Introduction to English Language Teaching Course Code: 4FHE 1053 Assignment 2: Second Language Acquisition

1. What do you understand by the term affective factors? In not more than 300 of your own words summarize Krashens views on the role of affective factors in the learning of a second language.

From my understanding, affective factors is a term which describes emotional factors that can influence the styles and methods used by second language learners. There are negative or positive effects of affective factors for second language acquisition.

There are a few affective factors in learning second language, which are motivation, aptitude, personality and learning styles.

Motivation is playing vital role in learning second language. Teachers should motivate their learners by helping them to put high quantity of effort to success on second language acquisition. Learners communication skills and attitudes towards second language are significant in motivation. There are four types of motivation which are integrative motivation, instrumental motivation, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Firstly, intrinsic motivation is done for personal enjoyment. Besides, extrinsic motivation allows learners to learn language to get reward like high marks or present for teacher and also preventing from getting punishment. Next, integrative motivation explains about how language is learnt for social and cultural enrichment. For example, they enable to communicate with foreigners. Lastly, instrumental motivation is for achieve career or academic goals. For example, learners learn second language for purpose of being a second language lecturer or to get high marks in exams. When learners are highly motivated, they will pay attention very deeply, they able to recognize their objective and goals and they have low anxiety and self-consciousness.

Aptitude is known as the skills or abilities in learning. Different people have different sort of ability in learning second language. Some learners who are high in cognitive abilities information could learn the language with a greater ease and speed. However the slow learners can also be successful if they preserve. Excellent language learners are those who do not have a very high IQ but they do have a very high aptitude or marks on the memory part of language learning. The learners who have high aptitude are capable to memorize the grammar rules, phonemic, meaning and the tone of the new sounds. As a consequence, they have the capacity to understand the grammar rules and get more familiar with vocabularies and words in sentences.

Moreover, personality factors which are divided into self-esteem, anxiety, empathy, extroversion vs. introversion and inhibition vs. risk taking. Self-esteem learners always have positive thinking, have ability to develop their skills and feel proud of them. For example, they would not feel shy of speaking English in a normal way with their friend who is fluent in speaking. They bravely face challenges and take risks that may be appear. This type of learners could learn the language very fast and improve their

weakness to a high level. Secondly, anxiety is considered as negative factor in learning language. This type of learners always feel depress and worry of their weakness and keep them away from learning new task, not actively participate in activities. For instance, they would avoid themselves to communicate actively with others in English. It shows that they emotionally are adopting avoidance behavior. This would cause poor performance in their learning of second language. Thirdly, empathy is the ability to speak with others of a target language. They have the willingness and ability to learn second language because they like to involve themselves in new identity for instance, they want to speak and pronounce the words in a native speaker way. Furthermore, extroversion versus introversion. A characteristic of extravert is someone who likes to mingle around with their friends, sociable with everyone and more likely to work in groups, always seek for opportunity and talkative. Thus, they have a big chance to learn the second language and will acquire more input especially when make contact second language users. For instance, they would able to learn many new words and slang of the language and bravely try out various types of words and grammar structures

in an advanced rate through their communication skills. Therefore, these provide a close attention to extroversion learners on second language acquisition. On the other hand, introvert type of learner who always quiet, do work on their own by referring books rather than people and like keep a distance from the others. Thus, they could not have chance to learn the second language from the others, unable to speak fluently when lack of communication with fluently speaking friends and unable to correct their mistakes in second language acquisition as well.

Lastly, I would like to talk about inhibition versus risk taking on second language acquisition. Inhibition type learners are who scared to take risk because it might endanger their ego. Usually inhibition type learners feel shy and being reserved to learn something. For instance, they shy to speak in front people because they are more selfconscious of their slang and pronunciation of the words. Thus, this will give late result for them to learn second language fully and discourage themselves to perform well. However, risk taking personality is who are willing to face any challenges on second language acquisition. They believe that there will involve some trial and error process in learning language. They have high motivation to achieve good result from their learning. They will also not give up easily of their bad performance and will practice hard to accomplish it.

