Individual differences in SLA

Table of contents
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Effects of Personality
- Self confidence - Empathy - Analytical Tendencies - Personality and Monitor use

Effects of Age
- Proficiency and Age of arrival Pronunciation Grammar - Rate of acquisition - Sources of Age Differences Biological Factors Cognitive Factors Affective Factors Differences in Language Environment

Language Aptitude Motivation

- Instrumental Motivation - Integrative Motivation - Resultative Motivation - Intrinsic Motivation

Language Strategies

Effects of Personality
y

Self confidence Empathy Analytical Tendencies Personality and Monitor use

Effects of Age
y

Proficiency and Age of Arrival

x Pronunciation x Grammar

Rate of Acquisition y Sources of Age Differences

y
x Biological Factors x Cognitive Factors

x Affective Factors: Adults filter out more of the available language input than children do. x Differences in Language Environment: Children receive much more concrete here-and- now input, which facilitates language acquisition; in contrast adults typically are exposed to conversation about topics whose referents are not obvious from the nonlinguistic context. On the other hand, older students may be better at managing conversations.

3. Inductive language learning ability: The ability to identify patterns of correspondence and relations between form and meaning. 4. Rote learning ability: The ability to form and remember associations between stimuli.

Motivation
x Instrumental Motivation: Learners are motivated to learn an L2 because it opens up educational and economic opportunities for them. x Integrative Motivation: Learners choose to learn a particular L2 because they are interested in the people and the culture represented by the target-language group.

x Resultative Motivation: Learners who experience success in learning may become more, or in some contexts, less motivated to learn. x 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 personally involved in learning activities.

Learning Strategies
Approaches or techniques that learners employ to learn an L2.
x Behavioral Repeating new words. x Mental Using linguistic or situational context to infer the meaning of a new word. Problem-oriented

x Cognitive strategies Those involved in the analysis, synthesis, or transformation of learning materials. Ex. recombination, constructing a meaningful sentence by recombining known elements of the L2 in a new way. x Metacognitive strategies Those involved in planning, monitoring, and evaluating learning. Ex. selective attention, where learners make a conscious decision to attend to particular aspects of the input. x Social/affective strategies Concern the ways in which learners choose to interact with other speakers. Ex. questioning for clarification, asking for repetition, a paraphrase, or an example.