Unlearn Helplessness Through Learning Together and Alone
By: Harumi Kimura
It’s been years since I started teaching repeaters’ English class in my school. Students who have failed regular courses in the previous semester have to register for this course. The idea behind this system lies in our understanding that these students need extra academic support to meet the requirements for passing the course. Teaching them together is preferred to individually as it is more efficient and effective since their needs are similar. Moreover, students may feel safer without high achievers in the same class.
These rationales may sound sensible, but in reality, I’m afraid it does not work with this particular mixture of students. The students are a heterogeneous group: they are likely to have a range of issues, from academic to personal and social. Most of them, as I understand it, have more than one issue. Quite a few do not like English. Some have experienced bad teaching in the past. Some have learning disorders. Others suffer psychological problems such as social anxiety and depression. Yet others are not on good terms with their parents. Actually, I usually have a few high-achieving students with good English language (and academic) skills in the group. Thus, only addressing the academic aspect of their problems in a narrow way does not pay off or even make sense.
In this article, I share my experiences with these students. It has been a process of trial and error. Having said that, I propose that teachers should try dealing with students’ social issues before anything else so that the students can feel they belong to the class. They will be able to relate to their classmates and grow in self-awareness (Deci, 1995). I also suggest making use of creative, expressive activities, and having them visualize and/or verbalize their work (Bell, 2007) so that they can perceive themselves as competent and autonomous by sharing with others what they have worked on and appreciating each other’s work. Through classroom activities like the following, students can rewrite in their brains who they think they are as a person and as a language learner (Ranganath, 2024).
Helplessness to be Unlearned
When I step into the classroom in the first week, I see faces showing reluctance, hesitation, and skepticism. I can tell these students want to escape from the classroom if they could. They are there just because they have to be. Little motivation. Few expectations. Maybe anxiety and fear. Moreover, they rarely look around. They probably have little curiosity about others in the same class. They are confined to their own individual world. I can tell that this is a distinct group of students, many of whom are suffering from learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975).
The online APA Dictionary of Psychology defines learned helplessness as: “a phenomenon in which repeated exposure to uncontrollable stressors results in individuals failing to use any control options that may later become available.” It happens when someone tries repeatedly to escape pain or solve a problem, but fails every time. As a result, they stop trying. I know all of the students in the group have experienced at least one failure: They haven’t received a passing grade for the required English course in the previous semester and that’s why they are here. Failing a class is stressful, and it’s beyond their control in a way since their teacher gave them the failing grade. I know nothing else about them at the beginning.
However, during the next several weeks, I receive official letters from our Disability Service Office asking for reasonable accommodations for absent students. I also receive emails from students who report their absence due to illness: feeling sick, having a fever, and other physical and mental issues. Well, it is good when I receive something from students about their absence. Many of the students who are registered do not show up even once or stop coming in the middle of the semester. They just disappear. Some students come one day, do not appear for several weeks afterwards, and then suddenly come to class. These students do not seem to be exerting meaningful control of their academic life, and quite possibly their personal life, either. They are likely to be controlled by something else. I speculate that quite a few of them are feeling helpless or suffering from learned helplessness. Sometimes, I feel like I’m the only one who is genki (“okay”, in Japanese) in this classroom. Well, I have to do something to get things done: to do my job as a teacher by supporting them in fulfilling the course requirements. Along the way, hopefully, I’d like to help them to realize they are autonomous, competent individuals who can be ready and willing to work with others. Let’s explore both the social and individual aspects of learner autonomy.
Jazz Chants
Some teachers (including me) enjoy using jazz chants by Carolyne Graham (eg, Graham, 1986) to teach/learn natural rhythm and connected speech inEnglish. It’s a good class starter too. Well, it is not easy to get that group of students involved at the beginning, but at the same time it is all the more effective with them in helping them get over their shyness and excessive self-consciousness. I especially like the ones with interaction and the following is one of my favorites.
That’s a nice sweater. Is it new?
Yes, it is.
Where did you get it?
I got it at Macy’s.
It’s beautiful.
Thank you. I’m glad you like it.
After practicing the original chants, students change the item and shop to ones they know and continue to give and receive compliments to each other. The second student can give a negative answer, saying, “No, it’s not,” but the interaction can just go on. Quite often, students share the name of the shop they actually bought the item at, so the interaction is real to some extent.
The interaction may sound like the infamous pattern practice, but it has some advantages: linguistic, social, and psychological. First, students can just follow the pattern in their immediate context, using any outfit, accessory, or footwear their partner is wearing. The task is not demanding. Second, the interaction can definitely be an icebreaker. Students smile at each other; they cannot possibly do the activity with a blank expression on their face. No, never. Third, the task makes students pay attention to what their partner is wearing, what she looks like, and eventually who she is, without realizing it. I hope students will understand that interacting in English is not so difficult; they can relax in class, and they are learning with other students, not alone, helping each other.
