Factors affecting second language learning

According to Patsy M. Lightbown and Nina Spada there are five main characteristics that can make you a good language learner: motivation, aptitude, personality, intelligence and learning style.

Intelligence

That’s right. The bigger your IQ is, the bigger is your chance of being a successful learner. Some recent studies have shown that intelligence may be more strongly related to certain kinds of second language abilities than others. In other studies, intelligence was highly related to performance on reading, dictation and writing task, but not on listening comprehension and free oral production tasks. These findings suggest that intelligence is more related to those second language skills which are used in the formal study of a language, such as reading, language analysis, writing and vocabulary study, but that intelligence is much less likely to influence the way in which oral communication skills are developed. Therefore, intelligence seems to be a strong factor when it comes to learning second languages in classrooms, particularly if the instruction is formal. When the classroom instruction is less formal, however (i.e. more communicative), so called ‘intelligence’ may play a less important role.

Aptitude

When investigating aptitude, researchers developed tests which can predict how successful a language learner will be. The most widely used aptitude tests are the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) and the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery. Both of the measure characteristics such as : (1) the ability to identify and memorize new sounds; (2) the ability to understand how words function grammatically in sentences; (3) the ability to figure out grammatical rules from language samples; and (4) memory for new words. It is thought that learners will be more successful if they have these abilities.

Personality

It is often argued that an extroverted person is well-suited to language learning. However, research does not always support this conclusion.

Another aspect of personality which has been studied is inhibition. It has been suggested that inhibition discourages risk-taking which is necessary for progress in language learning.

Several other personality characteristics such as self-esteem, empathy, dominance, talkativeness, and responsiveness, have also been studied. However, in general, the available research does not show a clearly defined relationship between personality and second language acquisition.

Motivation and attitudes

The overall findings show that positive attitudes and motivation are related to success in second language learning. Unfortunately, the research cannot indicate precisely how motivation affects learning. That is, we do not know whether is the motivation that produces successful learning or successful learning that enhances motivation.

Learning Styles

Different learners approach a task with a different set of skills and preferred strategies. Some people are ‘visual’ learners (those who need to see), some are ‘aural’ learners (those who need only to see), some need to memorize and some need to add physical action to the learning process. Of course we all can benefit from a variety of learning experiences and some approaches are more successful for one person than for another. What is important is to give the students freedom to choose their own way of learning, that way they will do better than those who find themselves forced to learn in styles which do not suit them.

It’s all in your mind: the innatist position

The linguist Noam Chomsky developed the innatist theory in reaction to the behaviourist theory of learning based on imitation and habit formation. He claims that children are biologically programmed for language and that language develops in the child in just the same way that other biological functions do. For Chomsky, language acquisition is very similar to the development of walking. The environment makes a basic contribution (such as people speaking to the child) and the child’s biological endowment will do the rest.
Chomsky argues that the behaviourist theory fails to recognize what has come to be called the logical problem of language acquisition (the fact that children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn on the basis of the samples of language they hear. According to Chomsky, the language the child is exposed does not provide all the information which the child needs and parental corrections have been observed to be inconsistent or even non-existent and when they do they tend to focus on meaning and not on language itself.
According to Chomsky, children’s minds are not blank stales to be filled merely by imitating language they hear in the environment. Instead he claims that children are born with a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language system. He originally referred to this special ability as being based on a language acquisition device (LAD) which was often described as an imaginary “black box” that contains the principles that are universal to all human languages, prevents the child from going off on lots of wrong trails in trying to discover the rules of the language. For the LAD (now referred as Universal Grammar - UG) to work, the child needs access only to samples of the natural language that serve as a trigger to activate the device.
In acquiring the intricate and complex systems that make up a language, young children, whose abilities are fairly limited in many ways, accomplish, with apparent ease, something which adult second language learners may envy.

