Social Factors
Teachers' ChallengesA teacher can have all of the theoretically relevant ways to teach children and they would all work without flaw if we could overlook a crucial aspect of children- their motivational factor. Young children will be enticed by a world of different things but when dealing with pre-adolescent and adolescent children, gaining their attention is a task within itself. Not only is this true for teens, but it has a significant impact on their subsequent performance. Part of the reason is that because the students have no motivation, they are less willing to encode information into their brain in a meaningful way. Without deriving the meaning, the hope of fully comprehending complex material that is covered in classes is reduced to marginal amounts. This effect cascades into a decreased amount practice with such material. Although this certainly effects children in general, it is doubly disconcerting for the hopes of ELL and SLA students; their best shot for acquisition of the intricate nature of language is to practice the language without apprehension and fervently to the point where they are comfortable in any setting. Involvement in the learning process will solidify this operation through neural activation and experience. (For more information on this see Cognitive Issues and the Brain)
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Developmental Biological Stage of
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Environmental Factors
As we have seen, the social contexts and experiences that a student brings to the classroom create the background for his or her language learning. The environments the student is a part of at home, school and in their communities will directly influence whether they become fluent in their second language. The language their friends and family speak will have the most influence, since at their age, these are their most important social connections. The support they receive from these relationships, and whether they share a goal of language learning or the ability to converse in the second language will have a great impact on how fluent students eventually become. Other environmental factors that may influence mastery of the second language includes exposure to television, music or literature written in the second language and how often the student interacts with these mediums. This is one aspect where the use of technology can potentially yield the most returns. For example, instant messaging in the second language to a classmate for an hour or so, counts as a significant amount of practice. What's more this social context yields multiple benefits: practice of spelling and grammar, increased experience with informal conversation and motivation to continue learning in order to better communication.