ASSIGNMENT – IF

SUBJECT ASSIGNMENT:
INDIVIDUAL FACTORS IN THE LEARNER’S DEVELOPMENT

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES:

This assignment has to be done in pairs following these formatting guidelines:

- Length: 6 pages (cover, table of contents, and appendices are not included in the
page count).
- Font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Font size: 11.
- Line spacing: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The assignment has to be written in this Word document and has to follow the
instructions on quotes and references detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, the assignment has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the
document: “Subject Evaluation”. Sending it to the tutor’s e-mail is not allowed.

It is strongly recommended to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the
document “Subject Evaluation”.

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Assignment instructions:
Design a questionnaire to retrieve information on a group of students and their learning
needs.

The assignment has to include the following sections:

a) Description of the context the questionnaire is designed for (institution,

characteristics of the course, number of students, etc.).
b) Questionnaire proposal.
c) Justification of questionnaire design: all the questions included in the
questionnaire must be justified regarding the group of students it is designed for
and the contents covered in “Individual factors in the learner’s development”.

Important: you have to write your personal details and the name of the subject
on the cover (see the template on the next page). You have to include a table of
contents after the cover. Assignments that do not fulfil these conditions will not
be corrected.

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Name and surname(s): Miledy Aguilera

Login: DOFPMTFL3898521
Group: Alone
Date: 03/03/22

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TABLE OF CONTEXT

PREFACE 5

CONTEXTUALIZATION 6

QUESTIONNAIRE PROPOSAL 7

JUSTIFICATION OF QUESTIONNAIRE 10
QUESTION 1
QUESTION 2
QUESTION 3
QUESTION 4
QUESTION 5
QUESTION 6
QUESTION 7
QUESTION 8
QUESTION 9
QUESTION 10

CONCLUSION 14

REFERENCES 15

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PREFACE
Another language acquisition involves several factors, in which the one that stands out
is incentive. This shows, that those apprentices who enjoy language learning and take pride in
their progress will do better than those who do not. In children’s learning process incentive is
taken as an important role to foster their interest in the language and reduce the behavioral
problems that external factors may have caused on them (Campbell, 1999). Another factor that
can be taken into consideration is personality, as those students who do not worry about the
inevitability of making mistakes and taking risks in their learning behavior, will develop more
practice and have better outcomes. Based on it, it is evident that those children who have solid
literacy skills in their own language, are the ones who seem to be in the best positionlocation to
acquire a new language efficiently. Further, cognitive styles which refers “ to the mental
conditions, strategies or processes which the learner has access to while learning a foreign
language” (Palacios, Gassó, Ball, 2016:p. 5) affects the cognitive ability as it can vary the
learning method from student to student. In other words, Ellis (1986) states that it is “a complex
process, involving many interrelated factors. It is the product of many factors pertainingrelating
to the learner on the one hand and the learning situation on the other” (p.4).The process of
learning a second language for children includes important and individual factors that may
affect the learning process and its outcome, presenting some students needs that require to be
found, evaluated and overcome (Falout, 2012). According to this, the factors that influence
individual learner differences in language learning are: cognitive, affective, physical, and
psychological (Palacios et al. 2016).

The IndividualDistinct Factors which a child or a student in the process of SLA

undergoes varies, as we have previously mentioned, and these factors take us into a
development of a questionnaire to better understand the students’ needs and approaches to a
better teaching learning process that we as teachers can use to be design successful lessons.
Hence, as no learner is completely similar to another, the factors are unique for each individual.
The literature describes the way in which those factors determine the significant different
manners in which individuals attain the L2. For this reason, the aim of this work is to present a
questionnaire that could be an assertive tool to determine the factors that influence the learning
development in the group of students described below

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CONTEXTUALIZATION

The populationpeople where the questionnaire will be applied is in a Language school

which is located in Bogotá -Colombia. The population is a group of students between 12-16
yearsold with some characteristics that will allow us to carry the questionnaire out.

 First, it is a fairly large group (60 students counting all courses) ideal for gathering a
substantial amount of information.
 Secondly, their students’ needs by presenting a low level of motivation towards
English made the students demand more attention, which was pertinent, since it favored the
constant participation in the activities of the role play.

 Thirdly, learners are predominantlyprincipally middle to upper class with access to

books, internet, and culturally diverse community surroundings. All these students have access
to either a computer or a smartphone in their homes to be able to use technology in case they are
needed in their learning methods.

