Tim Murphey

• PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
• Visiting Professor at Kanda University of International Studies

This chapter addresses the challenges of creating an equitable classroom where all participants’ voices are valued, and student leaders are nurtured. Although institutional policies may perpetuate traditional top-down power dynamics, teachers must prioritize this goal. In addition, teachers must address deficit beliefs, such as native-speakerism an...

How can we construct an educational partnership with students where we invite them to participate in the decision-making about the content of our classes? How can we create the conditions that ensure our teaching practices and students’ expectations for learning are “in sync” and enable students’ basic psychological needs of competence, autonomy, a...

We are hoping to propose a UCASA framework and welcome you to our ship! Our ship of UCASA... and UCASA stands for Universal Caring – Sharing – Advising, which definitely involves Care, Hope & Joy, all at the same time. Also a Universal Caring Sharing Advising, that is, UCASA, happens by adopting a “partnering” perspective as in anthropologist Riane...

The context of this study is a student-led “French Table”, a multi-lingual community which aims at fostering students' interests and language abilities in French and other languages. It should also be mentioned that the researchers are also Francophones and participants in the French community. This narrative inquiry collects students' reflections...

While I have found several good textbooks to use in my university classes over the years, the defining quality of my classes always seems to have been the creation and use of texts that students themselves have produced from their own experiences. In this piece, I will describe seven types of activity structure teachers can use to stimulate the pro...

In part 1 of this paper, I start with a book review of Simon Anholt’s The Good Country Equation in which he outlines some of the ways that he proposes we can change the world and still survive our own folies. I also describe his Aha! moment in which he realized that a country’s popularity was really based on how much good they did for their neighbo...

This chapter hopes to promote in our readers, colleagues, and us, our abilities to listen, ask, visualize and story-tell with more vitality, earnestness, and respect; all crucially productive leadership tools that increase the collective efficacy of our groups (Bandura 1995). And as Bandura so rightly said, “The times call for social initiatives th...

Student action logging is a very practical way for teachers to understand what their students have actually learned, what they like and do not like, and where to go next. Action logging entails notebooks and forms used to regularly record student feedback, reflections, and evaluations related to the classroom and their learning. In this paper, thre...

Finding possible ways to make work more meaningful can contribute to the psychological well-being in the jobs and lives of language teachers and their students. This study took an approach from positive psychology--which enquires into how people find, maintain or regain well-being--of presenting descriptive, rather than prescriptive, research (Seli...

In this short article, we propose that education could benefit greatly if students and teachers were tuned into the biopsychosocial parts of our holistic well-being, which is considered to be autonomy supportive, as a prerequisite of learning. Thus far, education has largely operated on a bias toward cognitive processes as the sole meaningful contr...

My father encouraged me to go to Europe the summer before my last year in high school (at 16). He thought I was going to stay in a youth hostel in Geneva, but instead someone invited me to go with him to the Alps and he taught me how to hitch-hike by sticking out your thumb on the roadside. We hitched up into the Alps together. I hitched back by my...

This chapter is a very personal and subjective overview of some potentially harmful aspects of society and education in Japan. Social psychology has warned us for many years about the danger of increasing isolation and individualization (III) along with reactive affiliations (e.g. Nazism) just for the sake of belonging to something. Fromm wrote in...

A conception of social testing is described in which students are directed to give themselves grades at two moments: first, after filling in answers that they recall alone; second, after asking others in the class for mediating help during social interaction. The first grade is an estimate of individual efforts, without social connections. The seco...

Finding possible ways to make work more meaningful can contribute to the psychological well-being in the jobs and lives of language teachers and their students.This study took an approach from positive psychology -- which enquires into how people find, maintain or regain well-being -- of presenting descriptive, rather than prescriptive, research (S...

This chapter provides details of the auto-ethnographic narratives of three different TESOL professionals who have worked in language teachers’ associations (LTAs) in different global contexts. Each of the authors has provided a personal story describing what they have contributed to LTAs as well as what they have gained from the experience. The fir...

This chapter provides details of the auto-ethnographic narratives of three different TESOL professionals who have worked in language teachers’ associations (LTAs) in different global contexts. Each of the authors has provided a personal story describing what they have contributed to LTAs as well as what they have gained from the experience. The fir...

Using the lens of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) we look at longitudinal survey results over a 3-year period for EFL students at Japanese universities. This panel study measured motivational changes across single semesters, using multiple measures. Our surveys contain questions to investigate what we call Present Communities of Imagining (PCOIz), whi...

This exploratory action research (Smith 2015) describes a new conception of testing in which students are directed to evaluate themselves (give themselves grades) at two moments in time: the first after a certain amount of time filling in answers that they can recall alone; and the second after asking others in the class for mediating help during a...

This chapter seeks to describe how we can make teaching and learning more “public and communal” so that we all (teachers and students) learn more. It also suggests that we all learn more when we actually try to teach things that we may not have fully understood yet, and that we could make this a regular part of learning in our classes. My innovatio...

