The Humanistic Approach in ELT in the Big Data Era

○ Yu Junling Pi Nanqi Cao Danping Tu Qingqing Zhang Jingyi

(College of Foreign Languages, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, 200093)



The Humanistic Approach in ELT in the Big Data Era

○ Yu Junling Pi Nanqi Cao Danping Tu Qingqing Zhang Jingyi

(CollegeofForeignLanguages,UniversityofShanghaiforScienceandTechnology,Shanghai, 200093)

The humanistic movement developed in America in the early 1960s, and was termed the third force in psychology. This paper discusses that the humanistic approach aimed to investigate all the uniquely human aspects of experience such as love, hope, creativity, etc. and emphasized the importance of the individual’s interaction with the environment.

the humanistic approach, ELT, the big data

I. Basic Themes of Humanistic Psychology

1.1 Origins and history

The humanistic movement developed in America in the early 1960s, and was termed the third force in psychology since it aimed to replace the two main approaches in the subject at that time, behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Influenced by gestalt psychology’s idea of studying whole units, and existential philosophy with its belief in conscious free will, humanists argued that behaviorism’s artificial and dehumanizing approach and psychoanalysis’s gloomy determinism were insufficient to provide a complete psychology.

The humanistic approach aimed to investigate all the

uniquely human aspects of experience such as love, hope, creativity, etc. and emphasized the importance of the individual’s interaction with the environment. Humanists, such as Maslow, believed that every individual has the need to self-actualize or reach their potential, and Rogers develop client-centred therapy to help individuals in this process of self-actualization.

1.2 Assumptions

Bugental (1967), the first president of the American Association for Humanistic psychology once said: ‘humanistic psychology has as its ultimate goal the preparation of a complete description of what it means to be alive as a human being’.He described some of its fundamental assumptions:

•A proper understanding of human nature can only be gained from studying humans, not other animals.

•Psychology should research areas that are meaningful and important to human existence, not neglect them because they are too difficult. Psychology should be applied to enrich human life.

•Psychology should study internal experience as well as external behavior and consider that individuals can show some degree of free will.

•Psychology should study the individual case (an idiographic method) rather than the average performance of groups (a nomothetic approach).

In general, humanistic psychologists assume that the whole person should be studied in their environmental context.

1.3 Methods of investigation

Humanists take a phenomenological approach, investigating the individual’s conscious experience of the world. For this reason they employ the idiographic case study method, and use of a variety of individualistic techniques such as

•flexible open ended interviews.

•the Q-sort technique, where the participant is given one hundred different statements on cards, such as ‘I don’t trust my emotions’ or ‘I have an attractive personality’ which they have to sort into piles for personal relevance.

1.4 Areas of explanation

The humanistic approach has been applied to relatively few areas of psychology compared to other approaches. The main areas of explanation have been in

•personality/self identity, eg. Rogers’s self theory

•motivation, e.g. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and self-actualization

•abnormality, e.g. due to imposed conditions of worth by others or the inability to accept the true self. Humanists are

against the nomothetic classification of abnormality.

1.5 Practical applications

The humanistic approach’s primary application has been to therapeutic treatment for anybody suffering ‘problems with living, Some humanistic therapies include:

•client-centred therapy-whereby the client is encouraged to develop positive self-regard and overcome mismatch between their perceived self, true self, and ideal self.

•gestalt therapy-developed by Fristz perls, the aim is to help the client become a ‘whole’ (gestalt) person by getting them to accept every aspect of themselves.

1.6 Strengths

The humanistic approach has contributed to psychology by

•re-emphasizing the need to study consciousness and human experience for a complete study of the subject

•serving as a valuable agent of criticism against the extremes of the earlier major approaches

•highlighting the value of more individualistic and idiographic methods of study, particularly in the areas of personality and abnormality.

•emphasizing the importance of self-actualization, responsibility, freedom of choice, and social context in therapy.

1.7 Weaknesses

Humanistic psychology has not, however, had the significant impact on mainstream academic psychology that the other approaches have. This is probably because humanists deliberately take a less scientific approach to studying humans since

•their belief in free will is in opposition to the deterministic laws of science.

•they adopt a more idiographic approach, seeking the more unique aspects of individuals, rather than producing generalized laws of behavior that apply to everyone.

•the issues they investigate, such as consciousness and emotion, are amongst the most difficult to objectively study.