Based on it, it looks reasonablepractical and suitable to apply this questionnaire in order
to advocate students’ motivation and enrich their experience with the Second Language
acquisition. Additionally, the questionnaire is designed not only for teachers but also for
students in order to identify students’ needs in the learning process. Since questionnaires are
understood by Moser & Kalton (1972) as instruments designed to investigate a cause-effect
relationship, they help teachers to identify the main characteristics about the social environment,
the activities, or the opinions and attitudes of learners. Thus, we consider it as an instrument to
collect learner’s responses, allowing us to collect factual, behavioral and attitudinal data in order
to retrieve information from a group of students and their learning needs.

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QUESTIONNAIRE PROPOSAL
1.When you need to study for an exam:
2. If you are trying to learn to pronounce:
3. When you are going through a reading
activity how do you perceive the linguistic
information?
4. When you are learning a new topic, what
is your perceptual learning style?
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A. You try to practice the topics with a friend
or classmate speaking in the L2 mainly.
B. You study by listening to recordings or
repeating the words you need to learn.
C. You do grammar exercises in your
notebook.
D. You wait for the teacher to make a review
before the exam.
E. You record what the teacher has said and
repeat at home to better your pronunciation.
F. You listen to music on your computer or
smartphone and repeat the words you hear.
G. You use the internet to browse through
pronunciation sites and practice with them.
A. You start thinking in a reflective-
impulsive manner.
B. You feel dependence on an external
referent (teacher)
C. You are autonomous in your learning
process.
A. Visual, since you prefer to process
information by using pictures, diagrams,
graphs and so on.

5. If you need to learn new vocabulary of
structures in the L2, what strategies work
better for you.
6. What affective influences do you have
when learning a Second Language?
7. What type of strategies do you think you
use when learning a Second Language?
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B. Auditory, since you learn best by listening
to conversations or presentations.
C. Kinesthetic, because you learn by
experience where physical activities are
involved.
A. Making comparisons between your L1
and the L2 being learned.
B. Grouping words in categories. E.g.
memorize words connected with food and
drink.
C. Setting a study plan in a learning
notebook in which
you design your own self-evaluation tasks.
D. You study with background music and
self-talk in a positive way e.g. saying to
yourself “you can do it”.
A. The global motivation, as for you is
important your previous knowledge and
experiences.
B. The situational motivation, since for you
is relevant to have an attractive classroom to
be.
C. The task motivation, due to it should be
appealing and interesting for you and make
your curiosity to be activated.
A. Cognitive, as you are able to generalize,
compare, analyze, and reason.

8.Which of the following do you consider
impact your learning process?
9.Which of the following personality factors
might influence your learning?
10. What motivates you to learn a second
language?
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B. Memory, so you retrieve information
easily and you can use it when need it.
C. Affective, because you have control over
your emotions and attitudes towards the
classroom and this allows you to work in
group conversations and cooperate with
peers.
A. Intelligence: Linguistic, spatial, musical,
kinesthetic, interpersonal, or intrapersonal
B. Physical Factors: Health, physical
development, nutrition, visual and physical
defects.
C. Teacher’s personality: Physical
appearance, his mental capacity, his
emotional behavior, and his attitudes towards
others
A. Extroversion: Helps you to interact easy
with peers and practice language more often
B. Anxiety: The fear of making mistakes in
front of other students since you have a lack
of self-confidence.
C. Risk-Taking: You feel comfortable with
the language as you are self-conscious and
your attitude within the class is active.
A. Integrative motivation: You want to learn
it because you are interested in the people
and culture of those who speak it and you
want to be able to communicate with them.
B. Instrumental motivation: You need to
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learn it to be able to use it in the future for

either a job or your career requires it.

C. You want to learn it because you like the

language and you feel motivated to just learn
it without having a specific purpose in mind;
in other words, because you just want to.

JUSTIFICATION OF QUESTIONNAIRE
Question 1

This question aims to gather information about the Cognitive style: the manner in which
the learner perceives, monitors, conceptualizes and recalls linguistic information (Palacios, et al,
2016). The options of this question offer information about the learning tendencies and styles
described by Reid (1987) and Willing (1988). Option a. is a field dependent learner, specifically
in the category of Socially Sensitive. It can also describe a Communicative learning style in
which the learner prefers social learning. Option b. is an example of the Auditory learning style
in which the learning process occur by listening to tapes or lectures. Option c. denotes Analytic,
in which learners prefer logical presentations that require high capacity for making connections,
and visual learning tendencies that occurs ASSIGNMENT – IF 8 in learners who prefer to see
words in books, workbooks, charts, among others. Option d. refers to Authority-orientated
learning style, in which learners tend to depend on the teacher’s decisions and commands.

