Attributional Tendencies, lesson 6

Attributional tendencies

Professor Iver, from BYUI taught in an class;Attributional tendencies refer to what do we attribute success, to what do we attribute our personal failures, to what do we attribute the successes of others, to what do we attribute the failures of others. In our culture, in all cultures, we're always attributing things to other things, like other causes. I'll give you some examples here in a minute.

There is a popular in saying in my country, De tal palo tal astilla, which means, Like father like Son, such saying declares that our children are like the consequence of our good or bad teaching. When our kids are misbehaving, we feel as we have failed, and when they are gaining progress we feel succeeded,  but are really the parents responsable for  all their children decisions, either good or bad?

For some cultures they are, and also the children try their best to honor their parents by their achievements.  For some cultures success means getting an education,  having a family, being married, or having a great job, or having children. As you can see every culture attributes succeed or failure to what they determined as good or wrong, or to an inner or outer influence. In some cases it is irrational and in some is understandable.

For example in my country many years ago it was not good seen that men make home shores because it was attributed to only female as their queen of home, but lately rules have change. It is taught  that since we all partake of the benefits of home we all must take care of it. An since many woman have a job, man also can help with home shores.

In some cultures parents are in charge of their children marriage, they choose not just the wedding gown but also the groom or bride. Would you accept that? Maybe yes or maybe not, but if it was your culture paradigms you would see it natural.

It is time to realized that we as cultures have different attribution tendencies and that those differences exist but they can gather us instead of separate us. In a TESOL classroom, there might be different attributed tendencies, for some cultures respect  for the teachers means, absolute submission, and for some students and teachers are equal, so it will be good to find out what tendencies have your students to better help them in the process of learning.