Self-concepts of Adolescents who Experience Language Difficulties

Abstract

Teens who experience language difficulties have difficulty communicating with their parents, peers and the community around them. In addition, language difficulties can affect adolescent self-concept, self-concept is an important thing in life, especially for adolescents, because adolescents' understanding of self-concept will determine and direct behavior in various situations. This study aims to determine the form of self-concept of adolescents who experience language difficulties and the impact of language difficulties on learning difficulties of adolescents in school. The objective of this study were three adolescents who were still in school and experiencing language difficulties with the classification according to DSM IV, namely, mixed receptive-expressive language disorders and the informants taken by the researcher were the biological mothers of each of the three respondents. The type of approach used is a qualitative phenomenological approach with a theoretical sampling technique. The results of this study indicate that respondents II and III form a positive self-concept in which both respondents accept their shortcomings and try to improve themselves. Meanwhile, respondent I formed a negative self-concept where respondent I did not accept his shortcomings and did not try to improve himself, respondent I was pessimistic about the competition and thought he was unable to fight. Respondents I, II and III experienced learning difficulties at school, however, respondents II and III had a solution to their learning difficulties by practicing before presenting the lesson, while respondent I preferred to be silent or angry because they could not express what they thought. So the study show that the three respondents form a self-concept and the impact on learning difficulties is different according to the influence of different aspects, factors and processes of self-concept formation.