论文总字数：29791字

摘 要

本文以二语习得的个体差异因素为基础，结合国内外外语教学的研究理论，分析了个体差异因素在外语教学中的运用。目前，对于二语习得理论与外语教学的研究的联系还没有一个统一的说法，但是，活生生的教学实践确实是二语习得理论的最好体现。也就是说，二语习得为语言教师提供语言教学理论知识，从而指导他们的教学活动或教学实践。在这些指导实践理论中，个体差异论是其中一个。他可以帮助语言教师全面的了解自己的学生。中国的英语学习者是世界上最多的，这就很有必要必要去研究这些学习者，因为这些因素都是因人而异的。正如牛津教授所说：“ 一位老师，如果不了解自己的学生，那他怎么去激发和引导他的学生呢？” 在这篇文章中，主要围绕着三个最主要的个体差异因素：年龄，个性和学习动机。这个研究，在某种程度上，不仅是对二语习得研究深入发展，也帮助语言教师更好的了解自己的学生。

关键词：二语习得；外语教学；个性差异

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Several Factors Affect Foreign Language Teaching 2

4. Age 2

4.1 Age in SLA 2

4.2 Age in Foreign Language Teaching 3

5. Personality 5

5.1 Extroversion and Introversion 5

5.2 Personality in SLA 5

5.3 Personality in Foreign Language Teaching 7

6. Motivation in SLA and Pedagogical Implication 7

6.1 Instrumental and Integrative 8

6.2 Resultative Motivation 9

6.3 Intrinsic Motivation 10

7. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

Individual differences are one of the research parts of SLA. Real-life observations tell us that even if L2 learners can be shown to be following a common developmental route they differ greatly in the degree of ultimate success which they achieve(Wang Dong, 2009: 169). This is one of the hot spots in SLA. As English is the compulsory subject in our country, we conduct a research about the learners has great significant. For this reason, this paper will explore and discuss three dimensions here, namely, age, personality and motivation, for which have gained much attention in this research field. In the first part, I mainly concern the age factors, for it is the most controversial topic in SLA research. For the second part and the third part, I focus on the personality factors and motivation of the learners, both two factors are so important because their pedagogic application. I hope both SLA researchers and language teachers will be interested in this thesis.

2. Literature Review

According to the previous language teaching history, we aware that the best way to teach a foreign language varied from time to time. In fact, no one could guarantee which method is the best. However, it is noted that theorizing about Second Language Acquisition (short for SLA) has its historic roots in reform movements connected to the practical business of language teaching. In China, SLA is a current research field over the last 30 years, and a major goal of SLA is to improve language teaching. Besides much of the SLA research has implication for language teachers, syllabus designers of language tests, and there is a growing number of studies which focus directly on these issues (Wang Dong, 2009: 190). For language teachers, it is very important to realize that even if L2 learners can be shown to following a common developmental route, they differ greatly in the degree of ultimate success that they achieve. That is to say, the same instructional option is not equally effective for all L2 learners. Individual differences are likely to influence which options work best (Ellis 1997: 59). So, it is obviously necessary to take individual differences into account when we explain the apparent ineffectiveness of instruction in foreign language teaching. That is why individual differences have deserved much academic concern in recent years. In this thesis, I will only focus on three of the major dimensions here, namely, age, personality, and motivation owing to my personal competence and limited referenced literatures. There are still other individual differences factors that can also affect foreign language teaching remains to be improved and perfected.

3. Several Factors Affect Foreign Language Teaching

When it comes to foreign language teaching, many people are familiar with this saying: “even thought language learners are in the same classroom setting, some are more fluently and correctly in foreign language use than others,” Why dose it so? We already know that individual differences do play a vital role in the process of second language acquisition, so, it is not difficult to tell that individual differences may affect foreign language teaching, too. Individual differences also called outside language factors including language aptitude, motivation, learning strategy, age, affection, personality and so on. Those factors all influence language learners from the very beginning to the ultimate language achievement. But, some will ask, “Do some of the factors enjoy much priority than other factors?” There is not any data can testify this argument. Therefore, I merely focus on some of these factors that have gain much attention in second language acquisition research----age, personality, motivation.

