Table of content
I. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………
II.DEVELOPMENT…………………………………………………
1. Motivation
2. Language aptitude
3. Age
4. Personality
5. Social aspects
III. Conclusion
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APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Discuss some of the factors affecting learner’s achievement in
second/ foreign language learning.
I. Introduction
Nowadays as a result of globalization, learning foreign languages
becomes a common trend throughout the world. Together with the spread of
foreign language teaching and learning is the development of theories on
second language acquisition. One of the main issues of these theories is the
investigation into factors that can influence learners’ second language
achievements. Many researchers have stressed the importance of
understanding affective factors in second language learning. For example,
Arnold (2000, P. 2) gives out two reasons to explain the importance. Firstly,
“attention to affective aspects can lead to more effective language learning”.
Secondly, attention to affective aspects can contribute to the whole-person
development, which is “beyond language teaching and even beyond what
has traditionally been considered the academic realm”. It can be deduced
that affective factors do play a significant role in both foreign language
learning and teaching. The factors: motivation, language aptitude, age and
personality (self-confidence and anxiety) are the most affective ones in
second language learning.
II. Development
Firstly, we must understand what second language acquisition is.
Second language acquisition is concerned with the study of the way in which
an individual becomes able to use one or more language different from his
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first language. This process can take place in a natural setting or through
formal classroom instruction, and, although the degree of proficiency that
can be attained is a controversial topic, it can start at childhood or during the
adult age (Krashen, 1982).
1.
Motivation
Motivation is one of the important aspects of second language
acquisition. Motivation is a kind of desire for learning. It is very difficult to
teach a second language in a learning environment if the learner does not
have a desire to learn a language. Reece & Walker (1997), express that
motivation is a key factor in the second language learning process. They
stress that a less able student who is highly motivated can achieve greater
success than the more intelligent student who is not well motivated.
Sometimes students may become highly motivated and the task of the
teacher is to maintain motivation of the students. The task of the teacher is to
maximize the motivation. Shulman (1986) expresses that students’ learning
is facilitated most effectively when students are motivated, and that
motivation can be enhanced through the creation of a positive affective
climate. Crookes & Schmidt (1991) defines the motivation in terms of
choice, engagement and persistence, as determined by interest, relevance,
expectancy and outcome.
Motivation depends on the social interaction between the teacher and the
learner. To be able to create an effective learning environment having highly
motivated students necessitates strong interpersonal and social interaction.
According to Cooper & McIntyre (1998), if it is accepted that learning is
claimed to be dependent on certain types of interpersonal and social
interaction, it follows that circumstances that make these forms of
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interaction desirable or at least congenial become a necessary prerequisite of
effective learning. Kristmanson (2000), offers that an effective learning
environment can be achieved by:
- Encouraging and supporting students at all times but especially when they
are struggling or lacking confidence in certain areas.
- Being energetic and enthusiastic about what you are teaching and on those
days when you do not have that energy, provide activities that require the
learners to put forth the majority of the energy.
- Creating an atmosphere in which students are not afraid to make mistakes
and are encouraged to take risks.
- Avoiding tension-causing strategies such as surprise quizzes, overly
competitive activities, putting students in front of their peers with no
warning or chance for preparation, and correcting errors in a negative,
accusatory fashion.
- Allowing students opportunities to talk about themselves, their interests,
and their culture.
- Providing opportunities for interaction in the target language in and outside
the language learning environment through preplanned and spontaneous
activities,
- Encouraging goal setting and a sense of dedication and continuous
commitment to the language learning task through meaningful, relevant and
authentic language learning activities.
- Encouraging learners to seek out opportunities in their lives that will help
in the learning of the target language.
- Creating, through the presentation of attainable goals and reasonable
challenges, a learning environment with a definite potential for success.
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- Recognizing the "little successes", improvements and progress of all
students both individually and with the entire group.
