Individual differences

1. III. Individual Differences in
Second Language
Learning

2. Factors affecting SLL:
1- intelligence
2- aptitude
3- learning styles
4- personality
5- motivation and attitude
6- identity & ethnic group affiliation
7- learner beliefs
8- age of acquisition & the CPH

3. • 1- Intelligence
• What is the term used for ?
• It is used traditionally to refer to performance on
certain kinds of tests.
• IQ scores were a good means of predicting success in
SLL which involves language analysis and rule
learning.
• This kind of intelligence may play a less important
role in classrooms where the focus on communication
and interaction.

4. • 2- Aptitude
• It refers to special abilities to learn quickly.
• Two tests: MLAT & PLAB based on aptitude
components:
a. identify & memorize new sounds
b. understand function of words
c. figure out grammatical rules
d. memory for new words
* Learners’ strengths and weaknesses in these
different components may account for their ability
to succeed in different types of instructional
programs.

5. • 3-Learning style is used to
describe an individual's
natural, habitual, and
preferred way of absorbing,
processing, and retaining
new information and skills.
By: Asia Al-Amri

6. • Information enters your brain in
three main ways: sight, hearing
and touch, which one you use
the most is called your Learning
Style.
• Visual Learners learn by sight.
• Auditory Learners learn by
hearing.
• Kinesthetic Learners learn by
touching or physical action
Those styles are called
perceptually –based learning
styles

7. Visual Learners
• Prefer to see information such as pictures,
diagrams, cartoons, demonstrations
• Picture words and concepts they hear as
images
• Easily distracted in lecture with no visual
aids
• Benefit from using charts, maps, notes,
and flash cards when studying

8. Auditory Learners
• Prefer to hear information spoken
• Can absorb a lecture with little effort
• May not need careful notes to learn.
• Often avoid eye contact in order to
concentrate
• May read aloud to themselves
• Like background music when they study

9. Kinesthetic Learners
• Prefer touch as their primary mode for taking in
information
• In traditional lecture situations, they should write
out important facts
• Create study sheets connected to vivid
examples
• Role-playing can help them learn and
remember important ideas
Okay, I
get it
now.

10. The cognitive leaning styles
• Some learners are described as Field
Independent.
• Others are described as Field Dependent.
For a number of years, it was widely
reported that there was a strong relation
between field independent and success in
SLL.

11. • There are many questions about how
learning styles interact with success in LL.
• However, we should encourage learners
to use all means available to them.
• The challenge is to find instructional
approaches that meet the needs of
learners with a variety of aptitude and
learning styles profiles.

12. 4- Personality By: Ashwaq Al-Harbi
• A number of personality characteristics have
been proposed as likely to effect SLL. They
are:
• Extroversion
• Inhibition
• Anxiety
• Self-esteem
• Empathy, etc…

13. 1- Extroversion:
• Extroverted person is well suited to language learning
.
• Researches, however, do not always support this
conclusion .
• 1- Some studies have found that success in language
learning is correlated with learners’ scores on
questionnaires measuring characteristics associated
with extroversion such as assertiveness and
adventurousness.
• 2- Others have found that many successful language
learners do not get high scores on measures of
extroversion.

14. In certain learning situation the quiet observant may have
greater success.
2- Inhibition
It has been suggested that inhibition discourages risk-
taking which is necessary for progress in language
learning.
This is often a particular problem for adolescents who are
more self-conscious than younger learners.
Alexander Guiora found support for the claim that
inhibition is a negative force at least for second language
pronunciation performance.

15. 3- Anxiety
• Anxiety refers to learners’ feelings of
worry, nervousness, and stress when learning a
second language.
• Recent researches acknowledge that anxiety is
dynamic and dependent on situations or circumstance.
• Anxiety can play an important role in SLL if it
interferes with the learning process.
• It has been argued that not all anxiety is bad and
certain amount of tension can have a positive effect
and even facilitate learning. For example, a learner’s
willingness to communicate has been related to

16. anxiety.
*Researches state that learners who willingly
communicate in a wide range of conversational
interactions are able to do so because their prior
language learning has led to develop self-confidence.
*Several other personality characteristics such as self-
esteem , empathy, dominance, talkativeness, and
responsiveness have also been studied.
*Many researchers believe that personality has an
important influence on success in language learning,
however it is not personality alone but the way in
which it combines with other factors that contributes
to second language learning.