This chapter seeks to describe how we can make teaching and learning more “public and communal” so that we all (teachers and students) learn more. It also suggests that we all learn more when we actually try to teach things that we may not have fully understood yet, and that we could make this a regular part of learning in our classes. My innovatio...

This exploratory action research (Smith, 2015) describes a new conception of testing in which students are directed to evaluate themselves (give themselves grades) at two moments in time: the first after a certain amount of time filling in test answers that they can recall alone; and the second after asking others in the class for mediating help du...

This chapter seeks to describe how we can make teaching and learning more "public and communal" so that we all (teachers and students) learn more. It also suggests that we all learn more when we actually try to teach things that we may not have fully understood yet, and that we could make this a regular part of learning in our classes.

Using the lens of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) we look at longitudinal survey results over a 3-year period for EFL students at Japanese universities.This panel study measured motivational changes across single semesters, using multiple measures. Our surveys contain questions to investigate what we call Present Communities of Imagining (PCOIz), whic...

Students’ social networks can become exapted (Johnson, 2010) for the purpose of increasing language learning, or any other kind of learning, as well as the promotion of well-being, through what Murphey (2014) calls the well becoming through teaching (WBTT) hypothesis. The WBTT paradigm holds that people not only learn better when teaching others, b...

Sarah Mercer is Professor of Foreign Language Teaching at the University of Graz in Austria and has published in the last few years on the self, agency, strategies, mindsets, working with narratives and, more recently, on complexity theory and its application to the language classroom. She is the author of the book Towards an Understanding of Langu...

Borrowing a meme out of Michael Moore's recent documentary "Where shall we invade next?" (great video, highly recommended), I would like for Japan to invade Finland and steal (borrow) the idea of interconnected graduate schools. Many TESOL MA programs in Japan are small and could benefit greatly from an interconnected system that encourages and all...

Educational systems endemic of demotivation might signify a stagnating rather than nurturing ecology of learning, due in part to an obstruction in the loops of shared information between the organisms within these systems, i.e., teachers, educational researchers, teacher educators, school administrators, and educational policymakers. Working within...

This action research study reports results from students (449 in phase one; 341 in phase two) in conversation-based, EFL classrooms. In phase one, we asked students, “Please describe a group of classmates that you could learn English well with. What would you all do to help each other learn better and more enjoyably?” Then in phase two, we coded th...

Much research supports the everyday therapeutic and deeper socialneurophysiological influence of singing songs alone and in groups (Austin, 2008; Cozolino, 2013; Sacks, 2007). This study looks at what happens when Japanese students teach short English affirmation songlet-routines to others out of the classroom (clandestine folk music therapy). I in...

While Inging SPAFF may sound pretty strange to you (even foreign and un-fluent) as you begin this chapter, I hope to show you that it offers familiar concepts that can inform us about fluencing. I also call upon your good will and tolerance to allow my gerundizing and acronymizing of many conventional nouns. The ‘inging’ of nouns helps us remember...

While Inging SPAAFF may sound pretty strange to you (even foreign and un-fluent) as you begin this article, I hope to show you that it offers familiar concepts that can inform us about fluencing. I also call upon your good will and tolerance to allow my gerundizing and acronymizing of many conventional nouns. The 'inging' of nouns helps us remember...

In Teaching and Researching Motivation, Zoltán Dörnyei and Erna Ushioda (2011) marvel at the ‘wave of research in Japan where demotivation among learners of English seems to be a major educational concern’ (p. 150). Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) start off with healthy motivations in primary school, with curiosity and intr...

Individual differences (IDs) is the notion that each individual person comprises a unique combination of aspects that might determine learning outcomes. Keywords: language teaching; language and social interaction; language in the classroom; identity

Critical Participatory Looping (CPL) (cf. Falout and Murphey 2010; Murphey and Falout 2010) involves returning processed data from surveys or assignments back to students for further reflection and analysis in small groups. CPL affords dialogical interaction among class members (including the teacher), which can encourage them all as agents develop...

In this chapter, we focus on the importance of groups in the language learning process and consider how several of the constructs addressed in other chapters of this book function together in group contexts. The general tendency within research in both educational psychology and second language education has been to regard the individual as the pri...

At the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2011 conference, John Schumann described how Lee, Dina, Joaquin, Mates & Schumann’s (2010) interactional instinct unfolds between infants and caregivers such that learning an L1 is assured in normal development through emotional bonding between infants and caregivers which is substantiated b...

Over four hundred students from six Japanese universities were asked to imagine their possible selves as related to English with a variety of activities. Possible selves are future-projected identities that can generate goal-oriented behaviors. The study investigated how possible selves might be used in the classroom by examining the interrelations...

This article describes some recent changes in assessment in several Asian countries and proposes that more Asian-based modeling of testing alternatives might help some institutions in other countries break out of their "entrance exam hell" mentality and shift educational assessment holistically toward a more performance and formative style. It ends...

Ƞ뀀ഀȠThis article describes some recent changes in assessment in several Asian countries and proposes that more Asian-based modeling of testing alternatives might help some institutions in other countries break out of their "entrance exam hell" mentality and shift educational assessment holistically toward a more performance and formative style. It...

