NDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION part 2

INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Disarikan dari buku UNDERSTANDING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION karya R. ELLIS (Pp. 99 –
126)
oleh : jasmansyah



Second Language (L2) learners vary on a number of dimensions to do with personality, motivation, learning style, aptitude and age.
 Aspect of SLA influenced by individual learner factors
Two basics possibilities regarding which aspect of SLA are affected by individual learners, they are:
1). The differences in age, learning style, aptitude, motivation, and personality result.
2). The factors influence only rate and ultimate success in SLA.
 Identification and Classification of learner factors
The identification and classification of the different individual factors has proved to be problematic. The main difficulty is that it is not possible to observe directly qualities, such as aptitude, motivation, or anxiety. Hawkey (1982) lists some of these: affective, cognitive and ability factors (Chastain 1975) and attitudinal / motivational characteristics (Gardner et al. 1975).
 Personal factors
Personal factors such as those identified by Schumann and Schumann are difficult to observe by a third person. This methodological problem has been solved in two ways. First, through the use of diaries studies, Second, through the use of questionnaires and interviews with individual learners. Personal factors are by definition heterogeneous:
1) Group Dynamic
Group Dynamics (henceforth GD) seem to be important in the classroom of SLA. Bailey (1983) records in some details the anxiety and competitiveness experienced by a number of diarists. Some classroom learners make overt comparisons of themselves with other learners. In other kind of comparisons, learners match how they think they are progressing against their expectations. McDonough (1978) also pinpoints GD as an important set of personal variables. He notes, however, that although rivalries can promote confusion, they can also serve a stimulus for learning.

2) Attitudes to the Teacher and Course Materials
Students will inevitably have very different views about the kind of teacher they think is best for them. Some prefer a teacher who creates for them to pursue their own learning path. Others prefer a teacher who structures the learning tasks much more tightly. Pickett (1978) study of successful language learning reveals greater diversity in attitudes towards the role of the teacher. Some learners wanted the teacher to act as ‘informant’, but others praised teachers who were logical, clear, and systematic. The main generalization to emerge from Pickett’s study is that learner needs to feel sympathy for their teacher, and also want him or her to be predictable.
Learners also vary in their attitudes to teaching materials, In general. Adult learners dislike having a course book imposed upon them in a rigid way. They prefer a variety of materials and the opportunity to use them in ways they choose for themselves.
3) Individual Learning Techniques
There is tremendous variety in the techniques employed by different learners. They will be dealt with in two groups: those involved in studying the L2, and those involved in obtaining L2 input. Naiman (1978) and Pickett (1978) identify numerous study techniques:
1. Preparing and memorizing vocabulary lists
Individual learners appear to have highly idiosyncratic ways of copying with this. For instance, one of Picket’s subjects kept a notebook in which he recorded first the English word, then the foreign word in phonetic transcription, and finally the orthographic version of the foreign word. He reported having three vocabulary lists, which he kept going at the same time: one was arranged chronologically, the second alphabetically, and the third either grammatically or situationally.
2. Learning words in context
Some learners made no attempt to keep lists. They relied on picking out key vocabulary items from the contexts in which they were used.
3. Practicing vocabulary
Various techniques fall under this heading: deliberately putting words into different structures in order to drill one, reading to reinforce vocabulary, playing games such as trying to think of words wit the same ending, and repeating words to oneself.
 General factors
 Age
Age is the variable that has been most frequently considered in discussions of individual differences in SLA. The main aim in this section is to highlight the key elements in this complex issue by first examining the effects of age and then looking at various explanations of these effects.
 The effects of age
It is necessary to separate the effects of age and the route of SLA from the effects of age on the rate or success of SLA. Most of studies that have investigated the role of age have been concerned with the latter. That is, they have examined the extent of the correlation between measures of age and length of learning period and measure of proficiency achieved. The available evidence suggests that age does not alter the route of acquisition. Rate and success of SLA appear to be strongly influenced by the age of the learner. Where rate is concerned, there is evidence to suggests that older learners are better.
