chapter: wcomstock@protonmail.com

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