Focus on the language learner
- 1. Focus on the Language Learner: Motivation, Styles, and Strategies
- 2. Success in learning a foreign or second language depends on a variety of factors such as the duration and intensity of the language course, the characteristics and abilities of the teacher
- 3. Age and Gender The age factor may have some physiological basis in the way the brain handles language, there are also likely to be several other age- related factors at work. The second fator, the learner’s gender is important because research ahs consistently found girls to outdo their male peers when it comes to language learning.
- 4. Motivation Most other learner variables presuppose the existence of at least some degree of motivation. The social Nature of Second Language Motivation Motivation to learn a second language a second language is not only a communication code, but also a representative of the second language.
- 5. Motivation as a Dynamic Process Second language motivation is not stable and static but is rather in a continuous process of change. Dornyei argues that motivation undergoes a cycle that has at least three distinct phases. o Motivation needs to be generated o The generated motivation needs to be actively maintained and protected o There is a third phase following the completion of the action termed ‘motivational retrospections’
- 6. The most important aspect of ‘executive motivational’ is related to the perceived quality of the learning experience. Schumann (1997) argues hat humans appraise the stimuli they receive form their environment along 5 dimensions: o Novelty o Pleasantness o Goal or need significance o Coping potential o Self and social and social image
- 7. Motivating Learners : o Creating the basic motivational conditions o Generating initial student motivation o Maintaining and protecting motivation o Encouraging positive retrospective self-evaluation
- 8. Learning Styles o Being visual, auditory or hands-on o Being more extroverted versus introverted o Being more abstract and intuitive versus more concrete and thinking in step by step sequence o Preferring to keep all options open versus being closure-oriented o Being more global versus more particular o Being more synthesizing versus being more analytic