Issues in Second Language Learning Essay

People today live in a global village people correspond with from each one other from around the egg regularly through the Internet, modern transportation enables a person to travel from Africa to Europe in a matter of hours, products are bought and sold with increasing ministration from all over the word, services are provided anytime, anywhere in the world, and real time coverage of major international news events is defecaten for granted. Thus, it seems that reading s phrase is a requirement in todays highly globalised environment.However, abet dustup learn (SLL) is a long and difficult demonstrate, and is a magnanimous task for anyone. After all, learning a first address is a process that gather ups much of a young childs day, and ESL students in universities must(prenominal) work even harder in order to learn and acquire a second talking to. The learning process can be emotionally difficult for university students to take the step into a new talking to and cult ure. Adult learners, perhaps even more than children and adolescents, can be shy and embarrassed around others when trying expose beginning language skills.Learners acquire a second language in many different ways. There are many similarities in how a second language is learned, but there are also differences based on individual student characteristics and language background. For example, outgoing students may begin to imitate phrases and expressions genuinely early and try them without worrying about making mistakes. Conversely, other learners may not physical exertion their new language for some time. Usually, at the outset, learners may understand cultural shock as they are exposed to a new language, therefore, a whole new culture.This common go out, described as uprooting, is the abrupt diversity from a familiar cultural milieu to an alien one. In the beginning of every SLL program, many learners experience a so-called honeymoon period, during which students are enraptur e with the alien language without a true catch of them. As time progresses, it is common for students to become almost hostile toward learning new language. Second language learners often suffer greater rates of anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic complaints.Furthermore, given the stresses SLL students face, a student struggling with language issues may lack the physical, emotional, or financial resources to lam to basic needs. After this stage, the learners are transitioned to so-called improved adjustment. In the last stage, the stage of bilingualism, the learners incorporate the norms of the language and culture that they bedevil acquired and learned into their own life-style and their own value set. Cultural Issues Many students of SLL are struggling with learning a new language.These struggles stem above all from linguistic and cultural differences. Often, they experience the language shock phenomenon wherein learners confront anxiety when first entering a community in w hich they do not verbalise, or are not ripe in, the dominant language. It is a common occurrence in schools, where, despite their desire to speak the dominant language fluently, students must struggle for months or several eld before they understand everything that is being said. This feeling of anxiety is aggravated by the ignorance of others.Consider the following example reported by Li (1999) When a Chinese mother went to pick up her daughter from school, she began to ask her some questions about her day, but in Chinese. The girl became upset with her mother and later explained that her classmates would laugh at her in those situations. Moreover, whenever the teacher in her school inquired as to who had made a particular mistake, one of her classmates would point to her and say, The Chinese girl, when it was usually not so. In admission to the language shock that occurs on entering a new environment, many students experience another kind of struggle.Because of the types of or deal described above, second language learners have negative associations with speaking their native language. Yet when they go home, that is the language in which their parents communicate. Moreover, their parents insist that they too maintain the use of the native language as a connection to their homeland and heritage. But many second language learners, especially those who immigrated to position-speaking countries, associate proficiency and fluency in English with becoming American and so they want to give up their native language.These learners are caught in a battle while at home, they are expected by their parents to speak their first language at school they are pressured to speak the second language. Another significant challenge that many second language learners face is sagacity the curriculum and pedagogy used in the classroom. Western classrooms are largely Euro-centric and America-centric. Carger (1996) recounts the story of a Mexican American boy, who was a student in a predominantly Latino Catholic middle school in Chicago.While the teachers and administrators never openly stated that they believed their students were inferior, they treated them as if they were. The boys homeroom teacher often used a de heart tone when she spoke to her students. She did not allow them to ask questions, nor did she encourage them to think on their own. Most of her assignments included surfeit to which her students could not relate. For example, one task that the students were asked to complete was to describe the experience of going to the dentist. However, many of the students had never been to a dentist.Pedagogical Issues A major problem confronting learners is the misfortune of the teachers to appreciate different learning strategies and styles among SLL students. Increased interest in student-centred learning approaches amongst language educators has led to numerous studies investigating individual language learning strategies and their consanguinity to achievement in learning second/foreign languages. Studies have indicated support for appropriately applied language learning strategies on second/foreign language achievement (e. g. , Griffiths and Parr, 2001).The consensus of the research is that although all learners, regardless of success with language learning, consciously or unconsciously employ a variety of learning strategies successful language learners busy in more purposeful language learning and use more language-learning strategies than do less successful ones. Overall, findings indicate that both the frequency with which learners founder language learning strategies and the strategies they choose are distinguishing characteristics mingled with more successful and less successful learners.Learning strategies are strategies that contribute to the development of the language system of rules which the learner constructs and which affect learning directly. They are steps taken to facilitate the acquisition, storage, ret rieval, and use of development. In addition learning strategies are the special behaviours or thoughts that individuals use to help them learn, comprehend, or retain