Question 2

This question aims to find out how important or how often a student turns to technology
in order to facilitate their learning process and to what extent it should be used either in the
classroom or at home by the student in order to succeed in SLA. All the answers point to the
importance of Integrating our technology in our teaching process.

Question 3

Students have different characteristics when showing their perceptual and intellectual
abilities as they have to include in their performance their cognitive, affective, and physiological

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aspects in order to respond to their learning process (as cited in Palacios et al. 2016). This
question is focused on enquiring learner’s thoughts, and how they perceive and organize
information in regard to the reading activity. It is also designed to measure in a qualitative way
their field of learning. In this question, motivation also helps to recognize new findings on the
individual factors that could affect their process and needs. The students’ needs and learning
factors in which these questions focus are the affective factors (Krashen, 1991) that may reduce
or increase learner’s language input.

Question 4

This question is based on Reid (1987) who identifies these modalities as learning styles
and intent to make teachers to identify learner’s cognitive style which can affect their success in
learning a foreign language. Moreover, it provides teachers to distinguish the relation between
the cognitive style and academic achievement since this entails that the task is seeing from
different perspectives as learners also need to explore their own learning style in order to make
the task successful. The importance of this question in our ASSIGNMENT – IF 9 questionnaire
is because for us it is a vital part in the learning process as it helps us to accommodate those
differences in the classroom having in mind a variety of materials that can be merged in
language classrooms. As many differences can be found in a classroom, those should be
reconsidered when teaching foreign languages. Students are also guided to try to regulate to
different learning settings in order to avoid any hostilities when exposed to learning styles that
do not suit them. (Mulalic, Almasa & Shah, Parilah & Ahmad, Fauziah,2009).

Question 5

This question focuses on identifying the type of language learning strategy that students
use when learning structures and vocabulary in L2 established by O’ Malley 1985, Ellis 1985,
Wenden and Rubin 1987, Willing 1988 and Oxford and Crookall 1989. Option A is an
operation that belongs to the Cognitive Strategies category in which the learner makes
comparisons across languages that enables him/her to generalize and differentiate one from the
other. Option B is an example of the use of Memory strategies, in which the learner creates
mental linkages to group words into semantic fields that might result easier to remember.
Option C defines a metacognitive strategy in which the learner is aware and reflects about
his/her own learning process. Option D might be selected by a learner that implements effective

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strategies when learning new concepts. This strategy aims to achieve better control over
emotions and providing positive reinforcement (as cited in Palacios et al. 2016).

Question 6

Motivation is one of the influences in learners as it can affect their learning since if
“motivation exists, success in language learning is guaranteed” (Corder, 1981 as cited in
Palacios et al. 2016: p. 29). Understood this, this allows students to interact with their
environment, their classmates and with the language (Ladousse, 2004, p.7). Budden (2006)
maintains that motivation allows the student to know other subjects in and through the foreign
language, which creates and benefits attention. According to Nida (1956) this is defined as the
“need or desire learners feel to learn the second language” and this involves ASSIGNMENT –
IF 10 different factors as seen in the questions. Thus, for us is important to identify due to if
there any lack in motivation in the classroom, learning will not take place. That is why we as
teachers need to be able to try to motivate students as much as we can having in mind their
interest, lacks and needs.

Question 7

This question is created in order to analyze learners’ strategies of learning as they are
essentially “steps taken by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage and retrieval of
information” (Oxford and Crookall, 1987 as cited in Palacios et al. 2016: p. 16). These
strategies are techniques that learners use in order to learn a Second Language and according to
Ellis (1997) they can be behavioral, mental, or problem-oriented. Besides, these enable teachers
to expand their role and also learners to take responsibility for their learning since they are the
tools used in order to achieve a task bearing in mind that learners have a variety of factors that
might influence their learning as the “personality traits, motivation level and purpose of learning
the language”(Wenden and Rubin, 1987 as cited in Palacios et al. 2016: p. 17).

