INTRODUCTION

Success in learning a foreign language or second language (L2) depends on a variety

of factors such as the duration and intensity of the language course, the characteristics
and abilities of the teacher, the appropriateness of the teaching methodology, the
quality of the textbook, the size of the composition of the learner group, the amount of
L2 practice opportunity and the last but not the least the characteristic of the language
learner.

The importance of leaner characteristic cannot be overestimated. When students

embark on the study of an L2, they are not merely empty vessel that will need to be
filled with wise words of the teacher; instead they carry a considerable personal
baggage to the language course that will have a significant bearing on how learning
proceeds. Past research is applied linguistic that identified a number of key
components of this baggage or leaner ‘baggage’ and have also provided clear
evidence that these components determine how fast and how well we are likely to
master the L2. Below, we are going to look at the learner characteristics which are
largely beyond teacher control.

Learner characteristics/ individual differences

Learner characteristics is a concept that revolves around the student learning

experience to influenced by personal, social, cognitive and academic elements. It is
presumed that these aspect play a pivotal role in both how and what students
learn.Through a series of studies, educators can determined what characteristics impact
students the most.

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An understanding of learner characteristics enable students to be more efficient and
effective in their learning. It is also encourage teachers to be more precise in their
teachings. Learners characteristics are also diverse that the range from personal to
academic. The former refers to the traits like gender, language, age and cultural
background. Meanwhile, academic characteristics consist of logic, objectivity,
intellect, insight and practical applications. These combined qualities contribute
significantly to the students learning process.

Human beings differ in different ways like sex, age, aptitude, motivation style,
learning strategies and personality are all differ from one individual to another, as such
as in learning language. Therefore, it is important for teachers to know these variables
which are individual differences of the learner. An effective and productive learning-
teaching process can be planned by considering these individual differences of the
students.

One of the most widely recognized facts about second language learning according to
Larry Serlinker (2008) is that; some individuals are more successful in learning a
second language than other individuals.There are some factors that may be responsible
for these differences, such as aptitude, motivation, personality/learning style and
learning strategies

Motivation
A social-psychological factor frequently used to account for differential success in
learning a second language is motivation. This has an intuitive appeal. It makes sense
that individuals who are motivated will learn another language faster and to a greater
degree. And, quite clearly, some degree of motivation is involved in initial decisions to
learn another language and to maintain learning.

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Personality and learning style
The term learning style refers in broad terms to the preferences that an individual has
of obtaining, processing, and retaining information. In other words, how do individuals
approach the task of learning? The term learning style is often used interchangeably
with personality, although the former is undoubtedly more variable, whereas the latter
refers to a stable trait of an individual

Learning strategies A common observation is that not only are some language
learners more successful than

Others, but also that good language learner sometimes do different things than poorer
language learners. The term commonly used in the second language acquisition
literature to refer to what learners’ do that underlies these differences is learning
strategies. These are methods students choose and use to learning second language.
These include methods of helping ourselves to recognize what is needed to learn
process new language and work with other people in order to learn. Use of the correct
strategy at the appropriate time can aid us to learn the language better and also make
us more independent (autonomous) learners.

Aptitude
The relationship between aptitude and second language learning success is a very
important one, if only because opinions about aptitude can have enormous
implications in our everyday lives. If aptitude measures are used to discourage
individuals from studying foreign languages and if they measures are inaccurate, then
certain students will be unfairly prevented from receiving whatever advantages may
accrue from knowledge of other languages. In other words, the specific abilities to
predict success in language learning have been studied under the title of language
learning 'aptitude ' one of the pioneers in those area, John Carroll (1991) has

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characterized aptitude in term of the ability to learn quickly. Thus, we may
hypothesize that a learner with high aptitude may learn with greater ease and speed but
that other learners may also be successful if they persevere.

What are the chief learner characteristics or as a researcher like to call them, individual
differences that influence language learning success? It is appropriate to start with the
two main demographic variables i.e. the leaner age and gender.

