What makes us Different Language Learners?

The main topic of this academic blog is related to the most important factors that affect the way in which people learn foreign languages. These aspects can be divided into 2 main groups: the ones related to contextual sources of variation and the ones related to individual differences that influence learning. The former group includes, for instance, the different phenomena that occur in our society (large culture), in our classrooms (small culture) and in our foreign or second language learning environments. All of these settings influence, in one way or another, the process we go through when we learn a new language.

For instance, during this complex progression, all of our cultural baggage plays a part and it definitely determines the way we learn. In addition, the classroom is another setting that affects this process, since the relationships that are built between the students and the teacher influence our motivation and autonomy. If the teacher is autocratic perhaps the students will feel intimidated and their anxiety will increase. However, if the teacher is democratic and he/she is concerned about his/her students' participation, the learners' motivation and confidence will grow and the learning process will be facilitated.

On the other hand, there are several individual differences that we as future teachers have to take into account when teaching English as a foreign language, because they deeply influence the way our students learn. These variables can be stylistic, cognitive, affective or demographical, but the most important one, according to my opinion, is motivation, which is an affective factor along with anxiety and self-confidence. Thus, we can find several types of motivation, but the most common classification is between instrumental and integrative motivation, which we will discuss later. Some other crucial factors are the student’s learning styles and strategies, which will be also deeply explained later. And last but not least, there are some demographical aspects to pay attention to, such as age, social background, and gender.

All of these factors, whether they are contextual or individual, will be explained and analyzed in a very thorough way so as to show future teachers of English their great importance, and make them realize that these variables can turn our profession a bit more difficult and demanding than we might think it is.

What are the Contextual Factors that affect our Language Learning?

Contextual sources of variation include ethnic and social backgrounds, classroom interaction and foreign and second language environments and the main idea of this section is to see how these factors influence language learning.

Large culture refers to the social, historical, political and economical aspects that integrate the cultural baggage of a specific community, which influences people’s personality and learning process. For instance, there are some cultures which are defined as individualistic, such as the United States and Europe in general. People belonging to this type of culture behave in a way that is very centered on their own persona, giving great importance to privacy, autonomy, and their personal goals. On the other hand, collectivist societies, like China, appreciate collaboration, tolerance, norms and hierarchies. This is why, in general, collectivist cultures have low Tolerance of Ambiguity, and they use rules to avoid uncertainty, while individualist cultures are willing to take risks and like changes, which demonstrates that usually they have a high level of Tolerance of Ambiguity.

This classification of cultures according to people’s behavior and characteristics is very relevant for language learning, since it shows that people prefer or use certain styles of learning which are culturally and socially established. That’s why people coming from certain collective cultures prefer group work and autocratic teachers, while individualistic people prefer to work by their own and like to feel in charge of their own learning.

It is essential for every teacher to pay attention to this important aspect of learning so as to try to adapt our teaching style to the context we are working in. This is because, within our own society, there are many different types of “large cultures” that vary according to geographical or economical factors and have very distinctive features. For instance, it is not the same to be teaching in a high-class school than in one that is located in a shanty town, because although both groups of students share some historical or political aspects, the difference related to economic issues makes a great distinction regarding their social roles, skills, language, personality and even their beliefs and interests. In short, large culture and its various types are also very important for the teacher, since students’ interests and beliefs are shaped by these culture-related features affecting the dynamism of the learning and teaching process, as we can see in the following video:

You can find the comment of this video on the right side of the screen

Small culture refers to the actual location where learning takes place and where teacher-student relationships are built. Most of the time, this actual place is the classroom, but language learning can also occur in less formal situations. Within the classroom many different phenomena take place, and I call them phenomena because they are dynamic and unique processes that are different in every situation. One of those phenomena is related to the student’s perspectives on the teacher’s role. All students, whether we like it or not, have opinions about their teachers, identifying some categories that are often repeated.

These categories are: the hunging judge, entertainer, co-learner, Babysitter, etc.

Studies regarding this relationship have shown that there are 3 main teaching approaches:

• Autocratic: When the teacher is the ultimate authority and he is the only model to follow.
• Democratic: When the teacher is still seen as an authority but he acts as a guide for the students and encourages participation.
• Laissez-faire: When the teacher gives too much freedom to the students and they end up doing whatever they want.

