Psychology for Language Teachers: A Social Constructivist Approach

Psychology for Language Teachers begins with an overview of educational psychology and discusses how different approaches to psychology have influenced language teaching methodology. Following this, four themes are identified: the learner, the teacher, the task and the learning context. Psychological developments in each of these domains are discussed and implications are drawn for language teaching. Areas considered include approaches to learning, motivation, the role of the individual, attribution, mediation, the teaching of thinking, the cognitive demands of tasks and the learning environment.