Changing States, Changing Results

Understanding language students’ states of mind, particularly when they first enrol at university, checking whether the messages they receive from their emotional sphere pushes toward or pulls away from a successful language path becomes important for educators and tutors since their actions, procedures and praxes might have to vary accordingly in an attempt to favour students’ efficacious learning paths, induce changes or transformations when avoidance rather than action states get manifested and suggest modalities to access those internal resources which are often blocked by inhibiting beliefs. Authentic class-driven data, collected at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and systematized in the P.Æ.C.E. Corpus through the written contributions of more than 500 students of English, indicate that students approach the study of foreign languages with self-sabotaging mind states. A significant quantity of students show a variety of blocking beliefs and present limiting mind states. The present paper illustrates that, although there seems to be no specific magic formula to transform students with limited competence, low self-esteem and poor motivation into students with confidence, self-motivation and willingness to achieve their goals, the use of NLP guided visualizations within an affective-geared teaching approach greatly favours the transformation of students from ugly ducklings into swans (Landolfi 2008) and, via establishing a new set of well-formed beliefs, unlocks negative states towards a future where learning and communicating in foreign languages become tools to enrich our lives and integrate peoples in a constructive, harmonic, and healthy world.