Title:
NUDGING ESL LEARNING IMPROVING SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING BY IMPROVING DECISION ARCHITECTURES

Authors:
Till Neuhaus ,Germany

Abstract:
The concept of Nudging describes the optimization of decision architectures. Nudging tries to improve decisions in certain situations by exploiting irrationalities in human perception as well as decision making. Nudging has been applied across a wide spectrum of areas and is currently considered one of the most potent approaches applied by administrations and governments worldwide. While Nudging and its underlying psychology has had tremendous impact on a plethora of fields, schools and the educational sector in general have barely taken up any nudgerelated ideas. However, schools can be considered an ecosystem in which countless decisions are made every day by teachers, students, learners, and parents and an improvement of these decisions could have meaningful consequences for all actors involved. This paper tries to cross the bridge between the educational sector and the concept of Nudging by introducing the concept and then outlining, contextualizing, and explaining two cases from the field of ESL learning in which schools and teachers already – maybe un- or subconsciously – applied effective Nudges. This paper aims at raising awareness for the importance of decision architectures in schools and education in general and language learning in particular