In most cases students rejected the 2 extremes, but they felt very comfortable with the second approach. I believe this is because most people don’t like to feel intimidated and to be treated like empty vessels in a place where you have no opportunity to speak up your mind. Or, on the other hand, to be left completely alone with no guidance or support is absolutely discouraging as well. So the best alternative as teachers is to keep having the control in the classroom, but making sure that the students are also taking control of their own learning.

If you wish to learn more about different teaching approaches and how students respond to them CLICK HERE

A second language learning environment is a setting where the target language input is natural, and unlimited, since that language is the main vehicle for communication. An example of this would be learning English in the United States or any English speaking country.

On the other hand, foreign language learning environments refer to locations where the target language is not the primary mode of communication and therefore the input of the target language is very limited, for instance, learning English in Chile. In most cases, learning a language in a foreign language learning environment leads to an excessive emphasis on form and structure rather than to using the language for communicative purposes. In fact, there is a video on internet that shows this exact situation with a Chilean student.

But the main problem is that if they learn the rules by memorizing them, most problably, they will not be able to use them in connected speech and consequently, this will lower the students’ motivation and their level of English proficiency. Fortunately, what teachers can do is to try to simulate the learning of the target language in a second language environment by providing activities that are centered in developing communicative skills. In addition, since the input is limited to the language that they get in the classroom, teachers can try to encourage students to look for some other sources related to their interests to get enough input to develop a better proficiency in the foreign language.

What are the main Individual Differences that influence our language Learning?

The individual sources of variation are related to the stylistic, affective, cognitive and demographical factors that make a difference in the way every person learns. These factors are influenced at the same time, by the contextual sources of variation, which shows that although we can divide them into distinctive categories, they are always interrelated in real life. For instance, stylistic factors include learning styles, which at the same time are highly conditioned by the large culture that person is living into. Or, for instance, the type of motivation a person is experimenting is going to be influences by the kind of language learning environment that individual is immersed in, and so on and so forth. Therefore, the main objective of this section is to describe every type of individual factor and to propose new ways of improving our language learning by paying extra attention to these issues.

Stylistic factors are related to the way in which we deal with problematic situations, in which we are forced to use our mind to work out those everyday life issues. That is why we can include in this category brain hemisphericity, learning styles and personality types, since all of these characteristics affect our behaviour and consequently, our language learning.

• Brain Hemisphericity

It has to do with the fact that every individual processes information either with the left side of the brain or with the right one. This brain dominance is developed during our early childhood and it is conditioned by our environment, experiences, and genetics. Brain activity is highly complex and when one part of the brain is damaged, the other side of the brain takes care of those functions, although they are performed in a very different way. According to the theory of brain lateralization, every part of the brain has specific functions, which are summarized in the following table:

This brain dominance influences our learning since it has to do with the way in which we internalize information. Therefore, we can characterize each type of learner in the following diagram:

These differences have a strong relation with learning styles, choice of career and academic achievement. That is why teachers have to be aware of these factors in order to provide students with different types of activities that can suit their specific learning needs. For instance, if we have left-brained students we can prepare some activities in which students can work on their own constructing rules or designing conceptual maps, etc. And if we have right-brained students we can incentivate, for instance, creative writing, group work, presentations, etc.

If you want to learn more about Brain lateralization, CLICK HERE

• Learning Styles

According to Spada and Lightbrown (2006, 59) “learning style has been used to describe an individual’s natural, habitual, and preferred way of absorbing, processing, and retaining new information.” These learning styles are influenced by genetic factors, our experience of the world, and the large and small cultures we are immersed in. This is why we can find several kinds of learning styles, which have been characterized through time and which vary from one student to another. For instance, in language learning, students have different ways of solving problems and dealing with the new information presented in the context of the classroom and outside of it. Some students prefer to learn rules by heart by using their memory, others prefer to understand the information as a whole rather than divide it into several parts, etc. Every person has an inherent way of learning which is formed from a combination of unique characteristics that interact with each other during the learning process. And although there are many different classifications according to perceptual or cognitive features, it is very common to find one individual who uses several styles at the same time. A summary of these different learning styles and their particular features can be found in the following table:

If you wish to see this table more clearly just click on it.