AGE: Age has been the subject of a great deal of research over the last 40 years. The
traditional view has been that the younger we start to learn a second language, the
better chance of success we have. Previously, this advantage was explained in term of
a critical period where a person needed to learn the L2 in the period roughly before
puberty, or lose the ability to become like altogether. This critical period hypothesis
suggested that the children must be expose to the environment early in life to develop
language properly. Scholars suggested and believed that there are neurotical changes
in the brain that make a learner less able to learn language, and these changes are
assumed to occur near puberty which is from 12-13 years above. Danson and Newpart
(1987) did research for two groups of Chinese between age 3 and 39 who arrived
United State, in different times but spent the same period of time and later they all
were given grammatical and ungrammatical sentences to differentiate. The result
shows that there is an advantage of early arrival from 3 and 7years then later arrive
from 8-38 years and they were indistinguishable from native speakers.

However, recent research shows that the younger the better principles is only valid in
environment where there is a constant and natural exposure to the L2 (for example
learning French in France): in a typical classroom environment where the amount of
exposure is relatively small, older leaner seem to have advantage over their younger
peers, that is here, older is better.

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 Also, age seems to have a much greater effect on pronunciation than on other
linguistic abilities, such as grammar or vocabulary. Even here, it seems that some late
starting learners have been able to develop native like pronunciation. Thus, although
the age factor may have some physiological basis in the way the brain handle
language, there are also likely to be several other age related factors at word including
the amount and pattern of L2 input, the amount of verbal analytic ability and the
motivation to learn the L2.

The question now are children more successful second language learners than adults?
Many would say yes, if we commonly observe the ease with which children especially
young children slip into the role of second language speakers. But Seville-Troike
(2006) warns us against such early assumption and argues that, one must define the
term success. According to her, some define ‘success’ as initial rate of learning while
other studies define it as ultimate achievement. Also some studies define ‘success’ in
terms of close learner pronunciation into a native speaker, other in term of how closely
a learner approximate native grammatical judgment and still other in term of how
fluently or functionally competence. she further warn us that the evaluative criteria
clearly must be kept clearly in mind while judging conflicting claims on success.

Beyond the critical period principles or hypothesis, it is believed that physiological

changes cause the brain to lose it is plasticity or capacity assume the new function that
learning language demands. Individual who for some reasons are deprived of the
linguistic input which is needed to trigger first language acquisition during the critical
period will never learn any language normally. One famous case that provides a rare
evidence for this point is that of Genie, an abused girl who was kept isolated from all
language input and interaction until she was 13 years old. Inspite of years of
interactive efforts at remediation, Genie never developed linguistic knowledge and

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skills for her L1 (English) that were compared to those speakers who began acquisition
in early childhood.

For a long time, a debate on the existence or absence of a critical period of language
learning has been going on in the field of second language learners. A more
sophisticated version of critical period hypothesis is the concept of sensitive period for
language learners by Slobin (1982). The sensitive period implies that there is a period
in one’s life (during childhood) when second language acquisition is optimized. Slobin
(1982) argues that of the sensitive of language learning is proven by the fact that the
universal age of unset of production, rate of acquisition and age of completion of the
language learning is the same and is relatively unaffected by the environmental
variation and individual cognitive ability. It is hypothesized that once this critical
/sensitive period is over, the child will not effectively communicate.

So how much difference does age make? Long (1990) argues that for language
learners of more than 15 years of age, it is difficult to acquire native like fluency and
an absent of an accent Savile -Troike (2006) agrees with Long (1990) that some older
learners can achieve native like proficiency, although they definitely continues a
minority of second language learner.

The critical/sensitive period hypothesis is yet to be tested at the scientific level and
second language learners theories have a long way to before they find a clear and final
answer to the fascinating question of why and how children seem to be better (second)
language learners.

