The Challenges of Learning a Second Language

The Challenges of Learning a Second Language

Study Design

Research Problem

The research is regarding to various challenges of learning a second language.

Research Question

What evidence is there of L1 (English) influence on students' ability to judge and to use L2 (French) language?

What is the relationship between learners' awareness of L1-L2 differences and their success in judging or constructing L2 tenses?

What is the correlation between multi-linguistics and grammar performance?

Research Method

Grammaticality Judgment

The grammaticality judgment test included 10 questions that were given to2 participants. All questions contained statements in two forms (Right and wrong forms), grammatical and ungrammatical versions of the same question.

Structured Interviews

In order to judge the implications of L1 in learning of L2, set of structured questions were presented to participants.

Participants

The research included two participants who were learning French language. These participants are doing graduation from collage and they have taken French language curse as a supplementary course. The reason I choose these participants is that they have just started learning a second language (French) and they are facing difficulties at initial learning phase.

Procedures

In order to attain data for my research, I went to a local collage in Queens, a borough of New York City. There I met few students who have taken French Language as a supplementary course. I spent almost an hour with those students. While talking to them, I observed their perception of French Language and the concerns which some of them had in learning the language. Afterwards, I asked few questions to from my two participants. I recorded the answers in my notebook and the interview took around half an hour. Some of the questions I asked were; why are you interested in French Language? What difficulties you faced during initial classes? What are the major differences between English and French Language? How do you plan to overcome these problems?

Findings

According to the responses, most of the students found French language interesting due to its international usage. Both of the participants were having issues with grammatical differences among these languages. For instance, there is no concept of respectful or disrespectful pronouns in English Language, whereas, French Language provides different words for informal or formal communication.

Discussion of Data

Grammatical differences are the major concern and challenge when learning a second language. These changes result from different cultures in two different countries. Initially, students are not aware of differences among languages (Gass & ...