Trainer: Tim Murphey has studied and taught in Europe for 15 years and in Asia for another 30. At present, he teaches at Kanda University of International Studies in Japan at the Research Institute for Learner Autonomy Education (RILAE). He researches student voice, motivation, and Vygotskian socio-cultural theory. Among others he has published: Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom, Music & Song (Oxford English Resource Books for Teachers), Communities of Supportive Professionals (Professional Development in Language Education Series), Language Hungry! An Introduction to Language Learning Fun and Self-esteem (Helbling)
Text by: Dimitris Maroulis
He said: “Creating suitable environments conducive to intense, multiple, and safe participation in foreign language interaction would seem to be one of the main jobs of language teachers…” (Teaching in Pursuit of Wow, 2012)
The Run
Tim Murphey in his book: “Language Hungry” writes:
“I am sure this will have happened to you as a language learner: you have been away from school or out of the country for a while. You try to remember all the language you knew before you left. And you can’t, at least for a while. Nothing comes. You are sure you have forgotten it all. There’s a leak somewhere in your brain. What you had so carefully put in has now gone!
As a small child I used to have a favourite glass that I drank all my milk out of. The bottom half was painted blue like the sea, with little fish on it. I used to take the glass out in my garden, fill it with water and then drop some sand into it. With my head beside the glass, I would watch the particles drift slowly to the bottom, out of sight. Then, I would put my finger in it, stir it up and watch the pieces swirl up to the top where I could see them again. After a while they would slowly drift down again, out of sight, just like the snow in a glass of Christmas bubble. So, at the age of four I invented my first physical law of activity: any activity makes things visible, knowable, without activity, the stirring up, we may think there is nothing there anymore. But there is. Usually. It just takes a bit of activity for what is there to come to the surface again. Language is rather like this.
One summer holiday, I forgot my glass of water and sand in the garden. When I came home, I went to see if my theory still worked. I put my finger in and stirred. I found that the sand had become stuck to the sides and that it took more effort, more stirring. Some of it came up in big chunks stuck together and sunk again really fast. Some stayed stuck to the side of the glass for quite a while. So, I developed my second law of sand-in-a-glass: the effort needed to reactivate something will be relative to the length of the time of disuse.
Then one of my brothers gave me a toothbrush, and I used that to unstick the rest of my magic sand and stir up everything that was inside. So, I developed my third law of sand-in-a-glass: other people have information and tools that I can use.
And these three laws have been helpful to me in many situations, especially in my language learning.
Post-Run Recover Routine
Sharing Murphey’s wisdom is the easy thing, what about learning from it?
Reviewing literature about reflection, we can reach three valid conclusions:
- Reflection is a mental resource; we are biologically endowed with the capacity to reflect on our experiences. This may lead to successful, self-fulfilling learning (which, in turn, may be one of the language learning biomarkers)
- Reflection leads to betterment, fuller life and to self-actualization (Maslow, 1943); it does so through cognitive and non-cognitive action plans; in this sense it is a psychosocial construct, and,
- Reflection can be taught, analysed and described the same way mindfulness, metacognition and grit can; in this sense reflection is not a naïve motif but an organic process of autobiographical memory self-representative function (Williams, Conway and Cohen, 2008)
There is now evidence that reflection can play a vital role in the development of our personality. Recent research confirms that: reflection predicts future success (Menekse, 2019; Menekse et al., 2020), helps in making fairer attribution assumptions (Hodge et al., 2018), leads to self-awareness and positive emotions (Cappellen et al., 2017), contributes to personality development for ever (Farrell, 2022), cultivates well-being and peace of mind (Czyżowska & Gurba, 2021).
There are two ways you can start reflecting. First, you can keep a “teaching diary/journal” where you can keep your notes after the lessons. Second, you can use flash questionnaires that learners can fill in at the end of each lesson or on Fridays. Their opinion matters however subjective it may be, it is part of an in-vivo experience and this is enough for you, if you know what to focus on.