1.2. Language aptitude
Aptitude is a specific talent for language, different from general
intelligence: Aptitude has a high correlation to language learning success,
while intelligence does not. Language learning aptitude refers to the
“prediction of how well, relative to other individuals, an individual can learn
a foreign language in a given amount of time and under given conditions. As
with many measures of aptitude, language learning aptitude is thought to be
relatively stable throughout an individual’s lifetime. Analyzing what he calls
“learner factors”, Jakobovits (1970) divided into four sets of factors:
aptitude, intelligence, perseverance or motivation, and other factors. These
factors account for the various degrees of success or failure for a foreign
language learner. Leon Jakobovits set up the following table of the
percentage of these four categories:
Aptitude
33%
Intelligence
20%
Perseverance or motivation
33%
Other factors
14%
From the table above, it is obvious that the first category (aptitude) comes
out with the same high percentage as (perseverance or motivation) and it is
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higher than intelligence factor. There is; however, not very much research on
language because it is something teachers are powerless to alter. Language
aptitude consists of four sub-components (according to Carroll, 1991):
phonetic coding ability, associative memory, grammatical sensitivity and
inductive language analytic ability. Phonetic coding ability is an ability to
identify distinct sounds, to form associations between those sounds and
symbols representing them, and to retain these associations. Associative
memory is the ability to learn associations between sounds and meanings
rapidly and efficiently, and to retain these associations. Grammatical
sensitivity is the ability to recognize the grammatical functions of words (or
other linguistic entities) in sentence structures. And inductive language
analytic ability is the ability to infer or induce the rules governing a set of
language materials, given samples of language materials that permit such
inferences.
1.3 Age
One of the important factors affecting the process of second language
acquisition is a learner’s age. According to Collier (1988) successful
language acquisition depends on the learner’s age. In one of the earliest
studies on second language acquisition Lenneberg (1967), claims that there
is a certain period in acquisition of a second language. In this period, which
is identified critical period hypothesis in language acquisition, Lenneberg
theorizes that the acquisition of language is an innate process determined by
biological factors which limit the critical period for acquisition of a language
from roughly two years of age to puberty. Lenneberg believes that after
lateralization, which is a process by which the two sides of the brain develop
specialized functions, the brain loses plasticity and lateralization of the
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language function is normally completed by puberty, making postadolescent language acquisition difficult.
After Lenneberg, in some other studies examining subjects’
pronunciation after over five years of exposure to the second language, it
was found that the large majority of adults retain their accent when the
second language is acquired after puberty, whereas children initiating second
language acquisition before puberty have little or no foreign accent. In two
different studies on assessing students’ acquisition of pronunciation after
three years of exposure to the second language, Fathman (1975) and
Williams (1979), found that younger students had retained more accent-free
pronunciation when compared to adolescents just past puberty.
While critical period studies usually focused on child-adult
differences and suggested that younger learners should be superior learners,
studies of oral language skill acquisition by children of different ages have
led to the conclusion that older children acquire faster than younger children
(Collier, 1988). In a study made by Ervin-Tripp (1974), it was found that
after nine months of instruction in French, 7- to-9-year-olds performed better
than 4- to 6-year-olds did in comprehension, imitation, and conversation.
Fathman (1975), found that in the first year of study, 11- to 15-year-olds
were significantly better at acquiring English as a second language than 6- to
10-year-olds in pronunciation, morphology, and syntax.
As to academic purposes, students need to acquire as complete to a
range of skills in the second language as possible. In school language
becomes abstract and focus of every content area task, with all meaning and
all demonstration of knowledge expressed through oral and written forms of
language as students move from one grade level to the next. Some
researchers made comparisons on the performance of students of different
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ages on language tasks associated with school skills, including reading and
writing. Some researches have been conducted by comparing the
performance of students of different ages on language tasks associated with
language skills, including reading and writing, In some of these studies, both
short-term and long term, it was found that students between the ages of 8
and 12 are faster in early acquisition of second language skills, and over
several years’ time they maintain this advantage over younger students at the
age of 4 to 7 years (Collier, 1988).
From these studies, it can be asserted that older students between the
ages of 8 to 12 are faster, more efficient acquirers of school language than
younger students between the ages of 4 to 7. In many of the studies, young
children beginning the study of a second language between the ages of 4 and
7 take much longer to master skills needed for academic purposes than older
children do. The reason why students acquire the language skills better is
that children who enter school at the age of 5 or 6 have not completed
acquisition of their first language, which continues through at least age 12.
From ages 6 to 12, children still are in the process of developing in first
language the complex skills of reading and writing, besides, continuing
acquisition of more complex rules of morphology and syntax, elaboration of
speech acts, expansion of vocabulary, semantic development, and even some
subtleties in phonological development (McLaughlin, 1984).
