Quotes About Learners

Learners who are successful may indeed be highly motivated. But can we conclude that they became successful because of their motivation? It is also plausible that early success heightened their motivation, or that both success and motivation are due to their special aptitude for language learning or the favourable context in which they were learning.

because the Japanese learners' attention was regularly drawn to form, they were primed to notice the corrective function of recasts. In the more meaning-oriented French immersion classes, however, recasts were less likely to signal to the learner that the teacher was responding to a language error. Thus is likely that learners assumed that the teachers' recast was simply a confirmation of what they had said.

These findings and those from other research led Lyster and Mori to propose the counterbalance hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, feedback is more likely to be noticed if learners are oriented in a direction that is opposite to what they have become accustomed to in their instructional environment. One example of this would be that learners who receive L2 instruction that is focused on meaning/content need feedback that directs their attention to form more explicitly.

Second language learners are not always aware of their individual cognitive or perceptual learning styles, but virtually all learners, particularly older learners, have strong beliefs and opinions about how their instruction should be delivered. These beliefs are usually based on previous learning experiences and the assumption (right or wrong) that a particular type of instruction is the best way for them to learn.

Another way in which younger and older learners may differ is in the amount of time they can actually spend learning a second language. We know that first language learners spend thousands of hours in contact with the language or languages spoken around them. Young second language learners may also be exposed to their second language for many hours every day—in the classroom, on the playground, or in front of the television.

Bonnie Schwartz (1993), for example, concludes that instruction and feedback change only superficial aspects of language performance and do not affect the underlying systematic knowledge of the new language. She argues that language acquisition is based on the availability of natural language in the learner's environment. Interaction with speakers of that language is sufficient to trigger the acquisition of the underlying structure of the language.