 Explaining the effect of age
The critical period hypothesis states that there is a period when language acquisition takes place naturally and effortlessly. Penfield and Roberts (1959) argued that the optimum age for language acquisition falls within the first ten years of life. During this period the brain retains plasticity, but with the onset of puberty this plasticity begins to disappear.
Some evidence to support the critical period hypothesis was supplied by Lenneberg (1967). Lennerberg found that injuries to the right hemisphere caused more language problems in children than in adults. He also found that in cases of children who underwent surgery7 of the left hemisphere, no speech disorder s resulted, whereas with adults almost total language loss occurred. Lennerberg then assumed that language acquisition was easier for children.
 Cognitive explanations
One obvious difference between young child and the adolescent or adult is the ability of the latter to comprehend language as a formal system. Older learner can learn about language by consciously studying linguistics rules. The also can apply these rules when they use the language. In contrast, younger children, while not totally lacking in meta-awareness, are not so prone to respond to language as form. As Halliday (1973) pointed out that the young child responds not so much what language is a to what it does. It is possible that age differences in SLA can be explained in terms of the different orientation to language of children and older learners.
 Affective explanation
Brown (1980b) proposes that SLA is related to stages of acculturation (i.e. the ability of the learner to relate and respond easily to the foreign language culture). Brown identifies 4 stages of acculturation: (1) initial excitement and euphoria; (2) culture shock, leading to the feelings of estrangement and hostility towards the target culture; (3) culture stress, involving a gradual and vacillating recovery; and (4) assimilation or adaptation. Young children are seen as socio-culturally resilient, because they are less culture-bound that adults.
Neufeld (1978) offers a more convincing account of how effective factors are related to age differences in SLA. He distinguishes ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ levels of language. Primarily levels include a reasonably large functional vocabulary, and baic mastery of pronunciation and grammatical rules. Secondary levels include the ability to acquire primarily level. However, children are more likely to achieve secondary levels than adults because they are much more strongly motivated by the need to be accepted by their peer groups. Whereas, the adult is happy to maintain a foreign accent.
 Intelligence and aptitude
Learning a L2 in a classroom involves two sets of intellectual abilities. It involves what might be called ‘a general academic or reasoning ability’, it often referred to as intelligence. The other kind of ability consists of specific cognitive qualities needed for SLA, often referred to as aptitude.
 Intelligence
It underlies our ability to master and use a whole range of academic skills. McDonough (1981) emphasizes it refers to capacity rather than contents of the mind. That is supposedly measured by intelligences tests. Cummins (1979) distinguishes two kinds of language ability:
1. Cognitive / academic language ability (CALP); this is a dimension of language proficiency which is strongly related to overall cognitive and academic skills and can be equated with Oller and Perkin’s ‘g’ factor and general intelligence.
2. Basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS; these are the skill required for oral fluency and also include sociolinguistics aspects of competence. Cummins argues that CALP and BICS are independent and that both sets of abilities are to be found in first and second language acquisition.
 Aptitude
It has been suggested that people differ in the extent to which they possess a natural ability for learning an L2. Caroll and Sapon (1985) identify three major components of aptitude:
1) Phonetic coding ability, which consist of the ability to perceive and memorize new sounds. Or the ability to identify the sounds of a foreign language so that they can be remembered later. Example: To identify the sound which ‘th’ stands for;
2) Grammatical sensitivity, which is the individual’s ability to demonstrate awareness of the syntactical patterning of sentence of language. Example: the subject and object of a sentence;
3) Inductive ability, which consists of the ability to notice and identify similarities and differences in both grammatical form and meaning. For example: to recognize that English ‘to’ can denote direction and ‘at’ location;
4) Rote learning ability, the ability to form and remember associations between stimuli. This is believed to be important in vocabulary learning;
Krashen (1972) distinguishes two aspects of SLA; acquisition and learning. Acquisition is the subconscious internalization of L2 knowledge that occurs through using the L2 naturally and spontaneously. Learning is the conscious study of a L2 that results in knowledge about the rules of the knowledge. Krashen argues that aptitude relates only in learning
The effects of aptitude on language learning have been measured in terms of the proficiency level achieved by different classroom learners.
 Cognitive Style
Cognitive style is a term used to refer to the manner in which people perceive, conceptualize, organize, and recall information. Each person is considered to have a more or less consistent mode of cogitative functioning.