The main idea regarding this topic is that as teachers, we have to be aware of these very important characteristics in our students, because they will definitely affect the way we teach. In fact, if we want to be good teachers, we have to adapt our way of teaching, materials and activities to their learning needs, which will be conditioned by their learning styles. For instance, if we have visual learners, we need to incorporate visual aids to our lessons, like graphs, conceptual maps, lists, pictures, etc. If we have aural learners we need to use tapes and videos and if we have kinesthetic students, we can provide them with TPR (Total Physical Response) activities, competitions, games, experiments, etc.

In the case of Field Dependent students, we can choose group activities in which they can develop their social skills by discussing different topics and giving their opinion about them. On the other hand, if we have Field Independent students, we can make them work by their own in order to provide solutions for a specific situation, etc. In short, we need to adapt everything involved in the classroom to fit our students needs, which goes from our teaching techniques to the materials we choose and the activities we plan for them.

In this section we can find different factors related to affective and cognitive aspects of our language learning. However, there are two main topics to be developed, which are: language learning motivation and learning strategies. These two factors are very important for us since they determine the success our students' learning process and our performance as educators.

• Language Learning Motivation

According to the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, motivation can be defined as “the driving force in any situation that leads to action” (Richards and Schmidt 2002, 343.) In language learning and teaching, however, there is a distinction between “orientation” and “motivation” itself. Orientation refers to the set of reasons for learning a language and motivation to the combination of the students’ attitudes and willingness to spend time and effort learning a language in order to satisfy his/her needs(Richards and Schmidt 2002, 343.)

According to this differentiation we can say that there are two types of motivational orientations:

• Integrative Orientation: It refers to the desire of becoming part of the target language community. Therefore, it has to do with the learner’s attitudes towards the second language community (Spada and Lightbrown 2006, 63.)

• Instrumental Orientation: It refers to the desire of using the target language to get a benefit from it, like getting a better job or studying abroad, etc. Therefore, these learners will perceive the communicative value of the language (Spada and Lightbrown 2006, 63.)
  

It has been said that students who are driven by integrative orientation are more successful in achieving a high level of proficiency of the target language, since they have intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation has to do with the enjoyment of the language learning itself (Richards and Schmidt 2002, 343,) because they want to become part of the target language community, which includes, in most cases, the appreciation of the culture itself.

On the other hand, students with instrumental orientation are less successful because their motivation is extrinsic. This means that their motivation is driven by external factors, such as parental and social expectations, academic pressures, job requirements, etc (Richards and Schmidt 2002, 343.) In this case, most students feel a lot of pressure and anxiety when they are learning a foreign language, because they are trying to fulfill imposed expectations rather than their own goals.

In most cases, the main reasons why students want to learn a foreign or second language are the following ones:

There are several factors that influence motivation, which can make it grow or decrease. One of these factors is self-esteem, which can be defined as the judgment of your personal value determined by the perception of your own competences in certain areas (global self-esteem) and the relevance of those areas within the society. This factor is very important, since people who have high self-esteem most of the time feel very confident about their own capacities. However, sometimes this self-esteem can be diminished when the language learning environment is threatening or unpleasant, which is a phenomenon called situational self-esteem.

Another important factor is anxiety, which can be defined as a “subjective feeling of apprehension and fear with language learning and use” (Richards and Schmidt 2002, 285.) However, there are two types of anxiety, which are: debilitating and facilitating anxiety. The first one is the type of anxiety you feel when you are intimidated by the task you are asked to fulfill, which leads to a poor performance and a consequent increase of anxiety. On the other hand, facilitating anxiety is the one that stimulates the student to try harder and perform better (Oxford, 251.) So, it increases the students’ motivation to succeed in the assigned task. This affective factor has been broadly studied by many scholars who have tried to discover whether anxiety is a feeling that is always there or if it varies according to different situations. However, most of the studies have demonstrated that anxiety is a dynamic feature which varies according to the context. For instance, that is why some students feel intimidated when they have to present orally in front of the whole class, but they feel very relaxed when they are asked to work alone.

As a conclusion, motivation is an internal process, which can only be activated by the individual, and if the person is not motivated, there is little we, as teacher, can do. However, our task is to try to engage our students in the activities we prepare. So, if we want our students to participate actively in our lesson, we need to:

If you wish to see this more clearly just click on it.

If we follow these very basic steps, there is a big chance that we can engage our students’ attention and increase their motivation, which will facilitate a great deal our teaching task.

