Affective Factors for Acquiring Language

Positive Factors

There are both positive and negative affective factors for second language acquisition. Some of the positive factors can be listed as: the student’s positive attitude towards learning the new language, the teacher’s motivational attitude, and discipline during the learning process, proficiency in the student’s first language, and the student’s discovery and application of similarities between the first and the second language.

Negative Factors

Some of the negative factors can be listed as: a poor attitude towards learning a new language, lack of motivation, lack of discipline, negative influence of teachers, and the habit by some students to constantly resort to concentrating on translating literally from his or her first language.

Similarities

There are some languages which can be considered really difficult to learn depending on how different they are to the learner’s first language. A native English speaker for example; depending on his attitude, discipline and desire to learn, would need less time to learn Dutch or Spanish. This is because these are Indo European languages with the same writing system as English. Even though many people regard German as a difficult language to learn, by the same token as Dutch and Spanish, the native English speaker would find German easier to learn than Arabic or Chinese, for example. This is because Arabic and Chinese belong to other language families and their writing systems are different. A native speaker of French should find Portuguese and Spanish easy to learn, while a native speaker of Spanish should find Italian easy to learn and vice versa.
Proficiency in the Native Language



If the student has a high level of proficiency in his or her native language, he stands a good chance of understanding and learning a second language. This does not mean that Students with a low level of proficiency in their language cannot learn a second language. Low level proficiencies are however affective factors for second language acquisition, and in these cases, students need a deeper immersion into the new language than those with high level proficiency. Living in the country of the new language for a period of time is an absolute must for lower level native language proficient students to feel comfortable with the new language.
Language Learners

Language learners come from different backgrounds and have different needs and goals they also have different styles of learning. Teachers of second languages should consider these among the affective factors for second language acquisition. The social and cultural contexts of the new language can also affect language learners, especially younger immigrant students, many of whom struggle at the same time to maintain their native language, and not lose it in the process of integrating in the new culture. Immigrant students, while happy to mingle with others of their own language and culture, should make an extra special effort to associate with speakers of the new language, and use this to their advantage to practice as much as possible.

Some articles on affective factors

http://www.esp-world.info/Articles_21/Docs/Age.pdf

http://www.celea.org.cn/teic/78/08070227.pdf

http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/su200505/su20050501.pdf

http://www.antonellapavese.com/papers/timeperception.pdf

http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/33/3300029.pdf

http://www.ses-online.jp/ronbun/30/b-kimura-5-20.pdf

Self-Efficacy: Helping Students Believe in Themselves

Self efficacy is commonly defined as the belief in one's capabilities to achieve a goal or an outcome. Students with a strong sense of efficacy are more likely to challenge themselves with difficult tasks and be intrinsically motivated. These students will put forth a high degree of effort in order to meet their commitments, and attribute failure to things which are in their control, rather than blaming external factors. Self-efficacious students also recover quickly from setbacks, and ultimately are likely to achieve their personal goals. Students with low self-efficacy, on the other hand, believe they cannot be successful and thus are less likely to make a concerted, extended effort and may consider challenging tasks as threats that are to be avoided. Thus, students with poor self-efficacy have low aspirations which may result in disappointing academic performances becoming part of a self-fulfilling feedback cycle.

How can students gain self-efficacy?
There are four sources of self-efficacy. Teachers can use strategies to build self-efficacy in various ways. 
Mastery experiences - Students' successful experiences boost self-efficacy, while failures erode it. This is the most robust source of self-efficacy.
Vicarious experience - Observing a peer succeed at a task can strengthen beliefs in one's own abilities.
Verbal persuasion - Teachers can boost self-efficacy with credible communication and feedback to guide the student through the task or motivate them to make their best effort. 
Emotional state -A positive mood can boost one's beliefs in self-efficacy, while anxiety can undermine it. A certain level of emotional stimulation can create an energizing feeling that can contribute to strong performances. Teachers can help by reducing stressful situations and lowering anxiety surrounding events like exams or presentations.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation

Engaging students from urban backgrounds

Educational psychology has identified two basic classifications of motivation - intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation arises from a desire to learn a topic due to its inherent interests, for self-fulfillment, enjoyment and to achieve a mastery of the subject. On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is motivation to perform and succeed for the sake of accomplishing a specific result or outcome. Students who are very grade-oriented are extrinsically motivated, whereas students who seem to truly embrace their work and take a genuine interest in it are intrinsically motivated.

Motivating Students

This chapter from the book Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis (Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco, 1993) is a great place to start for ideas and tips about increasing student motivation in your classes. The author presents a handy distillation of research on motivation and uses examples and anecdotes that bring this material to life. In addition to general strategies, this chapter addresses successful instructional behaviors, how to structure a course to motivate students, de-emphasizing grades and responding with other types of feedback to students, and tips to encourage students to complete assigned readings. A reference list points the way to more specific information. 

Excerpts from this chapter:
Give frequent, early, positive feedback that supports students' beliefs that they can do well.
Ensure opportunities for students' success by assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult.
Help students find personal meaning and value in the material.
Create an atmosphere that is open and positive.
Help students feel that they are valued members of a learning communit

My students aren't motivated - how can I help them?
Teachers have a lot to do with their students' motivational level. A student may arrive in class with a certain degree of motivation. But the teacher's behavior and teaching style, the structure of the course, the nature of the assignments and informal interactions with students all have a large effect on student motivation. We may have heard the utterance, "my students are so unmotivated!" and the good news is that there's a lot that we can do to change that.

Further reading on the topic

http://www.di.uniba.it/intint/UM05/WS-UM05.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7753203/Age-as-an-Affective-Factor-in-Second-Language-Acquisition

http://www.supercamp.com/links/student-attitude-motivation-------------------------.html

http://www.nadasisland.com/motivation/

Today we discussed a few articles studying the connections between affective factors and language proficiency. This is an often discussed topic in SLA. And if you discuss this topic, you’ve got to mention Gardner. He published and used the AMTB (see Word doc below) to gauge and measure the effects of “affective factors” (including anxiety, attitude, and motivation) on language learning outcomes. Krashen also included the “affective filter” in his Monitor Model.

Svane’s article’s conclusions were rather startling, though not all seemed to agree with all the interpretations of the discussion section. Svane concluded that there was a negative relationship between attitude and language outcomes, or in other words, that those with a more critical eye (Western culture students) had better grades and those with a more compassionate eye (Asian culture students) had worse grades.

Dr. Jiang’s comments on the Gardner et al (2004) article were humorous, but pointed. He, as a cognitive scientist, who looks into how the brain deals with language, was not interested in the article. He said that it presented nothing new for the field and he was disappointed with it. It proved a basic point with 37 pages of poorly written research, showing that “A” students experience little change in motivation and attitude over the academic year, but that “B” students start well, but then have a slight decrease in motivation and attitude at the end. “Less than B” students start with poor motivation and end up even lower.