Bio Data: Tim Murphey researches into sociocultural theory applications to language teaching. His co-author Joseph Falout researches into motivational variables of teachers and students in EFL contexts. James Elwood is interested in psychometrics in EFL/ESL and puppetry in the EFL classroom and Michael Hood's research interests include L2 writing a...

This exploratory study invited 285 Japanese university students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) to reflect on what demotivated and remotivated them. Students charted the ups and downs of their English learning histories and then completed a questionnaire in which they explained the causes of their demotivation and the pathways, uninten...

In this paper, we report our preliminary understandings from our qualitative readings of language learning histories (LLHs) written by 84 Japanese and 58 Taiwanese second-semester first-year university students in English. Our focus is on the social construction of learner identities and imagined communities that can nourish learning. We also note...

Researchers have pointed out that "showing concrete details of a specific life can convey a general way of life" ( Ellis , 1998, p. 1)and that "it is valid and effective to draw on personal experiences as an aid to explore a topic, as well as a prime source of data"(Gaitan, 2000, (9). As Bruner (1996), citing Kierkegaard, so aptly states, ``telling...

The study of 'group dynamics' is a vibrant academic field, overlapping diverse disciplines. It is also highly relevant to language education because the success of classroom learning is very much dependent on how students relate to each other, what the classroom climate is like, what roles the teacher and the learners play and, more generally, how...

This article reports on a content analysis of 100 short and anonymous letters of advice from second semester Japanese-university students to JHS and SHS English teachers. Students' own voices concerning their education are seldom heard and might help improve schooling. However, asking students for such input before they have contrast frames of refe...

The background literature on the repeating of a conversation partner's words, here called "conversational shadowing, shows it to be naturally occurring in L1 acquisition and adult use. This study was motivated by the question "What happens when second language learners and native speakers actively shadow each other in conversation?" I look closely...

The background literature on the repeating of a conversation partner’s words, here called conversational shadowing, shows it to be naturally occurring in L1 acquisition and adult use. This study was motivated by the question ‘What happens when second language learners and native speakers actively shadow each other in conversation?’ I look closely a...

When one system has enough flexibility (sometimes called "requisit [requisite (?)]flexibility" or "requisit [requisite (?)] variety" (Dilts, 2001) to cope with anothersystem, they are in a smooth balance. For example, the weather system and drainagesystem. As the amount of rainwater accumulates, drainage patters cope with theincrease. Social system...

A short story (Dec. 10 l993) The other day I hastily bought a new winter coat in a large mall with many stores. As I was leaving the mall I noticed another coat in another store that was the dream coat I really wanted. I agonized over having bought the other coat and wondered if my Japanese was up to being able to explain to the salesman in the fir...

Murphey and Alber (1985) postulated a pop song (PS) register and described it as the "motherese of adolescents" and as "affective foreigner talk" because of the simple and affect language. The PS register was further characterised as a "teddy-bear-in-the-ear" to capture its risk-less communicative qualities. More detailed analyses of a larger corpu...

This hypothesis raising article deals with the relationship between four phenomena: (1) involuntary verbal rehearsal, also called the “Din in the head”, (2) Piaget's egocentric speech, (3) Vygotsky's inner speech, and (4) the song-stuck-in-my-head (SSIMH) phenomena. The similarity of the Din to the SSIMH phenomenon is suggested based on a tentative...

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A discussion of the use of music activities in teaching English as a second language describes experiences with two different teaching environments and examines the reasons for the success of the approach. In one program, children aged 7 to 17 in an international summer camp learned English through songs and other music-related activities. The youn...

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Recent research in first and second language acquisition has indicated that the adult native speaker's adjustment of register when speaking to a learner plays a significant role in promoting second language acquisition. Brown (1977) characterises mothers, or baby talk (BT), as the simple code spoken to infants. This code is heavily charged with aff...

Swiss adolescents are in contact with more than 70 minutes a day of English Language Music (ELM) in their natural environment [in1984, today (2018 posting date) probably double that]. That's more than eight hours a week of contact time. As EFL teachers, what is the importance of these findings. Teachers are usually very interested in what their stu...

communicates,and models good,teaching more,clearly to others than abstract analytic statements. Below we look at a) the theory of identity and narrative construction, b) the stories we tell ourselves about teachers who impressed us and their impact on our teaching, and c) ways that teachers can formally and informally tell more stories to understan...

At present Japan's average class sizes in schools are 25% to 30% larger than those for other developed (OECD) countries. Many existing studies point to the possibility of a crucial 'tipping point' for the number of students in classes. Below this point, teachers can get to know students well enough to have caring and supportive relationships which...

Insert Japanese Abstract here ___________________ I alone cannot,step out from,the world,I constructed. If I

Self and other modelling (SAOM) describes the noticing of positive characteristics in ourselves and in others that help people learn more efficiently. While the words ―self and other modelling‖ seem to present two distinct processes, I hope to convince readers by the end that it is the dialectic of these two modelling processes and their co-constru...

Typescript. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Florida. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-74).