D R E A M S

Can you remember what you dream? I can! Sometimes, my dreams are so real! I can remember numbers, phrases… And sometimes they are a big confusion…

Last night I dreamed my theeth were falling! Oh, It was terrible! And it’s funny because I have already dreamed that many times! Maybe Freud can explain… Yesterday, It was just one thoot falling, but sometimes I dream all of them are falling!

I believe the worst dream I ever had was that I died… And there was “life after death”! So I tried to talk to my mother, but she couldn’t see me! She could hear me, but she thought she was crazy! When I woke up, I felt a really bad head…

I’m really afraid of pit bull… I get really nervous if there is a pit bull next to me. So, it’s normal I dream there is a pit bull where I am. And sometimes, a pit bull strikes me! I have a friend who has one. When I'm in his house, I just don't relax if the dog is not hooked, although he tells me It won't strike me.

Two weeks ago I did the last Law test in this semester. And it was really hard! But I was very good, I got 9! So I dreamed I was telling my father the questions! And I could tell him exactly the questions! And I dreamed about a number of a process that I have, and It was right!

I am used to dreaming about rats. Argh, it’s so disgusting! There are a lot of them and I don’t know what to do… I really hate rats!

Oh, sometimes I dream that I’m driving! But I can’t stop!!! The car has no brake! But I always wake up before an accident…

I also usually dream that there is a thief in my house, or in the street. And I can’t run… Or I can’t scream! I try to run, but I can just walk very slowly! And I try to scream, but I have no voice! And it’s funny, the thief never takes me. I always wake up before it happens.

When I arrive home after parties, I dream that I am still in the party. It’s very curious… When I wake up, I really don’t know what I dreamed and what really happened! Sometimes I have to ask my friends! Oh, I get really shy, they think I was drunk, because I can’t remember what really happened in the party and what was just a dream…

And what about you?? What do you usually dream about??

HOME ALONE

Do you remember Macaulay Culkin in Home alone? I believe everybody have ever seen this movie at least once. When I was a child, this was one of my favourites.

In fact, I want to know if you like to be alone at home. Would you like to live alone?

My parents and my sisters live very far from here. They lived here for a long time, then they decided to live in other city and I decided to stay here. My sisters decided to go with them. In the begin, my father stayed a long time here with me, because he has an office here.

They come to Pelotas sometimes and spend a long time here. I always thought I'd like to live alone, but I've changed my mind. When we are younger, it's nice, our friends can visit us, we can make parties, we can sleep and wake up as late as we want. But now all of my friends are working and studying very hard. So they can't be here every week.

And I really don't argue with my parents. We get on very well, they are my friends. We go out, we chat a lot, we work togheter... And they understand my choises, so I don't need to get worried with them. I don't need to change my life when they're here.

And I really miss my sisters! I'd really like to live with them again, but I now it's not possible. My older sister has a baby, so now she has her family.

I remember when we traveled togheter. We had a little car, so it used to be very full. And we used to spend a long time on road. Sometimes we really fought, but we used to have fun. My older sister is very talkative, so she just didn't shut up! If there was nothing to talk about, she invented something. She is an english teacher, so sometimes she used to translate musics for us. And once she read "The little prince". All of it!

Now she is a hippie. And the other is a rebel. But she is my best friend! I usually say she is my soulmate! It's really good when we're togheter. We never fight! When I need to talk to someone, I just take the phone and call her. And sometimes she listens to me for hours!

Well, you may be not so intersted about my family... I just forgot and got writing...

I really want you to think about your families. I'm really happy with mine. Of course there are problems, but there is always something that we share. There is always a moment when we need them. It's very easy to put the blame for our difficulties in our parents, but we have to understand they're not perfects. And may be we will have children, so we will feel how they feel.

The truth is they're always by your side. But the problem is that sometimes they are not able to accept our life stile or our choises. Maybe because they didn't have opportunities. Or maybe because they don't know what to do, but they pretend to know!

Well, I hope you understand what I say. I know our parents are not angels, but we're not either!

Have a nice weekend. I am on holiday, so I can watch a lot of movies \o/

Juliana