I had the pleasure recently of being interviewed by Sylvia Guinan on the role of empathy in language learning in Teacher Appreciation week. The interview with me formed part of a 2 hr session on WizIQ with various language experts from around the world, which explored the role of empathy in language learning.
In the interview I put the view that there IS a difference between feelings and emotions and understanding the distinction AND bringing this understanding into our lives could help us all to become better language learners. I also looked at the role of the intellect and how its over emphasis in our education has in fact been a key reason for the poor outcomes we see in learning of languages once we hit the school years, and on.
Even though the session was designed for language teachers I am sure that many language learners could also gain benefit, especially of the first 80% of the interview. The last bit does really does talk to language teachers specifically.
The audio I have loaded here has been stripped from a webinar type of interview and has been edited to enable to stand on its own. Some of the audio quality is not as good as it could be but only in a few small areas. Otherwise the quality is quite acceptable.
The interview was held on WizIQ (an online educational platform for learners and teachers). For those of you who would just like to listen just to the interview with me, here is the audio track:
For those of you who would like to see the video, you can view it beloe. Go to 1:30 minutes or if you can view the whole 2+ hr session including interviews with other language teachers and experts etc:
The role of our feelings, emotions and intellect are elaborated in my book Language Learning Unlocked, which has just been released. Bringing these understandings into our life can help take back ownership of the language learning capacities we were all endowed with.