new information. Furthermore, it can be argued that learning strategies can foster learners autonomy in language learning.Strategies can also embolden second language learners in promoting their own achievement in language proficiency. Learning strategies, therefore, not only help learners become efficient in learning and utilise a language, but also contribute to increasing learners self-directed learning. Whether as a result of heredity, educational background, situational requirements, age, or other factors, Sudanese learners of the English language understand and process information differently.While one individual prefers a particular learning style over another, such a orientation course reflects a personal inclination for how to learn in a particular situation. As personalities change, so too may their learni ng style preferences after word picture to different learning/teaching situations. Early research into language learning strategies was mostly concerned with investigating what language learning strategies learners used, without attempting to address the links between strategy use and success. Recent research has focused on determining the connections between strategy use and language proficiency.Such studies have shown that proficient language learners employed more strategies in language learning than less proficient language learners. Other findings have exposed a relationship between students perceptions of their language proficiency and strategy use. Oxford and Nyikos (1989) affirmed that greater strategy use accompanied perceptions of higher proficiency, while Wharton (2000) demonstrated a significant correlation between the devil factors, indicating the higher a students language proficiency self-rating, the more frequent strategy use was.Long lists of learning strategies h ave been identified by a number of studies over the past thirty years Oxford (1993) reported that there were at least two dozen different classifications. Generally, these learning strategies chance on under four broad categories, i. e. strategies that enable learners to (1) comprehend, store, retrieve and use information (2) manage and direct their learning through reflection and planning (3) control their emotions and (4) bring about opportunities to practice the target language with other people. Learning strategy system can be direct or indirect.Basically, direct learning strategies require affable processing of the target language. There are three major groups of direct strategies, each processes the language differently and for different purposes memory, cognitive, and compensation. Memory learning strategies, also called mnemonics, involve mental processes used in arranging information in order, making associations, and reviewing. Cognitive learning strategies involve the processing of the target language so that marrow becomes clear through processes like reasoning and analyzing.Lastly, compensation learning strategies enable second language learners to sword up for gaps in their knowledge and skills, by, for example, guessing meanings and using gestures. On the other hand, indirect strategies support and manage language learning often without involving the target language directly. The metacognitive, affective, and social learning strategies belong to the groups of indirect learning strategies. In essence, metacognitive learning strategies enable second language learners to plan, coordinate, evaluate, and direct their own learning as well as to monitor errors.Affective learning strategies, on the other hand, help learners gain control over their emotions, attitudes, and motivation through self-encouragement, self-reward, and reduction of anxieties. Finally, social learning strategies are ways of involving other people in enhancing learning throug h questions, cooperation and increased cultural awareness. Another pedagogical issue is that many SLL teachers do not generate environment that will foster learners understanding of making the essential mental construction. The current research proposes that students need to construct their own understanding of their learning.Constructivism provides a way of understanding teaching and learning and offers information for developing various ways of teaching, because the challenge in teaching is not to lecture, explain, or otherwise to attempt to transfer knowledge, but to create circumstances and experiences that engage the students and support their own explanation and application of language models needed to make sense of these experiences. The focus of constructivism is not unique to psychology it also has roots in several areas, such as linguistics. Constructivism is primarily a hypothesis of human development that in recent years has been applied to learning.The learning or mean ing-making theory proposes that people create their own meaning and understanding, combining what they already know and believe to be true with new experiences with which they are confronted. The theory views knowledge as temporary, developmental, social and cultural. Lambert et al. (1995) described constructivism as the primary basis of learning where individuals bring past experiences and beliefs, as well as their cultural histories and world views, into the process of learning all of these influence how we interact with and interpret our encounters with new ideas and events (p.xii).Guided by theories of constructivism, teachers must recognize that learning is a search for meaning meaning requires an understanding of the whole as well as its parts in seeking meaning, they must understand the mental representations that students use to interpret the world and the assumptions they make to strengthen those representations and the goal of learning is for the SLL student to develop his or her own understanding.Hence the students cultural-social and historical contexts are of importance in their learning. Social constructivist concepts have important implications in teaching strategies. Social constructivists believe that reality is constructed through human interactivity. Members of a cabaret together construct the properties of the world. For them, reality does not exist introductory to its social invention, thus it cannot be discovered.Also, social constructivism holds that knowledge is also a human product and is socially and culturally constructed, which suggests that individuals establish meaning by interacting with each other and with their environment. Additionally, social constructivism proposes that learning does not occur only within an individual, but is a social process meaningful learning among SLL students happens when they are multiform in social activities.Teachers can design instructional models based on the social constructivist perspective. These models promote collaboration among learners and with practitioners in the society. According to Lave and Wenger (1991) a societys practical knowledge is positioned in relations among practitioners, their practice and the social organization and political economy of communities of practice. This suggests that learning should involve such knowledge and practice.