MSI Press Blog

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Affective Dissonance: Anxiety   Everyone experiences anxiety, no matter how capable or how easy a life any person seems to have. [1] Everyone has problems; just scratch the surface. And problems create anxiety. Generally, the greatest source of anxiety comes from not having the means to resolve a problem even if you know how to resolve it. If you cannot pay rent because your income is too low, of course, you will feel some anxiety. Classroom anxiety comes from a similar source—except often the lack of means of resolving a problem is a perceived lack, not a real lack. You are nervous about a test because you don’t have enough time to study, but you have waited until the last minute so you need to cram. Of course, you feel anxiety. You probably also realize that you did not have to wait until the last minute, and next time you can rectify it. Some students experience severe test anxiety. Th...

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Affective Dissonance: Labeling and Mislabeling Closely related to disqualifying the positive is the affective dissonance (a type of cognitive distortion that is more emotion than cognition) of labeling, usually pejoratively, and mislabeling (most pejorative labels are mislabels). Sometimes, labeling and mislabeling has been referred to as negative self-talk, but it is more than self-talk. It is a matter of putting yourself into a category—and we are all larger than any category. It is, of course, human nature to want to label the things around us. We want categories of things for storing information neatly in our brain. We don’t really like things that don’t feat neatly into a category. In this case, though, it is not things you are labeling—and mislabeling. It is yourself, and that has significant repercussions for learning.   Identifying mislabels Labeling and mislabeling refers to having to ha...

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Affective Dissonance: Disqualifying the Positive Disqualifying the positive says a lot about your own self-esteem. It is a case where you are always putting yourself down, and this probably happens in other areas, as well, not just in language learning. When you do not understand how marvelous you are (even if you are not the top student in the classroom—there are so many other ways to be a good language learner and a good person than a high test score), you start looking for what is wrong with you. When you do that, you start seeing your negative qualities (c’mon, we all have them, and if we look hard enough, we will see them, and if we are honest enough, we will admit them), and overlook all your positive qualities, either personal or related to study and performance even when the positive qualities outnumber the negative qualities. When you do that , it becomes difficult to be a good learner.  ...

  Excerpt from  Think Yourself into Becoming a Language Learning Super Star Self-Guidance Self-guidance, self-talk, self-regulation is communication with ourselves and has been observed even in young children (Vygotsky, 1978). Self-guidance can be used to shore ourselves up or tear ourselves down. As they letter, self-guidance is a form of affective dissonance. In language learning, self-guidance can be positive and promote our soaring to success. Or, it can be negative and push us into flailing into failure. Once recognized, the proper kind of self-guidance can replace debilitating self-guidance.   Defining self-guidance Self-guidance that is disabling uses such cognitive distortions as filtering and personalizing—to the point of catastrophizing. Negative self-guidance is a powerful tool of self-destruction: motivation, self-esteem, and self-confidence all tumble. (Positive self-talk, on the other hand, brings up significant increases in motivation, self-esteem...