4. Age

Age is an imperative factor when it refers to language learners, and foreign language teachers can not neglect it during their teaching work. Because, language teachers must know the age of their students to decide which language competence students can master and than adjust their teaching method in an effective way. Anyway, a theoretical research about age of language learners has its own practical meaning.

4.1 Age in SLA

Over the last three decades, many SLA researchers tend to believe that younger learners are generally more successful than older learners possibly because their identity is less threatened by target-language form. They argued that children can grasp a native like proficiency while adults were hard to obtain, and this can be reflected in the so-called Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) proposed by Lenneberg. CPH states that there must be a very special spell that people learning a language, including L1 acquisition and L2 acquisition. CPH also emphasize a limited period that during this period, language learners can achieve a native like language level. And the ability to acquire another language after the acquisition of their mother tongue will disappear after juvenile era (Wen Qiufang, 2010: 212). It is much easier for children’s language acquisition presented in CPH was accepted by so many SLA research. However, other scholars claimed that the critical period hypothesis is an inadequate account of the role played by age in SLA in that this assumption was only partially correct. Krashen, Long and Scarcella pointed out that adults are better than children on the acquisition speed, and the older children are better than the younger. Therefore, the younger the better is not always true. In 1987, two scholars, Snow and Hoefnagel-Hohle launched an investigation on the acquisition of Dutch of English speakers and they draw the following conclusions: there is a wildly disparity on the acquisition speed of phonetic rules and semantic structures of children and adult, and this disparity mainly duo to onset age of second language learners. On the one hand, younger learners do have merit in SLA, such as phonetic learning, but, we can not deny the fact that this advantage is not obvious until a very long-term process of studying the target language. On the other hand, adult learners also get the praise in SLA, such as grammar acquisition, owning to their concentrated and efficient studies. As for this, lots of hypothesis about age in SLA arises at the historic moment, for example Sensitive Period Hypothesis, Exercise Hypothesis and Maturational State Hypothesis. The debate about CPH has been viewed as an important problem of age in SLA research. Whether CPH is a broad tendency or an absolutely inviolate law in SLA research field? This is still a conundrum waiting to be solved. Whatever, age is the same a significant factor of language acquisition for foreign language teaching.

4.2 Age in Foreign Language Teaching

A national education plan needs to consider all aspects of factors, and the starting age of children to receive education is one of the essential sides in this plan. After World War Two, learning a foreign language from the primary school boomed around the world. And in 1954, Modern Language Association (MLA) offered a proposal that foreign language teaching should be a compulsory course in primary schools. Followed by the MLA, many Asian, African and Europe countries have also began to try on foreign language teaching in primary school. Even so, the best age of second language teaching is still an open question with different answers.

As the global lingua franca, English has become the most popular second language in Chinese schooling for decades. However, the onset age of English teaching has still been a controversial subject for English language teaching researchers. Professor Gui Shichun said that considering the economics of education problem in English education, foreign language education from primary school dose not hold water. Another English language professor Hu Mingyang believed the faculty is indeed a very severe problem and some English teachers speak English with a Chinese accent, which will set a bad example for students. , above all once language learners pick up an accent at the very beginning of language learning, they can not get rid of the accent easily in their future studying. Again, it worth our considering as the case of the critical period is uncertain, teaching a foreign language in preschool class benefit the kids or not. All these views above reflect the concerns of experts about carry out English teaching blindly in China, because so far, there has been no scientific evidence to support CPH. Firstly, the attitudes of researchers towards the applicable scope of the critical period hypothesis and its explanatory power vary. But for the acquisition of pronunciation and intonation, age does play an important role. Many studies show that the time between the age of 4 and 7 is the critical period for picking up an authentic accent and learning lexical collocation. Hence, from the perspective of foreign language teaching, on the one hand, language teachers should pay much attention to helping students cultivate a good pronounce habit from the beginning stage of second language acquisition, on the other hand, the accent problem of adult learners can not be taken seriously by teachers, much consideration should be taken to improve their communicative competence. In the context of foreign language teaching in China, many learners lost lots of opportunities to speak English owning to their less confident about pronunciation. On the contrary, English learners from French, Germany speaking countries can express fluently in target language though with a heavy accent. Therefore, it is critical to understand this pedagogical implication for foreign language teachers.

