Strategy Instruction Programme with Awareness of Psychotypology (SIPPs): Developing Beginner-level Reading Skills in a Psychotypologically Distant Language
In an increasingly connected world, it is now more common than ever to learn languages that originate beyond one’s own continent. The burgeoning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) industry beyond Europe and the Americas, along with global awareness of economically powerful languages such as Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, is testament to such a trend. Oftentimes, these languages can be 'psychotypologically distant’, meaning that the learner perceives them to be dissimilar to other languages in their repertoire. These languages may also come across as particularly challenging to learn, since they require the learner to navigate new and potentially unfamiliar linguistic systems. Although there is widespread consensus on the complexity of learning such languages, existing theory does not yet provide a complete outlook on how to overcome linguistic distance effectively. Firstly, our knowledge of the dynamics of ‘psychotypology’—a learner’s perceived distance between the target language and other languages known—is still generic at present, and we know little about how psychotypology can function as a strategic learning tool if the learner perceives a target language to be largely distant. Similarly, the growing body of literature on transfer has greatly strengthened our understanding of multilingual processing; however, one would have to identify cross-linguistic similarities for transfer to occur in the first place, which may be challenging to do when exposed to a linguistically unfamiliar language. The potential usefulness of language learner strategies (LLS) and strategy-based instruction (SBI) also remains largely overlooked in such learning contexts. To that end, the Strategy Instruction Programme with Awareness of Psychotypology (SIPPs) was designed and evaluated in this study. Its ultimate goal was to explore how explicit instruction of psychotypological awareness, transfer, and language learner strategies could facilitate the learning of a psychotypologically distant language. The intervention took the form of a three-iteration design experiment, with five learners in each iteration. Set in the context of Taiwan, the programme focused on three groups of adult learners navigating beginner-level reading in Mandarin—a language generally believed to be psychotypologically distant from most other mainstream languages. These learners represented a range of L1 backgrounds (namely, Indonesian, Thai, English, and Spanish) and all of them shared English as a common language. Using reading task sheets, stimulated recall interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and semi- structured interviews, a mixed-methods approach was used to investigate the outcome of the SIPPs intervention in relation to process (i.e., psychotypologically sensitive strategy development), product (i.e., reading scores and factors explaining strategy effectiveness), and perception (i.e., learner thoughts on the guiding theory of the course). To meet the objective of design experiments, theory was revised as findings evolved in each iteration. Key findings revealed that the outcomes of each iteration generally improved over the previous, and the intervention was effective on the whole. Learners’ use of strategies diversified across the three iterations, with stronger reflections of metalinguistic knowledge, psychotypology, and monitoring towards the second and third iterations. While not all learners established a continuous improvement trajectory with regard to reading scores in the first iteration, general improvements were seen in the second and third teaching cycles, and the percentage of psychotypologically sensitive strategies increased from iteration to iteration. In a similar vein, attitudes towards the SIPPs in all three groups remained positive, although it was not until the final two iterations whereby learners were able to articulate more nuances of how the course facilitated their development of reading strategies as multilinguals. The intended contributions of this research touch upon both theory and practice. The study delves deeper into the nature of ‘psychotypology’, an area of applied linguistics that has been relatively under-researched in classrooms since its introduction in 1983. It solidifies the conceptual interconnectedness between psychotypology, transfer, and language learner strategies in the context of reading in a psychotypologically distant language, and further explores the affordances of transfer when cross-linguistic similarities are challenging to identify on the surface. Translating these theories into practice, the study investigates the management of linguistic distance with one’s existing multilingual resources, thus providing a concrete pedagogical blueprint for both the teaching and learning of psychotypologically distant languages.
Design-based research, Language education, Language learner strategies, Linguistic distance, Linguistically distant languages, Psychotypology, Strategy-based instruction
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