Factors affecting language learning
- 1. Factors affecting language learning Stage 1-Session 1: Learner Characteristics
- 2. Overview “Teachers should be especially interested in differences among language learners because in that sense teachers will find ways to help their students become more successful. Language learners differ in emotions, language aptitude, gender, learning styles, approaches to language learning, and age. By knowing learner characteristics teachers are sometimes able to help students develop more positive characteristics and become better language learners. Other times, teachers are able to adjust language teaching approaches for their particular students and teaching situation. Many educators feel that helping students become better language learners is essential so that they can become more autonomous and extend their language learning beyond the classroom”. (Horowitz, (2008, p. 3) 2
- 3. 1 Internal or Individual Factors that affect language learning
- 4. Internal/Individual factors 1. Age 2. Aptitude 3. Motivation and Attitudes 4. Personality 5. Cognitive Style/Learning Style 6. Hemisphere specialization 7. Learning Strategies 4
- 5. ¿Do age plays a major role in making decisions on how and what to teach?
- 6. Age Harmer (2004) indicated that “The age of our students is a major factor in our decisions about how and what to teach. People of different ages have different needs, competences, and cognitive skills.” It is generally believed that children have an advantage over adults in learning languages, children seem to pick up new languages without effort because of the plasticity of a young brain. The main difference between children, adolescents and adults has to do with their maturity level, which means they learn in different ways. 6
- 7. Children • Respond to meaning (even if they don´t understand word). • Their understanding comes from what they see and hear. • Abstract concepts are difficult to grasp. • Need individual attention an teacher´s approval. • Are keen on talking about themselves. • Get easily bored 7 Suggestions for teaching… • Use gestures, intonation and demonstrations. • Be clear and direct in how you speak. • Teach language through games. • Use physical actions to produce language. • Organize teaching around themes. • Promote their imagination and creativity. • Promote interaction and talk. • Reward them • Surprise them by using different objects such as ball or puppet. • Change the classroom setting. • Formal grammar teaching might not be beneficial.
- 8. Adolescents • Greater ability for abstract thought. • Are notoriously hard to please • They are passionate committed when they are engaged. • They are extremely vulnerable to negative judgments. • Beginning to increase their experience of life. • Cognitive skills are develop at around age 15. 8 Suggestions for teaching… • Have a clear structure to your lessons. • Adapt your lessons to different learning styles. • Expose them to different cultures. • Give them something different to learn about the language. • Teach with examples rather than rules • Reward good learning, to avoid disruptive behaviour. • Take an interest in your students’ lives beyond the classroom. • Be a positive role model. • Praise them
- 9. Adults • Can concentrate for longer periods. • They tend to be more disciplined. • Can learn in more abstract ways. • They are critical of teaching methods. • They are anxious because they have experienced failure. • May not be willing to make mistakes or take risks. Suggestions for teaching… • Use real-life situations and their own life experiences. • Use English as a practical communication tool. • Be aware on how they want to learn. Suit their learning tastes. • Ask them detailed questions to understand your learners' needs. • The most common area they want to focus is their fluency. • Offer them achievable activities. • Have mature cognitive skills. 9
- 10. • Gender is often referred to the roles assumed and performed by males and females students, their attitudes and behaviors shown in the English class. • Several studies on this aspect have found that females have more positive attitude towards learning a second language than males. • Studies also have shown that low-achieving boys tend to drop L2 classes more than low-achieving girls. • Girls may be motivators to male-students, in many cases girls’ leadership and coordination in team work may be necessary in the ESL classroom environment. Gender 10
- 11. • According to Neufel (1978), some students have innate abilities for learning languages than others. • Aptitude is a specific talent for language, different from intelligence. • Aptitude has high relation to language learning success, while intelligence does not. • “Researchers interested in cognitive differences between language learners have turned their attention from language aptitude to learning styles, since language teachers must teach all their students and not just those who score well on language aptitude tests.” (Horowitz, (2008, p. 12) 11
- 12. Motivation and Attitudes • Language learners have very different goals for language learning. • Motivation is the thoughts and feelings which make us want to and continue to want to do something and which turn our wishes into action. • Many scholars have found a strong relationship between motivation and language learning achievement. • Close tied to motivation is learner attitudes towards the new language and culture • Gardner (1985) reminds us that learning environments has a strong influence on the actual attitudes and motivations that learners hold. 12
- 13. Personality variables and their connection with SLA success 11 Personality variable Definition Connection with SLA success Self-esteem Feeling of self-worth of the individual. Types: overall self-assessment, specific self-esteem and task self-esteem Extroversion-introversion Extroverts are sociable, risk taking lively and active. Introverts are quiet and prefer non-social activities. +++ connections with basic interpersonal skills. + connections with reading and grammar skills. Risk-taking Willingness to take risks + connections in moderate risk-taking for testing hypothesis about language. Empathy Ability to put oneself in another´s place Inhibition Extent to which individuals build defenses to protect their egos. Tolerance of ambiguity Ability to deal with ambiguous stimuli. + connections with listening comprehension skills A + indicates a weak correlation, whereas +++ shows very strong connections
- 14. Affective filter 14 • Students learned at different paces the factor that promotes language acquisition is the amount of anxiety. • Low anxiety has to be directed somewhere Affective filter is a representation of the way in which affective factors such as attitude, anxiety, competitiveness, and other emotional responses can help or hinder language learning. .
