Abstract
While a substantial body of empirical evidence has been accrued about the role of individual differences in second language acquisition, relatively little is still known about how factors of this kind can mediate the effects of instructional practices as well as how empirically-derived insights can inform foreign language pedagogy, both with respect to shaping certain variables and adjusting instruction to individual learner profiles. The present paper is an attempt to shed light on the interface between research on individual difference factors and teaching practice, focusing upon variables which do not easily lend themselves to external manipulation, namely intelligence, foreign language aptitude, working memory and personality, with the role of the last of these in language learning being admittedly the least obvious. In each case, the main research findings will briefly be outlined, their potential for informing instruction will be considered, and, in the final part, the caveats concerning practical applications of research on the variables in question will be spelled out.
Highlights
There have recently been several attempts to relate the findings of research into individual difference (ID) variables in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) to everyday foreign language instruction,1 as superbly demonstrated, for example, in the book-length overviews by Gregersen and Macintyre (2014), or Williams, Mercer, and Ryan (2015), and pedagogical implications tend to be included in volumes devoted to specific ID factors (e.g., Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014; Oxford, 2011)
There are certainly ways in which practitioners could employ the matching or compensatory options by trying to emphasize their learners’ strengths and resorting to remediation to offset the negative effects of their weaknesses, try to build upon the dominant intelligences or hone those that are somewhat lacking, get learners to use the available software to expand their working memory (WM) capacity, ensure that students are cognizant of their ID profiles or implement a modicum of variety which would at the same time involve a certain degree of matching, compensation and stretching
While the activities included in their book demonstrate that teachers can do a lot to manipulate the ID factors discussed in this paper, there are grounds to temper our optimism in this respect for several reasons
Summary
There have recently been several attempts to relate the findings of research into individual difference (ID) variables in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) to everyday foreign language instruction, as superbly demonstrated, for example, in the book-length overviews by Gregersen and Macintyre (2014), or Williams, Mercer, and Ryan (2015), and pedagogical implications tend to be included in volumes devoted to specific ID factors (e.g., Dörnyei & Kubanyiova, 2014; Oxford, 2011). There is a clear need to take stock of what has far been accomplished in this respect, bring together some of the loose threads, and address the question whether, to what extent and in what ways such research could inform classroom practices With this in mind, the present paper, intended as the first in a sequence of two dedicated to the consideration of practical applications of empirical investigations into selected ID variables, focuses on factors which are believed to be relatively stable, or, at best, malleable only to a minute degree in response to external manipulation, that is, intelligence, foreign language (FL) aptitude, working memory (WM) and personality. The interface between research on individual difference variables and teaching practice: The case
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