Positive Psychology in SLA (Paperback)

Positive psychology is the scientific study of how human beings prosper and thrive. This is the first book in SLA dedicated to theories in positive psychology and their implications for language teaching, learning and communication. Chapters examine the characteristics of individuals, contexts and relationships that facilitate learning: positive emotional states such as love, enjoyment and flow, and character traits such as empathy, hardiness and perseverance. The contributors present several innovative teaching ideas to bring out these characteristics among learners. The collection thus blends new teaching techniques with cutting-edge theory and empirical research undertaken using qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods approaches. It will be of interest to SLA researchers, graduate students, trainee and experienced teachers who wish to learn more about language learning psychology, individual differences, learner characteristics and new classroom practices.

Peter D. MacIntyre is Professor of Psychology at Cape Breton University, Canada. He has received awards for teaching excellence (Atlantic Association of Universities), contribution to the study of language (the Gardner Award and the Mildenberger Prize), publication in language and social psychology (Harwood Award) and service to students and the community.

Tammy Gregersen is Associate Professor of Linguistics at Baylor University, USA.  She has published extensively on teacher wellbeing, individual differences, teacher education, language teaching methodology, positive psychology and nonverbal communication in language classrooms.

Sarah Mercer is Professor of Foreign Language Teaching and Head of ELT Research and Methodology at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests include all aspects of psychology related to the learning and teaching of foreign languages and she is co-editor of Multilingual Matters’ Psychology of Language Learning and Teaching book series.