- 15. Cognitive/Learning Styles • Preferred way in which individuals process information or approach a task. It is a a tendency, but those individuals favoring one style may switch to another in some circumstances. • The cognitive styles that have received most attention are Field-dependent students and Field-independent students. 15
- 16. Cognitive/ Learning Styles Conformist (Field independent passive) - Authority oriented learners - Classroom dependent -Non-communicative classroom -Visual Convergers (Field independent active) -Analytic learners -Solitary -Independent -learn about language not usage Concrete learners (Field dependent passive) -Classroom oriented -Learn from experience -language as communication -Games & groups -People-oriented Communicative learners (Field dependent active) -Out-of-class activities -Integrated skills -Take risks -Real-life situations -Social independence Analytic Active Holistic Passive 16
- 17. Teaching techniques appropriate for each cognitive style 17 Analytical-Abstract Holistic-Concrete Active Convergers • Good at interactive instructions using computers, classroom diaries or portfolios • Like focus-on-form teaching • Like individual pen-and-paper work in which analysis is involved • Like reflecting about the language Communicative • Active participants • Like any technique that allows independent discovery • Inductive learners who like to figure out rules • These are the students who will ask difficult and brilliant questions Passive-reflective Conformists • Like to be pointed out the objectives of the session • Like the use of visual materials • Visual orientation for learning • Reference guide and handouts which can be read are very useful Concrete • Reading method with demonstration • Like workshops, interactive tutorial with quick responses • Good at group-work cooperation • Like games • Like to use the language in communication or to “see” it used.
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- 23. Learning strategies • Are defined as “specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques such as seeking out conversation partners, or giving oneself encouragement to tackle a difficult language task, used by students to enhance their own learning”. (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992, p. 63). • Learning strategies are classified into six groups: cognitive, metacognitive, memory-related, compensatory, affective and social. 23
- 24. Learning strategies 22 Learning strategy Function Examples Cognitive Enable the learner to manipulate the language material in direct ways. Reasoning, analysis, note-taking, summarizing, synthesizing, outlining, etc. Metacognitive Are employed for managing the learning process overall Identifying one’s own learning style preferences needs, planning for an L2 task, gathering and organizing materials, arranging a study space, monitoring mistakes, evaluating task success, etc. Memory-related Enable learners to retrieve information Through acronyms, rhyming, mental picture, body movement (TPR), flashcards, location (on page or board), etc. Compensatory Are used for speaking and writing known as communication strategies Guessing form context in listening and reading, using synonyms, the missing word for speaking and writing activities, using gestures or pause words. Affective Identify one’s mood and anxiety level Talk about feelings, rewarding oneself for good performance, deep breathing, positive self-talk. Social Help the learner work with others and understand the target culture as well as the language Asking questions, get verification, asking for clarification of a confusing point, asking for help in doing a task, talking with a native-speaking partner, exploring social and cultural norms.