• Learning Strategies
  

Learning strategies can be defined as steps, actions, behaviours, and operations used by learners to improve their learning process and use of the new language. Many scholars have tried to classify learning strategies, but one feature that most of then agree on is that there are direct and indirect learning strategies. Direct strategies are the ones that require a direct processing of the language, which function in different ways. According to Oxford, there are 3 main direct learning strategies:

Indirect strategies have to do with the capacity of managing, regulating and supporting our language learning. Oxford also identifies 3 of them:


Some other taxonomies are the ones proposed by:

• Rubin: Learning Strategies
  Communication Strategies
  Social Strategies
  Cognitive Strategies
  Metacognitive Strategies

• O’Malley: Metacognitive Strategies
  Cognitive Strategies
  Socioaffective Strategies
  

All of these classifications include at least the cognitive, metacognitive and affective strategies, which shows that although there are many classifications, learning strategies are easy to identify, since they are used repeatedly by all human beings.

The use of strategies is affected by many factors, such as motivation, gender, age, type of task, culture, etc. So, once again, the teacher has to be aware of all of these factors which could be affecting in a negative way the learning process. Especially in Chile, most students are not aware of their own learning strategies and that is why they do poorly at school, particularly in language classes.

According to Oxford, good learners are capable of using different strategies at the same time so as to optimize their learning process. They are also capable of choosing the appropriate strategy according to the task they have to do, apart from being able to explain the choice of that specific strategy. In short, good learners are aware of their own strategies and the ones they have to use to learn successfully. Therefore, what teachers have to do is to train their students in order to make them aware of the strategies that suit them the best, according to their own learning styles and according to the skill or task to be developed. In fact, there are specific learning strategies for every type of perceptual learning style, as we can see in this video:

Finally, the best way of training our students in strategy use is by introducing the use of strategies in the same activities we prepare for the language class. For instance, if we are teaching writing, we have to tell them to think about the topic, to plan, paraphrase, revise, etc; which are all strategies related to that specific skill. This training should also include explicit explanations of the usefulness of each strategy so that the students can know exactly what the strategy is for when practicing it. Finally, the teacher should come up with some mechanism to evaluate the performance of the students in order to individualize the process and help each learner according to his /her own characteristics.

The most important demographic factors that influence language learning are Age and Gender. The first one has to do with the fact that there is a very important theory called Critical Period Hypothesis, which suggests that “only those who had begun learning a second language before the age of fifteen could ever achieve full, native-like mastery of that language” (Spada and Lightbrown 2006, 69.) Indeed, it is believed that up to the stage of adolescence, the human brain is biologically predisposed to acquire language. This is because during that time, there is a specific part of the brain which is designed for processing language. After that period, other parts of the brain take charge of language learning, therefore other processes are involved and different outcomes are seen. For instance, young learners pick up the sounds and expressions very quickly, while adults are more accurate in terms of the syntax and morphology.

If you wish to learn more about the Critical Period Hypothesis, its evidences, implications in language learning, differences between children and adults, and teaching aspects CLICK HERE

In the case of gender, studies have demonstrated that females are superior in terms of their verbal skills, while males are very good at using their spatial skills. These different types of intelligence affect female and male learning styles, and that is why females tend to be more visual, while men tend to be more kinesthetic. Men are also more analytical and individualistic, while women are more imaginative and collective learners.

Conclusion

Every person is a different world and every world needs different things. So as to know what those individual needs are, we have to take into consideration that there are many factors that influence the way human beings think, live and learn. As teachers, it is difficult to be aware of all of these factors at the same time, but it’s not impossible. In fact, the best way of doing it, is by taking the time to get to know your students a bit more and observe them very carefully to see how they are responding to the new information you are presenting. This is why it is so important to evaluate your performance constantly in order to improve what is not being beneficial for your students. Only in that way, we will be able to achieve what should be the main goal of every teacher; to fulfill our students’ needs.

References

• Oxford,R. (2002) Sources of Variation in Language Learning. In R. Kaplan (Ed.) Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press.

• Richards, J. and Schmidt, R. (2002) (Ed.) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Longman, Pearson Education.

• Spada, N. and Lightbrown, P. (2006) Individual Differences in Second Language Learning. (Ed.)How Languages are Learned. Oxford University Press.