Ⅱ. Problems of Humanistic Approach

Characteristically, the humanistic approach focus on learners’ personal experiences; they rely on a non-teacher-centered approach; and they contain an element of self-reflection. Few teachers or teacher trainers would deny that the affective clement is a crucial one in language teaching. Clearly the teacher must show respect and sensitivity towards the learners in his or her charge. And the students must feel that the teacher is there to help them (and they each other) to make as much progress as possible in the language in an enjoyable and stimulating way. Some useful humanistic techniques may be useful in achieving these aims, but every coin has two sides, it has negative sides of course.

The following is some problematic and controversial enterprise.

2.1 Misrepresentation of ‘traditional’ practice

The humanistic approach’s whole emphasis in language-teaching methodology in many parts of the world has been away from the idea of the teacher as an authoritarian, intimidating figure. However, the typical teacher’s role still need something that often makes him or her appear intimidating to the students.

2.2 Extravagant claims made about the learning process

Some ‘humanistic’ writers appear to make a habit of offering extremely dogmatic, unsupported statements about learning, as if the statements were proven, monolithic truths. And in some cases widely accepted axioms based on common sense are presented as if they were fresh, original, revolutionary insights of the writer in question. These related tendencies seem often to have their origin in a failure to define terms explicitly and to follow informed, reasoned lines of argument. Indeed, an overt disdain for such irrelevancies as ‘empty theoretical considerations’ (Sion 1985) is sometimes expressed.

2.3 Inappropriate objectives

At times, ‘humanistic’ methodologists exhibit a worrying disregard for the presumably axiomatic principle that the main aim of teaching a language to adults is to facilitate their learning of that language. It is surely important that we do not focus on affective factors of different appropriate linguistic objectives.

2.4 Excessive demands made on students

Many of the proponents of ‘humanistic’ activities, believing that successful language learning involves deep, affective

investment by learners in the learning experience, advocate the use of too much use of techniques which require learner to do things like revealing some of their deeper emotions, touch each other ways other than those accepted as standard cultural conventions, lie on the floor of the classroom, and soon.

The teacher’s concern in ELT classes should surely be with his or her role as ‘enseigrant (e)’, as opposed to ‘professeur’ (Widdowson 1987). Therefore the type of ‘interactional engagement’ which pertains between teachers and students should be justifiable in terms of the extent to which it facilitates progress towards the ‘transactional purpose’ of the classes. Affective factors ought not to be regarded as ends in themselves, and a humanistic approach should not be treated, even implicitly, as some sort of greater good over and above the more ‘pedestrian’ business of learning and teaching a foreign language.

[1]Appel, J. 1989. Humanistic approaches in the secondary school: how far can we go?[J].ELT Journal, 43/4.

[2] Nunan, D. 1988. The learner-centred curriculum[M].Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[3] Stevick, E.W. 1990. Humanism in Language Teaching[M].Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[4] Widdowson, H.G. 1987. The roles of teacher and learner?[J].ELT Journal, 41/2.

[5] Widdowson, H.G. 1990. Aspects of Language Teaching[M].Oxford: Oxford University Press.

上海市创新创业训练计划项目“基于大规模网络开放课程MOOCs资源的个性化学习研究及实践” (2015-2016年)；

郁俊玲，女，湖北武汉人，上海理工大学外语学院讲师，研究方向：专门用途英语、商务英语、信息技术与教学；

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大数据背景下外语教学中的人本主义教学法

郁俊玲 皮楠淇 曹丹萍 涂青青 张静怡

(上海理工大学 外语学院，上海 200093)

人文运动发展在美国20世纪60年代初，被称为心理学的第三种力量。文中探讨了大数据背景下人文主义教学法的起源、历史、特征及教学应用等。旨在探讨人文主义体验的是独特的人类的爱，希望，创造力等，并强调互动的重要性。

人本主义教学法； 英语语言教学； 大数据

上海理工大学校核心课程建设项目“实用商务英语”(2012-2015年)；

上海理工大学人文重点项目“培养卓越工程人才”背景下的三维一体商务英语教学研究 (2013-2015年)。

皮楠淇，上海理工大学外语学院本科生；

曹丹萍，上海理工大学外语学院本科生；

涂青青，上海理工大学外语学院本科生；

张静怡，上海理工大学外语学院本科生。