Tomorrow’s Alphabet
Usually, alphabet books go like A is for apple, B is for baby, and on and on. However, Tomorrow’s Alphabet (Shannon & Crews, 1996) goes like this: A is for seed, tomorrow’s apple. Some show a biological connection: D is for puppy, tomorrow’s dog. Some demonstrate cultural meaning: J is for pumpkin, tomorrow’s Jack-o’-Lantern. Others are philosophical: U is for strangers, tomorrow’s us. After sharing the first line about A, I just share the first part like B is for eggs. Students have to make a guess: tomorrow’s birds. In fact, some are surprising: S starts with S is for vegetables. Most students expect salad, but in fact it is tomorrow’s soup. This is a fun and easy game with words, with some learning targets such as new expressions like bulbs and X-ray, the pronunciation of toast and yarn, and spellings like flour and moth.
After going over all the alphabet in the books, students make their own Tomorrow’s Alphabet. I usually ask pairs to make one each so that two of them think together to create their own. Usually, we have a show time at the end, displaying all the alphabets on the board. I also make a PDF file with the products so they can share their cooperative works, as pairs and as a class, among the students. Take a look at some of their work.
Aren’t students creative and imaginative? Which is your favorite? Cognitively and linguistically, the task is not a difficult one, just finding a connection between two objects or two concepts, but it pushes them to think more deeply. They have power over their own product and they will grow faith in the potential of working together. I believe this kind of cooperative task, however simple and easy, helps them to be self-directive and self-reliant, moving one step further toward learner autonomy. When students experience functioning as a pair/group, they are empowered individually. I’d like to call it group autonomy (Jacobs & Kimura, 2023).
The Important Book
The Important Book (Brown, 1999) is another picture book I use in English classes. The book describes some familiar things and looks into what they are. One of the things, snow, goes like this:
The important thing about snow is that it is white.
It is cold, and light,
it falls softly out of the sky,
it is bright,
and the shape of tiny stars, and crystals.
It is always cold.
And it melts.
But the important thing about snow is that it is white.
After describing quite a few familiar things like the one above, the book ends with a verse: “The important thing about you is that you are you.” I ask students to depict their various characteristics and attributes while appreciating the fact that “You are you.” They look into what is essential about themselves. Is it important where they were born? What experiences do they appreciate? They use words, expressions, and sentence patterns they have learned so far for describing personality, past events, and daily actions and narrate what they are like. The passage starts and ends with “The important thing about me is that I am me.”
This semester, students have decided not to share their writing, but there were some groups of students in the past who agreed to share their important things among the class members. They did so by each of them reading their own writing aloud. I really liked the following, so I asked the writer if I could keep it and share it with others when necessary, without her name or identity. Her answer was positive. Here it is:
The important thing about me is that I am me.
I am shy.
Sometimes I am passionate and really into something, and get bored.
I often get upset and regret it later.
I don’t like to study.
I like dancing.
But the important thing about me is that I am me, just like you are you.
I really liked the last part: “just like you are you.” The last line demonstrates the understanding I hoped students would develop. I don’t know if I am successful in having students change their self-perception and realize their potential, but I believe it is absurd if they think of themselves as less productive, less competent, or less attractive than others. They fully exert agency over learning, both together with others and alone, in this English class. Why not in other classes? Why not on other subjects? Why not outside of school?
Let me make it clear, before concluding, that the classroom activities I have shared with you here are not a panacea to solve problems overnight in terms of difficult students. No way, but it might be an idea to try some of them, or even just one of them, if you feel helpless and desperate to try anything that might work in some way or another with your repeater students, or with any group of students you have difficulty in working with.
References
Bell, N. (2007). Visualizing and verbalizing: For language comprehension and thinking (2nd ed.). Gardner Publishing.
Brown, M. W. (1999). The important book. HarperCollins Publishers.
Deci, E. L. (1995). Why we do what we do. Penguin Books.
Jacobs, G. M., & Kimura, H. (2023). Cooperative learning and teaching (2nd ed.). TESOL.
Graham, S. (1986). More jazz chants from small talk. Oxford University Press.
Ranganath, C. (2024). Why we remember: Unlocking memory’s power to hold on to what matters. Doubleday.
Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. W. H. Freeman.
Shannon, G., & Crews, D. (1996). Tomorrow’s alphabet. Greenwillow Books.
Harumi Kimura is a professor at Miyagi Gakuin Women’s University. She studied L2 listening anxiety in her doctoral study, and her academic interests include second language acquisition, learner development, learner psychology, multilingualism, and cooperative learning. She thinks that her mission is “to make learning another language less intimidating and a bit more rewarding plus fun.”