I don’t have a lot of science to back up what I’m about to say, so if you need footnotes, look away now. But my observations are built on life experience.
Learners who have confidence in what they’re learning or doing learn better. Learners who have confidence in their teachers will learn better.
Confident language learners will learn quicker and talk more and faster than unconfident language learners. Confident language learners are prepared to make mistakes. Unconfident learners stay quiet in case someone laughs at them – and so their language learning slows.
Confidence keeps a learner engaged. Confidence can keep a learner learning long after an unconfident learner has given up. Confidence helps a learner overcome criticism and keep moving forward.
So what’s this got to do with 1 star reviewers? Well, I flitted onto this page following a tweet from Tim Ferris (the irritating 4 hour week guy who manages his 4 hour week by having the money to hire a million people to do all the stuff he can’t do in just 4 hours).
The post ‘You Can’t Please Everyone’ is a collection of 1 star reviews from Amazon on great literature, music and movies. Here’s a few highlights:
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon
“Why this album is so popular will always be a mystery to me. I guess if you take a lot of drugs anything will sound good. The lyrics are meaningless, the songs drone like, the production very dated. Don’t waste your money.”
F Scott FitzGerald’s The Great Gatsby
“The book had no point beyond the obvious, and if you found something deep within it, you are obviously a very stupid person who had little understanding of life before reading this novel. You all should be ashamed of yourselves”
The Wizard of Oz
“the wort movie ive ever seen .I mean they clorized once color tv came out and there special effects are lame ,the costumes are ugly the props are ugly so never buy this film!!!!”
Criticism is all around us. And sometimes the critics are ill-informed, malevolent or lazy. Even when the critics are ‘experts’, they’ve been wrong time and again – wrong about Elvis, wrong about television, wrong about the Internet.
I believe that constructive criticism is a fantastic aid to learning (I’m afraid I’m not a fan of giving everyone in the classroom a gold star just for turning up!).
But we also need to infuse learners with a sense of confidence that can help them overcome mindless criticism – both from others and from themselves.
Content like Cynical-C’s post are a good way of getting learners to realise what mindless, destructive criticism is like.
However, getting learners to recognise self-criticism is more difficult. Self-criticism in learning is common. And in e-learning, where you may lack the support of classmates to support you in the coffee break, or the chance to get a reassuring smile from the teacher at the top of the class, your confidence in your ability to learn, and your confidence in the materials you’re learning from, will be key in your learning journey.
Providing constructive criticism is something I feel is done best in a face-to-face environment, or one-to-one online. It’s difficult to do digitally. Encouragement that you know was written into an e-learning programme 6 months previously and is being automatically returned to every learner on the same course does not have the same confidence-building effect as a simple ‘well done – good essay’ from a respected teacher.
I’m not sure how to build learner confidence in their learning journey – I’ll be experimenting with this in the language-learning materials I’m putting together for Talk Irish. And when I need a little confidence boost when creating e-learning content for invisible students who may think it’s all a load of rubbish, I remember this quote:
“Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You’ll be criticized anyway.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Works for both learners and teachers!
