W6 |05-30-2020| Attributional Tendencies
Attributions refer to inferences individuals make to explain events and behaviors. Those inferences can be placed on external and internal causes. This is another interesting feature that comes and varies with culture as individuals will find internal or external explanations to certain events and behaviors that affect them or others.
For example, a person might attribute getting a promotion to his hard work for a long time. This is an internal attribution that explains his promotion. On the contrary, if that same person considers he got the promotion because a boss spoke well about him, or his co-working team did a great job, that is an external explanation of that same event. This is a characteristic also greatly influenced by beliefs, values, and religion. It has an influence about how reality is interpreted too.
Some attributions might be reasonable (I got a cero in my test because I didn't study) while others can be beyond reason (The whole world is against me that why I couldn't study for that test...). As we can see, these attributions can filter the experiences students live within a course. A common possible situation could be a teacher being blamed for "bad teaching" and that the cause of low grades. Whether the teacher might have to check on his way of teaching, it can also represent a student's external attribution of his or her failure. It is important for teachers to help students reason the real causes of success and failure in their studies, so they can properly address and work on them.
A language multi-cultural class will bring such situations. A teacher have then the main role of helping students recognize principal and real external or internal attributions concerning their studies and performance.
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TESOL 103 Class Assignment - BYUI