5. Personality

Among individual differences factors in SLA research, personality is extremely important and it is frequently neglected by most of the scholars, and personality difference affect individual language learning to a large extent. It is universally know that everyone has its own unique character and this personality type is connected to his or her learning style. Learning style has some personality characteristics, which has a long tradition in psychological research, even Aristotle discussed personality. Beside, each character of foreign language learners has different dominances and blind zone. Then once the personality type is determined, foreign language teachers can prescribe the right medicine for each study case. But there is no theoretical limitation about the amount of personality types for psychologist can provide a new test to define a new personality type at any time. Extroversion and introversion have received the most attention from numerous personality studies. Next are several aspects and research about extroversion and introversion related to foreign language acquisition.

5.1 Extroversion and Introversion

When we come to extroversion, many people tend to believe that talking with people is happier than reading, while introversion is not. Indeed, extroversion has an initiative social will； enjoy the companionship of a large number of talkative friends. And they actively answer questions during the whole class. While introversion prefers a quite atmosphere, they would not like to communicate with people. Compare to extroversion, introversion is less social and they tend to spend much time to after class instead actively during class. Here comes a question, so far as foreign language teaching is concerned, what types of personality is more successful in foreign language learning?

5.2 Personality in SLA

For a while, SLA scholars are inclined to think that outgoing students will get better test score than anxious ones as they have more chance to speak English in class. But then some researchers have made the relative experiment and found that this is not the case. One possible explanation for these findings is that each types of students using different learning strategies to handle different learning tasks. Extrovert is actively in class and quick to response, which is beneficial to get more input and have more opportunity to practice, but they not really pay attention to language form, and introvert is good at summarize language form carefully and analyze them in depth with his or her silence and stillness personality. This learning style has much more advantage in some classroom setting which lay the stress on language form and neglect its meaning.

Personality factor is a research which attempts to find what personality trait is suitable for learning foreign language. The thoughtful type person is not suitable to study a foreign language. Still Tucker found that students who are confident, adventurous, and have the sense of responsibility, emotional stability are better language learners. In fact, these views are neither complete nor scientific. After taking account of age and personality factors found that before maturity, extroversion in second language acquisition performance are positive correlation. But after that period, course specialized makes the individual independent study more important. Accordingly, we can see that the result of test performance of the same character will change due to different environment. In general, if we want to measure language skills of language learners, language achievement has close connection to outgoing personality. And, if the language knowledge is measured, language performance has nothing to do with that character. For this, I can give you an example of my experience and that is a true story. Last semester, I worked as an intern of a middle school in my hometown and I found something that is really helpful for this research. Extroversion students are outstanding in class, they would like to take part in class activities and are not afraid to make mistake, and therefore, extrovert can get high scores in listening and speaking test. In the contrary, introvert is passively, they anxious about mistakes that will make them embarrass. Sometimes, they do not open their mouse to read new words after me. But, I discovered that those types of students are industrious. They do their homework carefully and neat and they are good at writing test. To this point, introversion will get high praise from teachers. Nevertheless, the argument over whether extroversion or introversion is more suitable for learning a foreign language continues to be controversial. A lot of relevant information and research show that the differences between extroversion and introvert only make learners possess their advantages in some language programs. But overall, there is no significant difference of these two types of learners.

