Tuesday's Tip for Language Learning: Avoid Emotional Reasoning

 



Excerpt from Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star


Avoid Emotional Reasoning

If you are an emotional reasoner, you may get completely derailed on your journey to good language proficiency because you let your emotions rule your reason. Emotional reasoning, often lumped in with cognitive distortions (Beck, 1979), lets your emotional state, which can be a result of your academic experiences or a result of the events in your life or both, color your attitude, whether that is toward your course, your studying, your homework, your teacher, your textbook, your assignments, your classmates, or any other aspect of your academic life.

 

Definition of emotional reasoning

Emotional reasoning feels like you are riding a roller coaster. Your performance chugs upward, then speeds downward, over and over. Under these conditions, your performance is tracking with these emotional peaks and valleys, ups and downs, and not with your study.

Here are some examples:

•        You have fallen in love, and now you and your significant other are planning a wedding, taking massive amounts of time away from your studies; you reason that you need to spend time on your love not your language literacy because the love is enduring and perhaps language isn’t (wow, one could eat easily argue the opposite);

•        You owe a lot of debts and now one of them is after you to pay up or else; while scrambling to pay your debt, you may actually take on another job (not a good idea when your studies are already an important job), and you are tired in class; and/or

•        You have fallen sick enough that your doctor wants you to rest up for a few days, but you do not want to miss class; you are experiencing anxiety.

emotional reasoning = making decision based on feelings, not thinking

 

Eliminating emotion from reasoning

You clearly cannot remove all emotions or opportunities for deep optional experiences you’re your life, nor would you want to. What you need to do is not allow emotion to take over your decision-making. There are techniques for doing that.

Here are some ways to eliminate the emotion from reasoning:

·       Separate outside distractive emotions from your classroom experience; make a commitment to yourself to focus on home matters at home, social matters when you are in society, and academic matters at school—and not mix and match;

·       When you feel anxious, take a step back, identify the source, and answer the question as to whether the anxiety is warranted (you may not be able to do this alone though many learners come; if it seems important and you cannot take a step back, seek professional health, which will be worth it; and

·       Recognize the tug-of-war between your thoughts and your feelings, and, if you can, give the upper hand to thoughts.

 

identify source = lower anxiety

 

Reasoning is a cognitive function; keep it that way!



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