Individual Differences Of Three Adult Learners Of Chinese In An Language Immersion Program

Recently, research on individual learners has broadened to include a greater focus on the contexts of language learning and to explore the interactions between individual learners and the socio-cultural environment in investigations of these learner variables.This study has two purposes. The first is to investigate the language learning of three college-age learners of Chinese who participated in an eight-week language and culture immersion program in mainland China. The research focuses on four areas of learner variation: learner beliefs and philosophies about the nature of language learning, approaches to vocabulary learning, foreign language using anxiety and language learning outcomes.The second purpose of the study is to explore the use of multiple approaches to research on individual variation. The research framework for the study is ethnographic and the study employs a multi-methodological approach to data collection over an extended period of time in several language learning contexts. The research procedures used in the study include participant observation, interviews, language learning journals, questionnaires, and standardized instruments such as the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview.The findings of the study suggest the following:Learners learn in different ways. The variety of learner approaches was evident in the belief systems that learners bring to the language situation, in the ways that learners approached the learning of vocabulary words, even the point of dealing with foreign language anxiety and in the approaches to cultural adjustment.Learners bring to the second language learning situation pre-conceived notions and philosophies about the nature of language learning and about their strengths and weaknesses in language learning. The belief systems vary considerably from learner to learner and flow from the learners' personality characteristics, experiences with language learning within or beyond the classroom, and views of what constitutes...