Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Level of first language
Level of first language is also relevant. Some studies support the commonly held
teacher’s view that children who are more advanced in their first language are bet-
ter at their second language (Skehan, 1989).
Empathy
Those students who are able to empathize with the feelings of others are better at
learning L2 pronunciation, though this depends to some extent on the language the
students are acquiring (Guiora et al., 1972).
Individual differences in L2 users and L2 learners
152

---

Of course, all teachers have their own pet beliefs about factors that are crucial to
L2 learning. One of my own suspicions is that the time of year when the student
was born makes a difference, due in England, not to astrological sign, but to the
extra schooling children get if they are born at certain times. But my own checks
with the university computer cannot seem to prove a link between choosing a lan-
guage degree and being born in a particular month.
Many of the factors in this chapter cannot be affected by the teacher. Age can-
not be changed, nor can aptitude, intelligence and most areas of personality. As
teachers cannot change them, they have to live with them. In other words, teach-
ing has to recognize the differences between students. At a gross level this means
catering for the factors that a class has in common, say, age and type of motiva-
tion. At a finer level the teacher has to cater for the differences between individu-
als in the class, by providing opportunities for each of them to benefit in their
own way: the same teaching can be taken in different ways by different students.
To some teachers this is not sufficient; nothing will do but complete individual-
ization so that each student has his or her own unique course. For class teaching,
the aspects in which students are different have to be balanced against those that
they share. Much L2 learning is common ground, whatever the individual differ-
ences between learners may be.
Discussion topics 153