 Attitudes and Motivation
Schumann (1978) lists Attitude as a social factor on a par with variables such as ‘size or learning group’, and Motivation as an affective factor alongside ‘culture shock’.
Gardner & Lambert, 1972: defines Motivation in terms of the L2 learner’s overall goal or orientation, and attitude as the persistence shown by the learner in striving for a goal. They argue that there is no reason to expect a relationship between the two; the type of motivation is distinct from the attitudes displayed to different learner tasks. However, Gardner: 1979 suggest that attitudes are related to motivation by serving as supports of the learner’s overall orientation.
Brown, 1981 distinguishes motivation and attitude. He identifies 3 types of motivation:
1. Global motivation, which consist of general orientation to the goal of learning a L2;
2. Situational motivation, which varies according to the situation in which learning takes place;
3. Task motivation, which is the motivation for performing particular learning tasks.
There are also some various kinds of motivation have been identified: they are:
1. Instrumental motivation, learners may make efforts to learn an L2 for some functional reason—to pass examination, to get better job, to get a place at university etc.
2. Integrative motivation, some learners may choose to learn a particular L2 because they are interested in the people and culture represented by the target language group.
3. Resultative motivation, an assumption of the research referred to above is that motivation is the cause of L2 achievement. However, it is also possible that motivation is a result of learning. That is, learners who experience success in learning may become more, or in some context, less motivation to learn. This helps to explain the conflicting research result.
4. Intrinsic motivation, motivation involves the arousal and maintenance of curiosity and can ebb and flow as a result of such factors as learners’ particular interests and the extent to which they feel personality involved to learning activities.
Motivation is clearly a highly complex phenomenon. These four types of motivation should be seen as complementary rather than as distinct and oppositional. Learners can be both integrative and instrumentally motivated at one and the same time. Motivation can result from learning as well as cause it. Furthermore, motivation is dynamic in nature, it is not something that a learner has or does not have but rather something that varies from one moment to the next depending on the learning context or task.
Brown uses the term ‘attitudes’ to refer to the set of believes that the learner holds towards members of the target language group (e.g. whether they are seen as interesting or boring, honest or dishonest, etc) and also toward his own culture.
Stern (1983: 376-7) classifies these attitudes into three types:
1. Attitudes towards the community and people who speak the L2 (i.e. ‘group specific attitudes’);
2. Attitudes towards learning the language concerned;
3. Attitudes towards languages and language learning in general.
These attitudes are influenced by the kind of personality of the learner, for instance whether he is ethnocentric or authoritarian. They may be also influenced by the social milieu in which learning takes place. Different attitudes, for instance, may be found in monolingual and bilingual contexts.
The results of the empirical research based on Gardner and Lambert’s theoretical framework are mixed and difficult to interpret. The following is a summary of the major findings:
1. Motivation and attitudes are important factor, which help to determine the level proficiency achieved by different learners;
2. The effects of motivation/attitudes appear to be separate from the effects of attitude. The most successful learner will be those who have both a talent and a high level of motivation for learning;
3. In certain situations an integrative motivation may be more powerful in facilitating successful L2 learning, but in other situations instrumental motivations may count for more.
4. The level and type of motivation is strongly influenced by the social context in which learning takes place, as has ready been noted.
 The good language learner
There have been a number of attempts to specify the qualities of the ‘good language learner’ based on studies of personal and general learner factor (Rubin 1975; Naiman et. Al. 1978). The good language learner will:
1. be able to respond to the group dynamics of the learning situation;
2. seek out all opportunities to use the target language;
3. make maximum use of the opportunities afforded to practice listening to and responding to speech in the L2;
4. supplement the learning that derives from direct contact with speakers of the L2 with learning derived from the use of study techniques;
5. be an adolescent or adult rather than a young children;
6. posses sufficient analytic skills to perceive, categorize, and store the linguistics feature of the L2;
7. posses a strong reason for learning the L2 and develop a strong task motivation;
8. be prepared to experiment by taking risks, even if this makes the learner appear foolish;
9. be capable of adapting to different learning condition
These characteristics are a mixed bunch. Some apply more to classroom learners than to naturalistic learners.