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:
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.
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- 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.