5.3 Personality in Foreign Language Teaching

In the process of implementation of English Teaching, teacher must pay much attention to students’ personality differences to enhance the activity of students in their study, to inspire their passion to the target language. Because the learning style of extroverted and introverted students to accept language knowledge is not the same. Extroverted students love to participating in all kinds of class activities, expressing themselves, and communicating with people. They also positively answer teacher’s question and take every possible opportunity to show off their English ability. But on the contrary, introverted students are not good at speaking in public, so they never actively answer teacher’s any questions in class. For introverted learners, teachers should give them more compliments and less criticism, help them to build up their confidence. What’s more, teachers should try their best to make a friendly classroom atmosphere so that introverted students are not afraid of it, and consciously give them more chance to express themselves. All in all, a good teacher should instruct his or her students to learn from other’s strong point to offset one’s weakness, teach them flexible change their learning style so as to improve their English skills.

6. Motivation in SLA and Pedagogical Implication

Here is a psychological factor that is often used to explain the differences of people’s second language achievement, and this factor is motivation. Motivation had an intuitive appeal; illustrating individual learners with strong motivations can learn a second language well and quickly. Obviously, English learning activity is a long-term and complex active process. In addition to the objective conditions, each learning task needs the coordination with students’ psychological activity. Given motivation, anyone can learn a language (Wang Dong, 2009: 174). It is with some degree of motivation that a person original decide to learn a second language and make up his or her mind to persist in learning that language. Whereas personality concerns the learning style that underlie successful L2 learning, motivation involves the attitudes and affective states that influence the degree of effort that learners make to learn an L2 (Wang Dong, 2009: 174). Generally speaking, SLA researchers have classified motivation into four kinds. They are instrumental motivation, integrative motivation, resultative motivation, and intrinsic motivation.

6.1 Instrumental and Integrative

Social psychology regard foreign language learning as a social psychological phenomenon, therefore many scholars particularly emphasize the impact of learning environment and learning attitude on learners’ behavior. Cardner and Lambert have divided foreign language learning motivation into integrative motivation and instrumental motivation. According to Cardner social-educational model, features of integrative motivation is that leaner understood or have special interests in the target language. Learners with integrative motivation usually are fond of the culture of target language, showing great enthusiasm about the cultural group and wishing to be a part of them. It is a prime example to attest integrative motivation that most English speaking Canadians have for learning French. However, in other learning contexts, we may also find an integrative motivation does not seem to be so important. Some studies found that less integrative oriented Mexican Women in California were more successful in learning English than those who were more integrative oriented (Wang Dong, 2009: 175). The above idea leads us to suggest that learners’ desire to learn the L2 in order to manipulate and overcome the people of the target language. In such case, instrumental motivation can help to explain. Instrumental motivation refers to learners regard the language as a communicative tool, hoping that master that language can bring benefits. The Carrot and Stick Hypothesis sees external incentives and influence as determinants of learners’ motivational strength. It has been investigated in SLA research through studies of instrumental motivation (Wang Dong, 2009: 175). Learners may try their best to learn another language for some functional reason-to pass an examination, to immigrate to English speaking countries, or to get a degree and so on.

However, these two kinds of motivation, by contrast, integrative motivation is more like an effective boost in foreign language learning and also a predictive factor in successful foreign language learner. This is because integrative factor rooted in learner’s learning will that can influence individual for a long time and do not rely on external pressure. Instrumental motivation, on the contrary, emphasizes some practical purpose of learning a foreign language. So, once learner accomplish his or her learning goal, the instrumental effect have on learner is gone. This kind of motivation is lack of persistence.

It is possibly the case that both integrative motivation and instrumental motivation do exist among language learners in the real foreign language teaching activities. First, according to my observations, an integrative orientation is more actively, and more willing to answer the teachers’ questions in class. Thus, they are more likely to be favored by the teachers and can receive more praise and encouragements from them, and this will in turn promote their interest in learning that language well. It has been proved that integrative motivation is strongly related to second language achievement. Second, in some learning contexts, an instrumental motivation seems to be the main power determining the success in second language learning. For example, in settings such as China where learners are motivated to learn English because it is a compulsory subject from primary school to college. Many learners want to learn English voluntarily because they eager to pass the English test. So, foreign language teachers, they can cultivate students’ interest in learning English, such as introduce some culture background of the target language to arouse students’ interests in English. And then they would spend more time in learning that language or get some information about the culture of that language group independently and consciously.

