The Power of Language to Influence Thought and Action
June 24, 2015
Language influences thought and action. The words we use to describe things—to ourselves and others—affects how we and they think and act. It’s good to remind ourselves that this powerful influence happens in all kinds of situations and most certainly with language related to teaching and learning.
Here are some big ones that come to mind.
Grades play a powerful role in the education experience of students, and teachers are a central part of that process. We try to correct students when they assert that we “give” them grades; no, they “earn” the grades, which they do, but we decide what they’ve earned. “I didn’t give you that grade, you earned it” recognizes the student’s contribution but implies nothing more than a recording role for us.
Often students feel (sometimes with justification) that teachers purposely make things more difficult than they should be. After passing back a quiz on which my students had done poorly, one quipped, “I’ll bet you’ll be celebrating after class.” I didn’t get it, so I asked for clarification. The response? “You really got us on that quiz.” I heard about a tactic in a session at The Teaching Professor Conference that turns that thinking on its head. Imagine a student getting this message on the first day of class: “I start out assuming every person in this class has an A. My job is to support your efforts to keep it.”
I have blogged, written elsewhere, and spoken regularly about the strong, authoritarian, directive language used to describe policies in our syllabus, wondering how that language affects the motivation to learn and whether it reflects a belief that the only effective way teachers can take charge is with commands. The language is more collaborative when the directive “you,” such as in “you will do the assigned reading and come to class prepared,” becomes “we.” In this case the change in voice is accurate. Students and teachers should do the reading and arrive in class prepared.
However, language that inaccurately characterizes the teacher-student relationship does not convey the authenticity needed to establish genuine relationships with students. “We” are not going to be taking the exams, writing the papers, or working in groups. Those are student activities. And “we” are not going to be a community of learners just because the teacher says we are. More accurately, the teacher can invite, but not force, students to share in the learning adventures of the course.
And then there’s the common plan that students have to “go over” their notes when they study for their exams. Most of them are better advised to “get into” those notes, as in really engage with them. Then we wish them “good luck” on their exams and projects. Are we suggesting that luck plays a role in successful academic work?
Sometimes when trying to get students to remember content from a previous part of the course, I’ve heard teachers say, “Remember? We talked about this just before the last exam.” This implies that course content is organized around exam events, which adds to the importance of those assessments and doesn’t connect content chunks in ways that showcase how they’re related.
And then there’s all the content we have to “cover.” When there’s a lot to cover, we’re usually on a mission to move through it quickly. We cover a lot of ground in most of our courses with students strung out behind us, many struggling to keep up and most missing what makes the places we’re passing through interesting and memorable. But we’ve done our job—covered the content. Does this kind of coverage conceal or reveal what we want students to understand?
Language influences thought and action. Examples abound. Please share those that come to mind so that we can use them to explore how they influence what we think and how we act.