The presentation shows the most relevant information about differences in learners

1. DIFFERENCES IN
LEARNERS
BY: DIANA PRISCILA MONTESDEOCA BENITEZ

2. WHY SOME L2 LEARNERS ARE MORE
SUCCESSFUL THAN OTHERS?
From a psychological perspective we have to analyze the difference among
learners, such as age, sex, motivation, cognitive style, personality and learning
strategies.
AGE
 Older learners seem to have an advantage as an initial rate of learning.
 Younger learners who have been introduced to the L2 learning have advantage.
Younger advantages
• Brain plasticity
• Not analytical
• Fewer inhibitions (usually)
• Weaker group identity
• Simplified input more likely
Older advantages
• Learning capacity
• Analytic ability
• Pragmatic skills
• Greater knowledge of L1
• Real-world knowledge

3. SEX OF THE LEARNER
Female
• Better at memorizing
• Outperform men is like some
verbal fluency test
• High estrogen correlates with
better semantic and interpretive
skills
Male
• Better at computing
compositional rules
• Brain more asymmetrically
organized for speech
• Higher androgen level correlates
with better automatized skills.

4. APTITUDE
 It’s believed that there is a talent specific to language
 learning
 The talent components are the basis for most aptitude tests.
 The components of this talent are:
• Phonemic coding ability
• Inductive language learning ability
• Grammatical sensitivity
• Associative memory capacity.

5. MOTIVATION
Components:
 Significant goal or need
 Desire to attain the goal
 Perception that learning L2 is
relevant to fulfill the goal
 Belief in the likely success or
failure of learning L2
 Value of potential
outcomes/rewards.
Types:
 Integrative motivation
 Instrumental motivation

6. COGNITIVE STYLE
 It refers to individuals preferred way of processing of
perceiving, conceptualizing, organizing, and recalling
information.
 Different from the other seen factors of age, aptitude and
motivation, because its role in explaining why some L2
learners are more successful than others has not been well
established.
 It’s closely related to and interacts with personality factors
and learning strategies.
*Field-dependent
*Global
*Holistic
*Deductive
*Focus on meaning
*Field-independent
*Particular
*Analytic
*Inductive
*Focus on form
Categories of cognitive styles

7. PERSONALITY
 Sometimes the personality factors are added to cognitive style to
characterize more generally the learning style.
Self-confident
Risk-taking
Adventuresome
Extroverted
Other-directed
Impulsive
Uninquisitive
Uncreative
Insensitive to others
Closure-oriented
Anxious
Risk-avoiding
Shy
Introverted
Inner-directed
Reflective
Imaginative
Creative
Empathetic
Tolerant of ambiguity

8. LEARNING STRATEGIES
 Behaviors and techniques adopted to learn a
L2.
 The variables previously considered (age, sex,
and aptitude) also play a role in strategy
selection.
 Many learning strategies are culturally based
 Not all strategies are equal, some are more
effective tan others.
 One goal in SLA research has been to identify
which strategies are used by good language
learners, in order to apply them to enhance
learning.
Typology of language-learning strategies:
 Metacognitive → Previewing a concept in
anticipation pf a learning activity, self-monitoring
of progress and knowledge states.
 Cognitive → Repeating after a language model;
translating from L1 remembering a new word in
L2 by relating it to one that sounds the same in
L1; guessing meanings of new material through
inferencing.
 Social/affective → Seeking opportunities to
interact with native speakers; working in peers to
obtain feedback; Requesting explanation or
examples.