HANGZHOU FAMILY
The Environment, a Friend or a Foe?
by Adina 邱天美
As soon as people hear the word "environment", the first thing they usually think about is pollution or the lack of clean air, especially in China. However, as an environmental psychologist, I tend to understand the environment as the space we are in and the people that we are surrounded by at a given time. With this in mind, our home, school, workplace etc are all environments that influence our behavior more than we are aware of.
who are currently studying English. Many people think that studying a language is very hard, but the space we decide to study in has a very big impact on our study outcomes. As a matter of fact, a proper physical environment can increase learning outcomes up to 25%, thus next time you face difficulties learning English, just take a closer look at the space you are in. What environmental factors should you look at?
If it's the first time you hear about environmental psychology, no worries! You are not the only one. Very few people are actually aware of this broad, yet very important field. In simple words, environmental psychology looks at how our behavior influences and is influenced by space. In other words, everything we do is space related, whether we do it alone or with others, thus the space and the people around us will influence our behavior. Starting from this idea, we can separate the environment into two parts: physical (space) and social (people). Environmental psychology has broad implications, but for the sake of clarity, in this article I will focus on the physical learning environment to emphasize its influence on our learning outcomes, more specifically in relation to language learning, given the amount of Chinese people
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Furniture Sitting in comfortable and soft chairs will make you want to spend longer time in that classroom. However, hard and uncomfortable chairs will make you involuntarily lose your patience. As a consequence, our attention span is reduced, thus not being able to fully focus, nor remember new English words. It becomes even more disturbing once back pain starts to kick in, as it won't only make you want to get out of that classroom faster, but it will also ruin your mood for the rest of the day. Layout Desks of more than two people arranged in rows in a classroom, will put you into the listening mood, not the interaction mood. If you are sitting on the side and your colleagues in the middle of the row need to go out of the classroom, they will disturb you, thus make you lose focus on the lesson. Once your attention is lost, it will be very difficult to continue
following the teacher's ideas, thus your learning outcome has been already compromised. However, a cluster type arrangement of tables (students facing each other) will make you more willing to interact with others and encourage to better cooperate in group work. When you are trying to improve your English speaking, this is definitely the type of layout that you should be looking for. Color Vivid colors in a classroom will keep you awake and help you keep your mind focused on the lesson. As
