Austin Woerner's Memory Palace
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EAP101 Class Notes & Homework

Fall 2018

Day 14

W-Th Oct. 17-18 (Week VII)

Homework

➤ Week of Oct. 29: Individual conferences

Come to your meeting with me—on time!—to talk about revising your midterm paper. Please also bring all four of your Short Essays with my comments on them.

➤ Midterm paper, final draft

After our one-on-one meeting, revise your midterm paper. Your final draft is due one week after our meeting, by the end of the day, in my blue box.

(For example, if your conference was on a Monday, your final draft is due the following Monday, by the end of the day.)

➤ Begin reading Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers

Due M-Tu Nov. 5-6

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Zoltan Dornyei and Magdalena Kubanyiova, "Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers"
Zoltan Dornyei and Magdalena Kubanyiova, "Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers"

Excerpts from Motivating Learners, Motivating Teachers: Building Vision in the Language Classroom, by Zoltan Dornyei and Magdalena Kubanyiova.

Read pp. 1-22. Next class, three students from each section will do brief oral presentations (2-3 minutes per student) summarizing their assigned portions of the readings. The assignments are as follows:

  • Student 1: Introduction (pp. 1-6)

  • Student 2: Chapter 1, pp. 8-14 (not including section 1.3, Mental Imagery)

  • Student 3: Chapter 1, sections 1.3 and 1.4 (pp. 14-22)

All students: Read with the following discussion questions in mind, and come to next class ready to talk about them.

  • Who are "we" -- the authors? Why are they writing this book?

  • Who is the intended audience?

  • To whom or what does this book seem to be responding? Is there a "they say," either stated or implied?

  • What is a vision? What does it mean to "have a vision"? How is a vision different from a goal?

  • What do Dörnyei and Kubanyiova mean when they talk about "possible selves"? 

  • What is an "ideal self"? What is an "ought-to self"?

  • Why do Dörnyei and Kubanyiova believe that visions -- particularly visions of possible selves -- can be powerful sources of motivation?

  • Have you ever been motivated by a vision? What was it?

  • What is "mental imagery?" (The authors sometimes just use the word "imagery" to mean the same thing.)

  • Have you ever used mental imagery to help you learn or acquire skills? If so, how did you use it?

  • What evidence do the authors provide to try to convince you that mental imagery can be used in foreign language education?

  • Why could a book like this be important? (I'm not saying it is, necessarily -- I'm asking you to speculate.) Why should you and I care what Dörnyei and Kubanyiova think?

Austin Woerner