EXPLORING THE PSYCHOLOGY OF EFL LEARNERS IN BENINESE SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Psychology contributes to improving teaching and learning in the classroom andknowledge, motivation, social interaction, and communication. Educational psychology,an umbrella term for cognitive psychology and language didactics, is also known aspsycho-pedagogy and has evolved over the last few years to analyse, understand andhelp solve problems related to learners' difficulties, such as those of English as a foreignlanguage learning. The objective of this study is to shed light on the psychology of theBeninese EFL learners. To help these learners be more successful in learning their targetlanguage, it is important to gain more insights into them by studying, throughquantitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews and focus groups) data, theirmindset, attitude, and self-perception as a learner. The research involved 37 EFL learners,5 of their teachers, and 3 pedagogical advisors who participated voluntarily. Thefindings, derived from thematic and sentiment analyses using keyword extractiontechniques, offer valuable insights for advancing language teaching methodologies.