6.2 Resultative Motivation

Integrative motivation and instrumental motivation are regarded as the cause of second language achievement by many SLA scholars. However, other researchers argued that motivation can be the result of learning. That is, learners who experience more success in learning may become more confident in learning the target language than those less successful. For example, if a student get a high score in second language test will stimulate his or her interest in that language. For students, high score is a big boost. He or she will work harder and harder to get higher result for the future study in that language to be recognized by teacher or parents. Conversely, learners who received a very low score in second language test, they usually pay little attention to the target language and are not willing to work harder. We do not know whether motivation is to be seen as the cause or the result of success in second language learning or both. In context like Canada, success in learning French may intensify English speaking learner’s interest in French culture. However, in California success in learning English may bring Mexican women into situation where they experience discrimination and thus reduce their appreciation of American culture (Ellis, 1997: 70). Thus, there exist an interactive relationship between motivation and achievement. A high level of motivation does inspiring learning and then achieve language goal. Conversely, we have to accept that there is a vicious circle of low motivation would result in low achievement, and what’s more, low motivation can develop (Ellis, 1997: 93). So, language teachers should encourage their learners more or less to cultivate the motivation in language learning process. Sometimes, a simple encouragement from teacher is a kind of motivation that stimulates students to work harder and harder.

6.3 Intrinsic Motivation

In some learning situations, it was not learners’ specific reasons for learning a second language that determine their motivation. In fact, it is many language learners hold a neutral attitude towards the target language, neither positive nor negative. Such is probably the case with many foreign language learners and it does not follow that such learners are unmotivated. They may find the kinds of learning tasks they are asked to do intrinsically motivating (Wang Dong, 2009: 178). According to some findings in SLA, the motivated individual of intrinsic type is one who experiences satisfaction in learning tasks associated with achieving language goal. It is probably to say that if an individual becomes actively engaged in class activities, and maintain that participant without teachers’ encouragement or praise, his or her intrinsic motivation must be stimulated by language teachers. English teachers see it as their job to motivate students by attracting students’ attention to take part in classroom activities. Such as diversify classroom activities and combine the textbook with multimedia tool. All in all, motivation is a dynamic and changing phenomenon, and has the strongest connection with language achievement for these two factors can interact and influence each other.

7. Conclusion

The purpose of studying individual learner variables is to see how they affect SLA. While a major goal of SLA research is to improve language teaching. In this paper I mainly concentrate on three perspectives such as age, personality, motivation by looking at evidence from several linguistic theories on some of the conditions for second language learning that are present in learners. As English major, I am very interested in language pedagogy and, have viewed SLA as a potential contribution to more effective language teaching. Nevertheless, with a lack of the required academic sophistication, and with a pragmatic bent, I have, as best as I could, brought into focus on individual learners factors affecting SAL in the present paper. Many other factors such as cognitive styles, language aptitude, learning strategies etc. have not been discussed here. These aspects are also playing critical roles in the process of the learner’s L2 acquisition as well as the three mentioned ones. At last, I hope these opinions will help English teachers in their teaching work to some extent.

Works Cited

[1] Ellis, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

[2] Gass,Susan and Larry, Selinker. Zhao Yang (translate), Second Language Acquisition:An Introductory Course. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2011.

[3] Wen,Qiufang. Major Issues in Second Language Acquisition. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2010.

[4] 季忠民, 刘喜文，沈昌洪. 《第二语言习得导论》. 北京：北京大学出版社，2010.

[5] 王栋. 《第二语言习得导论》. 山东：山东大学出版社，2009.

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[8] 张鑫. 《英语教学的理论与实践》. 北京：知识产权出版社，2012.

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