Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Box 8.4 Individual differences and language teaching
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The variety and nature of motivations need to be recognized.
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Teachers should work with, not against, student motivation in materials and
content.
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Important attitudes in L2 learners include maintaining cultural identity,
maintaining relationships with other groups, beliefs about bilingualism,
beliefs about monolingualism.
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Students without aptitude can be excluded (if allowable on other grounds).
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Different teaching can be provided for learners with different types of apti-
tude, even streaming into fast and slow streams.
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Age issues affect when and how to teach the second language.
Discussion topics
1
Suggest three ways in which you would increase (a) positive short-term
motivation and (b) integrative motivation in your students.
2
Is it really possible to change the students’ underlying motivation, as opposed
to simply increasing it?
3
What should be done with students who have a low aptitude for L2
learning?
4
What do you think is the best age to learn a foreign language?
5
Name two teaching techniques that would work best with adults, two with
children.
6
How can one cater for different personality types in the same classroom?
7
If girls really are better at L2 learning than boys, what could the reason be?

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Further reading
Main sources for this chapter are Skehan (1989) Individual Differences in Second-lan-
guage Learning; Gardner (1985) Social Psychology and Second Language Learning; and
Singleton (1989) Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. Coverage from a psycholo-
gist’s point of view can be found in Dornyei’s (2001) Teaching and Researching
Motivation and (2005) The Psychology of the Language Learner.
Individual differences in L2 users and L2 learners