Non-cognitive Skills to Be Researched: Insights Gained From Educational Psychology

How can teachers help their students to learn English effectively? What are the skills important for their growth as language learners? These are fundamental questions that many English teachers have. To keep students motivated and engaged, teachers may wonder if there are important skills other than English language proficiency. In this paper, I propose that non-cognitive skills should be studied, and I introduce three well-operationalized terms: (1) grit, (2) optimism, and (3) resilience which might help language teachers interested in dealing with the questions posed above. After I discuss the importance of focusing on non-cognitive skills in language teaching, I introduce grit, optimism, and resilience, three noteworthy research topics which are important for understanding students who are studying foreign languages in Japan. While grit has been studied extensively in recent years within the field of Applied Linguistics, the other two topics, optimism and resilience, have received less attention. Towards the end of this paper, I take another look at non-cognitive skills using insights from the field of Positive Psychology and discuss how these topics can be studied in Applied Linguistics. It is hoped that this paper informs how language teachers can better work with students. 本稿では、日本における英語学習者の非認知能力に関して研究することの重要性に関して議論をする。非認知能力をどのように定義できるかを議論したのち、グリット、楽観性、レジリエンスの３つの非認知能力を取り上げ、可能な限り応用言語学関連の先行文献を中心に紹介する。言語テストでよい成績をとるために重要な認知的能力を身に着けると同時に言語学習者としての成長に重要な非認知能力とはどのようなものであろうか、また教師はどのように効果的に英語を学習できるように手助けができるだろうか。そういった疑問に関して本稿では議論を行う。最後に国内の英語学習者の非認知能力を研究する際の注意点や留意点に関して取り上げる。