individual factors in FLL

• CPH: humans are genetically programmed to acquire certain skills at specific times in life (Chomsky)

• children who are not given access to language in infancy & early childhood, will never acquire language, if deprivations last too long

• extreme cases to find evidence

• Studies exploring CPH take two perspectives:

– The rate of acquisition

– Ultimate attainment of proficiency

• Cognitive Sciences: Children rely more on memory basedprocesses, whereas adult L2 learning is more characterized by rule-based learning

• A widely accepted finding states that children are slower at SLA than adolescents and adults

Common features of successful adult learners

– Intensity of language use

– Intrinsic motivation for learning the TL

– Later learners compensate for lack of plasticity in procedural memory by relying more heavily on declarative metalinguistic knowledge

• Motivation and aptitude are the two best researched areas of individual differences

• aptitude

• „someone who has an ear for foreign languages“

• „a knock for foreign language learning“

• "prediction of how well, relative to other individuals, an individual can learn a foreign language in a given amount of time and under given conditions“

• Language aptitude tests and achievement tests correlate in a range between 0.4 and 0.6

• MLAT: successful in predicting language learning rate in instructional contexts

• How can learners with low MLAT scores ever succeed? (Carrol: aptitude = stable)

• Learners differ regarding their working memory capacity (Wen 2016)

• Working memory seems to exercise greater effects on L2 learning and processing than on L1

• Working memory affects different areas of SLA

• Working memory is already included in models of language aptitude (Skehan)

Language learning strategies can be defined as thoughts and actions, consciously selected by learners to assist them in learning and using language in general, and in the completion of specific language tasks.

• Self regulation: ‘the degree to which individuals are active participants in their own learning’ (Dörnyei, 2005: 191, as cited in Ellis & Shintani, 2016: 309)

• replace traditional, decontextualized strategy training with awareness-raising strategy training embedded into meaningful language learning activities

• provide learners with exact information on how to proceed and why

• encourage learners to verbalize their application of the strategy

• Native-like proficiency is possible for adults who started learning the target language after puberty (Nikolov 2006: 239)

• Conditions that have to be met for early FL instruction to be successful:

• Positive attitudes towards the L2, its speakers and language learning

• Content and methodology have to be appropriate for young learners

• Proficient teachers: in L2 as well as in implementing adequate methodology