Question 8

Success in learning a Second Language is generally faithfully related to the level of the
intellect, physical factors, and teacher’s personality since if students present lack in any of them
or have any difficulty with them, learning will not be successfully. Thus, the factors mentioned
in the question are considerable in the guidance and the diagnosis of the learning needs. When

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the learner has accumulated a number of deficiencies that interfere with his/her progress, it
slows the process and can affect the entire teaching- learning progress. Besides, a factor like
health, can decelerate learning and will likely affect learners ability to learn and his capability to
concentrate. Moreover, the teacher is also an important component in the learning environ-ment
or in the failures and achievements of the learner since the means in which he/she interacts
within the classroom, determine the kind of performance which occurs from the learning
situation. ASSIGNMENT – IF 11

Question 9

In this question, what we intend to analyze is the Personality factors that learner have in
order to learn a Second Language since these define a person’s pattern of thoughts, feelings, and
behavior across several circumstances in any specified setting. These allow teachers to
recognize learners personality and how this can contribute to his/her learning. Anxiety happens
when the learner feels fear to fail and has a lack of confidence and make the performance quite
difficult. Contrasting, when the learner takes different risk in his/her learning process is “helpful
for rapid progress in an L2” (McClelland et al., 1953 as cited in Palacios et al. 2016: p.
61).Thus, the personality traits help us comparing responses over an extensive variety of
settings, consistencies that appear in the classroom. In summary, they aid as warnings of
patterns of behavior.

Question 10

As we have stated above, motivation is a major influence factor in a SLA, therefore the
question has two types of motivation and one personal answer, which is common among second
language learners. Answer A shows Integrative motivation, which has been linked to “Additive
Bilingualism”, allowing learners to add a second language to their natural environment with no
harm to their L1. Gardner (1979) Answer B shows Instrumental motivation, which is more
likely linked to “Subtractive Bilingualism”, where the learners will replace the mother tongue
by the second language that they will use as their primary communication skill in their
immediate surroundings. Ellis (1986) The final answers, which tends to be a quite common one,
where the students usually say, “Because I want to.” Many learners like to be able to speak a
second language because they are fascinated to say they are bilingual, and this usually takes
them to have SLA in their repertoire. ASSIGNMENT – IF 12

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CONCLUSION

We have mentioned and briefly discussed several factors that influence second language
acquisition at different levels and their direct influence to achieve SLA. Factors like motivation,
attitude, age, intelligence, aptitude, learning style, and personality can either influence, hinder or
support them in their efforts to master L2. Therefore, these elements seem to be an essential part
of the learning process, which can contribute to the success or failure of a second language
learner. Considering all this, it motivated us to design a questionnaire to be able to use their
responses to better the teaching learning process. As a result, theses answers will help us
develop the right study plan by considering their needs and learning styles so they can achieve
their objective of Second Language Acquisition. Education has always been influenced by the
social system, age, and culture and this also involves the behaviors that students present inside
the classroom as their behavior problems are at the risk for numerous difficulties in academic,
social, and daily functioning. These behavioral problems triggered the pressure in their learning
process to a point where students present a lack of motivation and interest. As we mentioned
before, lack of motivation and interest is a common learners’ need presented in the ESL/EFL
classes that is why during this proposal we intended to dig in it, in order to foster their interest
in the language and decrease the behavioral problems that external factors may have caused on
them (Campbell, 1999). These questions allow us to perceive how demotivation in children can
be reduced through the use of substantial, contextualized and powerful activities where students
feel motivated and are capable to understand and produce the use of English as a Second
Language.

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REFERENCES

Budden, J. (2006) Role Play. London: BBC.

Campbell, J. (1999). Student discipline and classroom management: Preventing and

managing discipline problems in the classroom. (C. C. Thomas, Ed.) Springfield, Illinois:
Charles C. Thomas.

Ellis, R. (1986). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford

University Press

Falout, J. (2012). Coping with Demotivation: EFL Learners’ Remotivation Processes

December 2012–Volume 16

Gardner, R.C. (1979). ‘Social psychological aspects of second language acquisition.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Ladousse, G, P. (2004) Role Play: Resources Book for the Teacher Series. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Moser, C., & Kalton, G. (1972). Survey methods in social investigation (Second ed.).
New York: Basic Books.

Mulalic, Almasa & Shah, Parilah & Ahmad, Fauziah. (2009). LEARNING-STYLE
PREFERENCE OF ESL STUDENTS. ASEAN Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher
Education.

Palacios, I., Gassó, E., & Ball, P. (2016). Individual Factors in the Learner’s
Development. Barcelona: Funiber.

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