Self-handicapping in language learning

It happens to me all the time. I have adults coming to my German group courses telling me before the first lesson. “I have never been good at foreign languages. I just want to try one more time.” Then they are surprised of how great they are doing during the first 10 or so lessons. Then, they miss 2 or 3 lessons due to work, holidays, or whatsoever. And then they send me a message telling me that, suddenly, they do not have the time anymore to come to the last lessons and pass the exam. Do you know what, I do not believe most of them! Sounds arrogant, inconsiderate, fill in the blanks. What I believe is that we have here a classic example of self-handicapping.

Self-handicapping is a well-researched concept in empirical (experiment-based/data-driven) psychology that describes situations when an individual chooses an action that is potentially detrimental to his or her future performance. In classic experiments, individuals, after initial success in some “cognitive” task in which they themselves did not quite understand how they succeeded, were asked to choose between potentially performance-enhancing and performance-impeding drugs. Around 70% of male (!) participants in a 1978 study by Berglas chose the first option. While many may ask why an individual would act so stupidly, in studies, women are quite accurate in understanding the situation. The participants just want to have an excuse for future failure.

There are many ways of self-handicapping: alcohol and drugs, and other bad habits, adopting bad strategies, and, not putting in the necessary effort. You know it all: the student who parties before an exam, the drinker friend that – if he were not drinking – would be the next Jimi Hendrix or Ernest Hemmingway.

Why do people self-handicap? Studies on self-handicapping offer several explanations:

·        To protect one’s self-image. If I fail, it is not because I am not smart, but because I just did not try enough.

·        To protect one’s social status.

Thus, research has shown that men do self-handicap more often than women, so do more dominant ethnic groups and professionals with higher social status. The phenomenon is more prevalent if the performance of a task and the feedback on results is visible to others.

Coming back to the initial examples. A participant shows unexpectedly positive results during the first lessons. But, she is afraid she may not replicate that in the final exam, due to a history of previous exam failures in other language courses. So, dropping out at a high point serves as leaving her (only?) success in a language course unchallenged.

What are the implications for your teaching?

Taking into consideration the above, you can suppose that students with the following characteristics will be more prone to self-handicapping.

·        Adult males,

·        Out of the dominant ethnic/religious group,

·        With high social status (school teachers, policemen, HR managers, university professors, judges, doctors, etc.), that is people in front of which we feel uncomfortable due to their authority of deciding our fate.

What can you do to stop self-handicapping?

I do not know the perfect remedy, because the underlying cause is a perceived existential threat to the individual. Just by “explaining” it, you won’t stop alcohol and drug addicts. However, you can introduce some standard procedures into your teaching that decrease the probability of its occurrence.

·        Periodically addressing the issue (using small videos, articles, jokes/parody) and discussing it with students (ideally in the target language as a discussion topic);

·        Forming peer-support groups so that students have an accountability partner outside of the classroom that can offer support in case of frustrations and difficulties;

·        Making the lesson as non-threatening as possible. I do this by having students work in always-reshuffled pairs during most of the lesson time, with background music to make them comfortable;

·        By stressing that the real exam is not at the end of the course but in real life when using the language practically;

·        By being transparent about the exam requirements, and also about the test’s limitation. No test will ever validly and reliably reflect an individual students abilities in their entirety.

Tell me what you encounter and think. Or send me your questions. If you want me to hold a live seminar for your school on the, just send me an e-mail.

If you want to read more about quality management in language teaching, please check out the other articles on this blog. If you have not read it yet, I recommend those on student feedback questionnaires and on how to standardize your teaching.

Stay tuned!

Gerhard

About the GO Method

The GO Method is a quality management system for language schools. It conforms to key elements of the ISO 9001 standard, while being more specific on teaching-related issues. Customers get access to easily adaptable document templates.

Check us out at The GO Method.

About me

Psychologist and polyglot from Hamburg /Germany (*1979). Married with children. MA in psychology from the University of Hamburg. More than 15 years of experience in quality management and foreign language teaching. Coordinator of the GO Method network, with representatives in more than 90 countries worldwide.
Connect with me on Linkedin or send me an e-mail.