Finally are the learning styles on second language acquisition. There are 3 types of learners who are visual, kinesthetic and auditory learners. Visual learners like to look at pictures, written words and they prefer to learn language by looking at how people communicate in language. This kind of learner prefers their teachers to write new words and sentences on the whiteboard instead of saying it loudly. While kinesthetic learners like to move around, move objects while learning and do things physically. Lastly, auditory learners like to hear people talk, say the words loudly, listen to song and video will make them to learn second language easily.

2. Reflect on your own experience of learning English. Use the table below to list the positive and negative experiences which had an effect on your language learning and say what kind of impact they had on you. You must mention at least 3 positive and 3 negative experiences. Positive experiences Details of experience 1. My teacher always chose me to answer her questions for English lesson especially in primary school. Impact on learning of English I started to have selfesteem to answer her questions. I become confident with my answer especially answering the grammar rules. I started to volunteer to answer the questions especially during her lesson. I would pay attention in the classroom so that I able to answer correctly. I spontaneously gave some ideas related to the discussion topic. Share our information each other without shyness. They would not look down when I pronounce the words wrongly. My friends will teach me how to pronounce the word correctly. I participate in Spelling Bee competition and I won 2nd prize. I put my effort in reading many story books, watch English cartoons, talks with my English speaking friends. I also participated in Choral Speaking competition. I learn many new words, the tone of each word during choral

2. Having group discussion with peers who always motivate each other and correct our mistakes.

3. Have opportunity to participate in activities especially during English month.

speaking with full of expression. I also learnt new vocabularies and practice them with my friends. Negative experiences 1. An embarrassing moment during reading passage in classroom. My teacher scolded me that I pronounce some words wrongly. I felt embarrassed but some of my friends correct my mistakes and encourage me to improve my reading skills and speaking skills. So, next time I read it carefully. I started to a lot of books and say the words loudly until get the correct pronunciation. I asked my friends whenever I have doubt in the meanings of some difficult vocabularies. I became a walkingdictionary I always bring dictionary to school. I improve my communication skills by interacting in English with my peers and also with my family members. I went to English tuition to improve my marks in that subject. I asked my teacher when I am not sure or confused about something. I tried to do a lot of writing activities at home. Thus, I able to write very good essays after my hardworking.

2. My teacher had punish me because I do not know the meanings of the word which asked by my teacher.

3. My teacher sent me to extra English classes because my writing skills was very poor and unable to write essays as expected by my teacher.

3. Think of 3 things that the classroom teacher can do to create a positive atmosphere in the classroom to aid language learning. Discuss briefly (in 2-3 sentences) how each of these things can help the learner. Submission deadline: 23rd September 2013 Firstly, the teacher can create a positive emotional classroom. She or he has to make the classrooms rules clear to ensure a safety environment for the students. Make sure all the students have the opportunity to voice out their opinions without any fear. The students have to engage with teachers, they would start to trust him or her and feel comfortable around her or him as a person. While speaking to students, teacher has to use positive language, use humour and have eye contact. While teacher teaching, students would pay attention especially when learning the grammar rules and phonemics. Secondly, using humour will be a good way to create a positive atmosphere in classroom. The students will have fun in the classroom as they allowed. Using humour is the best method to lower the effective filter by Krashen, so that the students feel self-esteem, extrovert, and less anxiety. They will concentrate in language learning when they feel great of using the target language orally. This makes them to communicate to each other and become a fluently speaking person. Students also more willing to take risks in using their second language in a classroom that allow them to be brave and less stress with the positive environment. The ways of classrooms desks arrange would create a positive environment. There is very important to arrange the desks in the way that all the students feel included in the classroom. The best way is arranging the desks in pods or in cheapest form which placed in a group for example four tables together. This will allows a lot during group discussion. Teacher has to make sure students should be able to see the whiteboard and teacher clearly. Students also should be seated facing the front of the classroom and away from window to prevent from distraction. While learning language, this will be helpful especially during group discussion. For example, they can discuss the grammar rules, construct different kind of sentences and communicate among themselves in second language as well.