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
