Learning another language is a challenging undertaking for many foreign-language learners. Over the years, SLA scholars have attributed a multitude of reasons as to why learning another language is an immensely complex phenomenon (Mitchell & Myles, 2001, p. 12). This section reviewed the literature regarding difficulties ESL students encounter in their university academic studies. The challenges ESL students face also call attention to the influence of individual differences and English speaking difficulties. The differences that one can explore are: Age, Sex, Aptitude, Motivation, Learning Styles, Learning Strategies, Personality (Zafar & Meenakshi, 2012). However, the individual differences in this study focus only on age, gender and level of L2 proficiency as follows:
Individual Differences
Age
Muñoz (2007) indicates that it is important that classroom practice activities capitalize on the very different strengths in memory and analytical ability of children and adults by being adaptive to their age. He (2006) summarized the effects of age on foreign language learning in the following generalisations: adults proceed through early states of syntactic and morphological development faster than children (where time and exposure are held constant) and acquirers who begin natural exposure to send language during childhood generally achieve higher second language proficiency than those beginning as adults because at a certain maturational point the L2 learners are no longer capable of achieving native-like levels of proficiency, require markedly more effort than before this point, and they are no longer subserved by the same mechanisms that subserve child language acquisition (Singleton, 2003).
Many older language learners are more afraid of failing than their younger colleagues, maybe due to past failed attempts to learn a foreign language or because they embrace the stereotype of the elderly person as a bad language learner (Dunlap & Weisman, 2006, p. 31). Griffiths (2008, pp. 45-46) noted that if older and younger students are to be successfully integrated into the same classroom, however, the teacher needs to pay conscious attention to the following aspects of class management:
- Resources that appeal to a broad age range or that are specifically aimed at certain age groups in the class must be made available.
- Plan a variety of activities because older students might find some too “childish” and younger students might find some too “boring.” Activities that appeal to younger pupils should also be planned.
- Classroom culture should be geared toward tolerance for face-saving strategies (such choosing to withdraw from threatening activities).
- Students ought to be permitted to utilize unique strategies that align with their individual learning styles or beliefs regarding effective learning.
Individuals at various ages and proficiency levels in second language acquisition utilized distinct strategies, with specific strategies frequently adopted by older or more advanced learners.
Overall, the older and the more advanced the learner, the more sophisticated the strategy used (Ehrman and Oxford, 1989) in order to infuse them with fun and understanding.
Gender
The relative success that men and women of all ages have in learning languages may be significantly influenced by their gender socialization. It is therefore imperative to underscore that, despite the occasional statistical significance of differences in language learning preferences between males and females, they are typically negligible, with a significantly greater degree of variation between individuals than between the sexes (Nyikos, 2008, p. 79). Green and Oxford (1995) concluded that the effects of the use of language learning strategies attributed to gender difference might refer to biological and socialization-related causes. As suggested by Oxford (1989), the gender difference may have been associated with “women’s greater social orientation, stronger verbal skills, and greater conformity to norms, both linguistic and academic” (p. 238). Therefore, gender should be taken into account in order to reach the effectiveness of the learning and teaching by applying the suitable teaching approaches.
Level of L2 Proficiency
Higher levels of proficiency are defined as a contact with more complex and abstract texts, more general knowledge and more grammar learning (Komorowska, 2014, p.15) and vice versa. At the higher proficiency levels, it will be more important for learners to develop precise understanding; however, at lower levels, a general overall understanding is sufficient (Leaver, Ehrman, & Shekhtman, 2005, p. 29). In that regard, a level of proficiency is extremely important when talking about the language learning challenges, for learners who are in higher levels of language proficiency trend to have fewer challenges and vice versa (Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2006, p. 188). Candlin and Mercer (2001, p. 30) indicates how language proficiency is defined and measured is difficult to make conclusions about the relationships between individual learner characteristics and second language learning.
By adding proficiency as a second independent variable, it is able to examine if the effects of learning method (traditional teaching methods) are the same for learners at different proficiency levels (Chen, 2005, p. 38).
