Factors that affect effective second language acquisition are self-esteem and anxiety. Students with low self esteem tend to not ask questions, and for the most part keep to themselves. Another factor is anxiety which affects how the student will interact not only with the students, but also the instructor. With these factors combined there is created a barrier that if not broken will impede the students progress in his or her L2 acquisition.
Self-esteem has been shown to be related to second language achievement. Krashen (1980) mentioned the relationship between self-esteem and oral production in ESL performs. A person with higher self-esteem tends to achieve better than those because the person would not feel embarrass if they make mistakes. However, if teachers try to correct mistakes from those students with introvert personality, teachers need to properly correct them without embarrassing them in front of other peers. For example, if Mary says” I go to school with my sister yesterday,” the teacher would respond, "You went to the store with your sister yesterday?" She has effectively provided corrected input while also continuing the conversation. If a student shuts down after an outright correction then opportunity for more input and practice has been lost.
Anxiety:
William Twyford (1988) mentioned that “Ease in acquiring a second language has also been linked to a low level of anxiety”. (P.6) Anxiety is a kind of feeling with worry or self-doubt and people can predicate it. Anxiety is also as important as self-confident for a second language learner and in Brown (2002) mentioned “three components of foreign language anxiety have been identified as followed:
1. communication apprehension, arising from learners’ inability to adequately express mature thoughts and ideas;
2. fear of negative social evaluation, arising from a learner’s need to make a positive social impression on others; and
3. test anxiety, or apprehension over academic evaluation. (p.151)
According to Fishbein (2000), besides the different types of anxiety various, there are also different stages of anxiety. The three different stages of anxiety are before, during and after. In the before stage, the person would have anxiety on the anticipation of the event. In the during stage of anxiety attack, the person will be self aware of the event that is accuracy at the moment. In the after stage of the anxiety, the person would be concerned about the result of the event.
In language acquisition, every foreign student has different levels of anxiety barriers due to the various types of personalities. However, the comparison of older learners to younger learners when it comes to second language acquisition will vary due to the fact that older learners will be more self aware of themselves than younger learners. Older people’s self awareness is higher than younger learners and because the self awareness is higher, they will understand their personalities better than once they are more aware of themselves.
In Conclusion these factors that lead to language learning barriers are quite common. In becoming an ESL instructor/teacher I’m going to strive to help my students overcome these barriers through strict observation of my students interactions with each other and maintain an environment wherein my students will feel comfortable enough to relax and open up their minds for the optimum learning experience.
