Factors involved in language learning process

There are too many factors that are involved in the teaching-learning process. All of them should be taken into account when planning in order to get better results. In this work, I will talk about three of them: teacher, student, and L1. The first one, the teacher has to create a learning environment where the student can be motivated to learn. The teacher is not just a person who shares what he or she knows, he or she should create a need in his or her students so they will be eager to learn more. The teacher has different roles inside the classroom; one of them is to be facilitator. As facilitator, she or he guides students, another teachers responsibilities are the activities set in class, grouping and interaction among students. Teachers performance inside the classroom is influence by his or her own beliefs, preparation, skills and personality. The teacher has to give students feedback, assess activities, plan lessons, determine lesson objectives, and use gesture and body language to convey meaning. Students are the second element. Students are people and that implies the idea that each of them have their own social context ( social class, cultural level, and ethnic and religious context), their own individual characteristics, motivation, in other words, their interest and desire to learn, their attitude toward L2, and the effort they make to learn a L2. This motivation is call intrinsic when it is an inherent interest and extrinsic motivation when it is the result of external factors. Personality, abilities, beliefs, experiences, cognitive styles (particular ways in which students learn), and learning strategies (special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or retain new information) are other factor that are present in a language class. All of them are involved in the learning process and help or stop students in their language learning. The third factor is the L1. L1 or mother tongue may help students to learn a second language. It can be taken as a reference to understand how the target language works. It is not necessarily something that stops students from getting a full command of the new language. As previously said, it is important to have in mind all this factor and what do they imply, so we as teachers can plan meaningful classes that help students to meet their needs. References: http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume4_issue2/gurney.pdf http://www.ugr.es/~dmadrid/Publicaciones/Individual%20differences.pdf http://english.tyhs.edu.tw/epaper/epaper9/thesis_eng.pdf http://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/DLiT/2006/2ndlanguage/Factors.htm

http://www.misd.net/Bilingual/shelteredcontent/sld013.htm http://www.wce.wwu.edu/Resources/CIRCLE/Lectures/SarahJuliaAge_SLAcomments%20(2).pdf