Effective Language Learning: Cognitive, Affective & Personality Factors

Effective Language Learning

Cognitive Factors

Learning Styles

Learning styles are modes of thinking and behaving. They are related to the particular way each individual learns how to learn, and they change with age.

• Children tend to lack learning autonomy.
• Adults tend to have learning autonomy.

Learning Strategies

Learning strategies are specific actions, behaviors, steps, or techniques students use, often consciously, to improve their progress in apprehending, internalizing, and using a foreign language. They are tools that learners can use to develop L2 communicative ability.

• These tools favor active and self-directive learner involvement in the learning process.
• Their conscious use is related to language achievement and proficiency.
• The age factor is crucial in this use.
• Types: direct (e.g., memory, compensation) and indirect (affective, social, metacognitive).

Role of Rogers

• The teacher must be real and genuine, discarding masks of superiority and omniscience.
• They need to have genuine trust, acceptance, and a prizing of the student as a worthy, valuable individual.
• They need to communicate openly and empathetically with their students and vice versa.
• These teachers will understand themselves better and be effective teachers.
• The teacher must provide the nurturing context for learning.

Role of Bruner

• They make students interested in the task.
• They simplify the task, often by breaking it into smaller steps.
• They keep students on track towards completing the task by reminding them what the goal was.
• They point out what is important to do or show them other ways of doing parts of the task.
• They control students' frustration during the task (frustration is part and parcel of the learning process).
• They demonstrate an idealized version of the task (by showing them a model).

The teacher is doing what students are not yet able to do for themselves.

Affective Factors

Motivation

Motivation is an internal state of the individual influenced by needs and/or beliefs which generate interest and a desire to achieve a goal and moves the individual to attain it with continued effort.

Anxiety

Second language anxiety is a group of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to using that second language. It affects the evaluation of a situation negatively.

Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is the feeling of self-worth the individual possesses; how the person regards him or herself. It deals with the emotional side of human behavior and is closely linked to the cognitive dimension.

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to personal beliefs about one’s capabilities to learn or perform skills at designated levels.

Attribution

Attribution concerns beliefs about the causes of outcomes.

Personality Factors

Extroversion

Extroverts have an advantage in interpersonal skills: more sociable, like to take risks, lively and active, look for more opportunities for interaction, develop their communicative skills, and tend to focus more on fluency than accuracy (a disadvantage in pronunciation skills).

Empathy

Empathy is the extent to which individuals build defenses to protect themselves.

Tolerance of Ambiguity

Tolerance of ambiguity is important when learners are confronted with new materials which tend to be unknown or confusing for them.