An Approach to Build Trust in Opposition to the Fear of Making Mistakes in English: A Circle of Dialogue Based on Positive Psychology
摘要
In the early 1900s, positive psychology (PP) had its earliest insights and later it was constituted as a subfield of psychology, which, by that time, was mostly dedicated to healing people from mental illnesses. Focused on another mission of psychology, PP is concerned with making the lives of all people more productive and fulfilling, by promoting and exploring positive emotions. In the last decade, investigations on the concept of emotions have widely increased in the context of second language acquisition as they acknowledge and discuss its important role in the context of teaching and learning a foreign language. This work is based on doctoral research that investigated 12 undergraduate students of a Language Course Degree from a public university in the South of Brazil. It was conducted with the use of circles of dialogue, from restorative justice, to provide the participants with an environment that would welcome their conflicts, paradoxes, emotions, and beliefs through active listening. The investigation unveiled learners’ emotions such as embarrassment, frustration, and fear. Thus, the aim of this study is to recognize the contributions of PP in the context of second language acquisition and to propose a circle of dialogue based on the PERMA Model (positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, achievement) from PP. The focus of the proposal is to approach the emotion of fear and suggest trust as an antidote for it. Participation in the circle of dialogue may promote well-being and contribute to the learning process through valued subjective experiences, at the individual and group levels.