1.4 Personality
Self-confidence is considered to be another significant factor, which
profoundly influences the learners‟ language performance. The students who
lack of confidence are usually found to be extremely fearful and timid,
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reluctant to express their opinions and even unable to utter a complete
meaningful sentence in class. H. Brown (2001, p. 23) phrased this factor as
“I can do it” or self-esteem principle, i.e., a learner believes in his or her own
ability to accomplish the task. “The eventual success that learners attain in a
task is at least partially a factor of their belief that they indeed are fully
capable of accomplishing the task.” Of all the possible characteristics that
can affect language learning, self-confidence is very important for the
following reasons. The first reason is that self-confidence will encourage a
person to try new learning. One would be willing to take some risks in order
to be successful. Another reason is that a confident person rarely gives up.
With these abilities, a confident student can succeed in language learning.
Finally, the studies of self-confidence have meaningful implications for
language teachers. What should be solved is how to help students to
establish and strengthen their self-confidence when they learn the second
language. Successful language learning only takes place in an environment
where learners‟ values and positive attitudes are promoted, where learners
approach learning with confidence and joy, where learners can use the target
language at ease. Therefore, teachers should spare no efforts to create
conditions that can be conducive to students‟ self-confidence.
Anxiety is another particular affective factor. It is one of the most
prominent and pervasive emotions. According to Arnold (2000, P. 59),
language anxiety “ranks high among factors influencing language learning,
regardless of whether the setting is informal (learning language on the
streets‟) or formal (in the classroom)”. Students with anxiety attending the
class will feel nervous and afraid to cooperate with teachers and then they
cannot concentrate on the learning points and waste their energy or they just
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want to flee the learning task. According to Krashen(1981, P. 23), “The
students who feels at ease in the classroom and likes the teacher may seek
out more intake by volunteering ... and may not be more accepting of the
teacher as a source of input.” Ellis (1994) divided anxiety into three kinds,
i.e., trait anxiety, state anxiety, and situation-specific anxiety. The study of
situational anxiety has received considerable attention in SLA research. It
consists of the anxiety which is aroused by a specific type of situation or
events such as public speaking, examinations, or class participation.
Research indicates that learners frequently experience „language anxiety‟, a
type of situation-specific anxiety associated with attempts to learn an L2 and
communicate in it. Second language learners‟ anxiety is due to their
competitive natures. They tend to become anxious when they compare
themselves with other learners in the class and found themselves less
proficient. The anxiety will decrease when they perceive themselves
becoming more proficient, and therefore better able to compete.
1.5 Social aspects
There have been many different approaches to sociolinguistic study of
second-language acquisition. Ellis identifies three types of social structure
which can affect the acquisition of second languages: sociolinguistic setting,
specific social factors, and situational factors. Sociolinguistic setting refers
to the role of the second language in society, such as whether it is spoken by
a majority or a minority of the population, whether its use is widespread or
restricted to a few functional roles, or whether the society is predominantly
bilingual or monolingual. Ellis also includes the distinction of whether the
second language is learned in a natural or an educational setting. Specific
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social factors that can affect second-language acquisition include age,
gender, social class, and ethnic identity, with ethnic identity being the one
that has received most research attention. Situational factors are those which
vary between each social interaction. For example, a learner may use more
polite language when talking to someone of higher social status, but more
informal language when talking with friends.
There have also been several models developed to explain social effects on
language acquisition. Schumann's Acculturation Model proposes that
learners' rate of development and ultimate level of language achievement is
a function of the "social distance" and the "psychological distance" between
learners and the second-language community. In Schumann's model the
social factors are most important, but the degree to which learners are
comfortable with learning the second language also plays a role. Another
sociolinguistic model is Gardner's socio-educational model, which was
designed to explain classroom language acquisition. The inter-group model
proposes "ethno linguistic vitality" as a key construct for second-language
acquisition. Language socialization is an approach with the premise that
"linguistic and cultural knowledge are constructed through each other", and
saw increased attention after the year 2000. Finally, Norton's theory of social
identity is an attempt to codify the relationship between power, identity, and
language acquisition.
III. Conclusion
As a teacher of English, I find it necessary to study factors affecting
learner’s second language learning. If we have as a good understanding of
these factors affecting learners’ achievements in second language
acquisition; we can choose appropriate approaches and design suitable
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materials to facilitate our students.
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