17. 5- Motivation and attitudes
Motivation has been defined in terms of two factors:
a. learners’ communicative needs
b. learners’ attitude to SL community
Q. How are (a) and (b) related to SLL?
Q. What is the difference between Integrative
and Instrumental motivations?

18. Motivation in the classroom
• Levels of motivation in relation to
pedagogical practices:
• Motivating students into the lesson
• Varying the activities, tasks and materials
• Using cooperative rather than competitive goals

19. 6- Identity and ethnic group
affiliation
• Social factors can affect motivation, attitudes and
language learning success.
• Children as well as adults are sensitive to social
dynamics and power relationships.
• There were social situations in which learners were
reluctant to speak because there was a power
imbalance.
• Immigrant learners were quickly assigned identities
such as
successful/unsuccessful, big/small, talkative/quiet, etc
.

20. • However identities are not static and can change
over time.
• As for ethnic affiliation, it is related to mastery of
pronunciation. Explain how?
7- Learner beliefs
• Learners have strong beliefs and opinion about how
their instruction should be delivered.
• Some learners are convinced that their progress was
negatively affected by an instructional approach that
was not consistent with their beliefs about the best
way for them to learn.

21. * A mismatch between students’
and teachers’ views
• All students desire to have their errors corrected
while very few teachers felt this was desirable.
• Most students believe that formal study of the
language is essential, just half of the teachers share
this view.
• Learners’ instructional preferences will influence the
kind of strategies they use in trying to learn new
material.

22. 8- Age of acquisition and the CPH
• It has been hypothesized that there is a critical period
for second language acquisition just as there is for first
language acquisition.
• Critical Period Hypothesis: there is a time in human
development when the brain is predisposed for success
in language learning.
• Language learning that occurs after the end of the
critical period may not be based on innate biological
structures, but rather depend on more general learning
abilities. These abilities are not as effective for language
learning as the more specific, innate capacities that are

23. available to the young child.
* The critical period ends somewhere around puberty.
• The critical period: More than just accent?
Parkowski found that age of acquisition is a very
important factor in setting limits on the development
of the native-like mastery of a second language and
that this limitation does not apply only to accent. It
also applies to syntax and morphology.

24. • Intuition of grammaticality:
Parkowski compared learners who began their
intensive exposure to English between the ages of
three and fifteen with those who arrived in the
USA between the ages of seventeen and thirty-
nine.
* He found that learners who began earliest achieved
the highest scores on the grammaticality judgment
task. Those who began later did not have native-
like language abilities and their performance on
the test varied more widely.

25. • Rate of learning:
• Studies show that adults and adolescents learned faster
than children in the first year of second language
development.
• However, children can catch up and probably surpass
the older if they continue to have adequate opportunity
to use the language.
• Thus, adults and adolescents can make considerable
and rapid progress in contexts where they use the
language in social, personal, professional or academic
interaction.

26. AT WHAT AGE SHOULD SECOND
LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION BEGIN?
* D Decisions about when to start second language
programs in school should based on realistic
estimates of how long it takes to learn a second
language. One or two hours a week will not
produce advanced second language speakers no
matter how young they were when they began.
Older learners may be able to make better use of
the limited time they have for second language
instruction.hould based on how long it takes to
learn. Decisions about when to start second
language programs in school should based on how
long it takes to learn.

27. • Age is one of the characteristic that determine the
way in which an individual approaches second
language learning. But The opportunities for
learning, the motivation to learn and individual
differences in aptitude for language learning are
also important factors that affect both rate of
learning and eventual success in learning.
* * * *