Gender: The second factor, the learner’s gender is important because research has
consistently found females to outdo their male counterpart when it comes to language
learning

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Many studies (e.g. Oxford, 1993: Young and Oxford, 1997) have found that gender
have a significant impact on how students learn a language. Although the study of
gender as a variable in language learning is still at an early stage (Bacon and Fineman,
1992). Oxford, 1993 : Ehman and Oxford 1995) studies of individual language
learning is still at an early stage related to sex (biological) or gender (socially
constructed) shows that the female tends to show greater integrative motivation and
more positive attitude to L2, and use a wider range of learning strategies, particularly
social strategies (Oxford, Nyikos and Ehman, 1998). As a matter of fact, as for the
pattern whether the difference exist between male and female in terms of learning a
language. Larsan Freeman and Long (2000) believed that in the process of first
language acquisition female excel males, at least at early stage. Zanglin (1989)
highlighted that, it was gradually believed that the male and female are born with
different linguistic advantages such as female learn to speak early than male, and
female learn a foreign language faster and better than male etc.

Studies of actual results suggests that female are typically superior than male in nearly
all aspects of language learning expect listening vocabulary (Boyle, 1987). Although
there are researches conducted by researchers like Dtanguruagu (2012) and Ese (1998)
are on the view that attitudes that are responsible for making an individual learn
language effectively. However Kimara 91992, as cited in Faniye- Troike, 2006) report
that higher level of articulatory and motor ability have been associated in women with
higher levels of estrogen levels during menstruation cycle.

It was proven that the women has practiced more than male did when it comes to the
second language learning because female had a better learning strategy for learning
vocabulary. It was also shown that females used more memory strategy when
attempting to learn as well as having more self regulated learning strategies in learning
than males. This is due to their ability to having a better conscious control than males.
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This enact to gender behavior, where females are more capable of paying attention to
their second language learning. Males are less likely to feel fear and anxiety in public
speaking where as females can easily become anxious when speaking. Males tend to
detach themselves from unpleasant emotion in order to obtain more self control. So
although females do use more strategies to speak, males still manage to feel more
relaxed in conversation.

Conclusion

From the details given above, one can concluded that individual learns different play a
critical role in the acquisition of second language. However, despites the efforts of
many researchers at reaching a conclusive theory with regards to this, success have
eluded them. At present, the scientific study of the role of these differences in second
language learning, may not be very sophisticated and advanced, but it can be hoped
that the growing awareness of the need to focus on the individual student and his
individuality in language learning situation will fuel the need to study the phenomenon
in a detail and empirical manner. Moreover, the analyses of these differences reiterated
the commonly held belief that a teacher, especially a language teacher, apart from
imparting knowledge must also be a psychologist who can modify her/his teaching
methodology according to the factor related to the individual differences of his/her
students. It is not enough to just know that all students are different from each other.
They should also be skilled and wiling enough to help the process of second language
learning. Thus, it is help that the study of individual differences and the pedagogical
implications will further lead to the kind of teachings practices that increase the
success ratio of second language learning.

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 REFERENCES

An introduction to applied linguistic, edited by Nobert Schmitt. First edition (1994)

An introductory course on second language acquisition. Third edition (2008)

Bacon Sim and M.D. Finneman (1992) Sex difference in self-reported belief about
foreign language learning and authentic oral and written input, language
learning 42.4, 471-95

Beniyey, L. (1983) competitiveness and anxiety in adult second language learning:

looking at and thought the diary study in H Selinger and M Long (eds)
classroom oriented research in second language acquisition . Roniley, M.A
Newbury House Publishers, 67-102

Beebe, L. (1983), Risk taking and language learner in H Selinger anmd M Long
(eds)

classroom oriented research in second language acquisition. Roniley M.A

Newbury House Publishers. 39-66.

Boyle, J. ( 1987). Sex differences in listening vocabulary, language learning 39.2,

273-28A.

Cook, V. (2001). Second language acquisition and language teaching (3 rd edition)

New York. Oxford University Press inc.