- 25. Language Levels 22 Real beginner/f alse beginner Elementary Lower intermediate/ pre-intermediate Mid-intermediate Upper-intermediate Advanced
- 26. Individual Variations • Harmer points out that “If some people are better at some things than others, this would indicate that there are differences in the ways individual brains work. It also suggests that people respond differently to the same stimuli”. (Harmer, 2001, p.45-46) • How might such variation determine the ways in which individuals learned most readily? How might affect the ways in which we teach? • The following theories have tried to account individual variations. 23
- 27. The following theories have tried to account individual variations: 27
- 30. Hemisphere specialization • Each hemisphere has different functions, but the differences are continuous. • The dominant hemisphere. Is the one opposite to the hand we use, so if we are right-handed, our dominant hemisphere is the left one and vice versa. 25
- 31. Hemisphere specialization: Language functions within the brain 31 Left Hemisphere Corpus Callosum Right Hemisphere • Speech • Writing • Temporal-order judgments • Language • Reading • Associative thought • Calculation • Analytic processing • Right visual field • Writing (Right-Handed) • Holistic processing • Stereognosis (faculty of perceiving understanding) • Nonverbal environmental sounds • Visuospatial skills • Nonverbal ideation • Recognition and memory of melodies • Left visual field • Writing (Left-handed)
- 33. 2 External factors that affect language learning Learning and teaching contexts
- 34. Acquisition vs. Learning 34 “The result of language acquisition … is subconscious. We are generally not consciously aware of the rules of the languages we have acquired. Instead, we have a ‘feel’ for the correctness. Grammatical sentences ‘sound’ right, or ‘feel’ right, and errors feel wrong, even if we do not consciously know what rule was violated”. (Krashen, 1982, p. 10) “We will use the term ‘learning’ from now on to refer to conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them. In nontechnical terms, learning is ‘knowing about’ a language, known to most people as ‘grammar’ or ‘rules’. Some synonyms include formal knowledge of a language or explicit meaning”. (Krashen, 1982, p. 10)
- 35. How do we acquire language? 35 • Stephen Krashen is an American linguist who studied how people acquire and learn language, he believes that language is acquired through comprehensible input in a low anxiety environment. • Input is the information that students receive from others and the teacher. And must be “comprehensible, developmentally appropriate, redundant, and accurate” (Kagan, 1995). So, students must be able to understand the basic message of the information they are receiving. • “It is especially critical for them to receive comprehensible input from their teachers and classmates” (Haynes, 2005). • The input must be received from many different sources for the information to move from “short-term comprehension to long-term acquisition” (Kagan, 1995). Also, the messages must be “slightly above their current English level” (Haynes, 2005).
- 36. How do we acquire language? 36 • Intake is the particular amount of input that students process to build up internal knowledge. • Output is the act of producing language (speaking or writing). • Comprehension is the result of language acquisition. • The best way for a second language learner to acquire a new language is through receiving lots of input and having the opportunity to produce a lot of output. The best way for a student to have ample opportunities for input and output is through interaction.
- 37. 37 Student talking time (STT) Teacher talking time (TTT) Is the time that teachers spend talking in class. Teachers have to regulate their TTT, reduce the amount of TTT as much as possible, to allow students to speak and learn from speaking
- 38. 38 Natural contexts -Interaction with L2 speakers -More fluent -More grammatical mistakes -Acquisition speed depends on formal instruction Educational Contexts -Higher motivation level due to social and economical advancement. -Not native-like proficiency -Teacher, methodology, materials, technology -Literacy level -Increases accuracy Instructional method must be matched to individuals learners’ needs.
- 39. References Diessel, H. (n.d.). Stephen Krashen Acquisition vs. learning. Retrieved October 18, 2014, from http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~x4diho/LA_Krashen.pdf Harmer, J. (2007). Chapter 2: How to be a good learner. In How to teach English (New ed., pp. 7-14). Harlow: Pearson Longman. Harmer, J. (2001). Chapter 3: Describing Learners. In The practice of English language teaching (3rd ed., pp. 37-49). Essex, England: Longman Haynes, J. (2005). Comprehensible Input and Output. Retrieved October 18, 2014 from everythingESL.net: https://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/view.d2l?tId=14348644 &d2l_body_type=1&ou=1579251 Factors Affecting SLA success. (2014). 1-25. Retrieved from http://www4.ujaen.es/~gluque/Topic4factors.pdf Horwitz, E. (2008). What do language teachers think about? In Becoming a language teacher: A practical guide to second language learning and teaching (2nd ed., pp. 1-24). Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. 39
- 40. References Kagan, S. (1995).We Can Talk: Cooperative Learning in the Elementary ESL Classroom. Retrieved October 18, 2014 from CAL Digests:https://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/view.d2l?tId=14348648&d2l_body_type=1&ou=157 9251 Oxford, R. (2003). Language Learning Styles and Strategies: And overview. 1-25. Retrieved October 17, 2014, from http://web.ntpu.edu.tw/~language/workshop/read2.pdf Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., & Williams, M. (2011). Unit 13 Learner characteristics. In The TKT course: Teaching knowledge test : Modules 1, 2 and 3 (2nd ed., pp. 72-73). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. What is Comprehensible Input? (Excerpt from Teaching English-Language Learners with Learning Difficulties). (2010). Retrieved October 18, 2014 fromhttps://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/view.d2l?tId=14348642&d2l_body_type=1&ou=15792 51 What Type of Learner Are You? (2012, July 2). Retrieved October 15, 2014, from http://www.onlinecollege.org/what-type-learner-are-you/ 40