Major Social and Psychological Challenges Faced By Adult ESL Learners - Research Paper Example

Major Social and Psychological Challenges Faced By Adult ESL Learners and How They Can Cope s Teachers are ordinarily used to presiding over classrooms that have been filled with kids. In the ESL sector, things are somewhat different because the clientele could range between 3 years to eighty and above. Teachers can find the practice of teaching adult learners very rewarding though quite challenging too. Teaching adults calls for a need to remember that the deal is with people who own individual lives outside the school’s vicinity and some of them could be having busy schedules. The purpose of this paper is to examine the broad range of major social and psychological challenges faced by adult ESL learners and how do they cope. Major Social and Psychological Challenges Faced By Adult ESL Learners and How They Can Cope Section 1 Introduction There exists a big difference between academic achievements related to English as a Second Language (ESL) and the remaining section of a school population while students get to higher levels of education. The ESL students are generally faced by the challenge to learn the language plus their subjects and to adapt to the demands of varied cultures. Amidst these challenges, ESL students have still been witnesses of academic success. To adults, learning a second language is by nature a voluntary process especially during the post survival and more advanced level of language acquisition (Hoare 2006, p. 18). Taking this into a social context, adult learning does not merely revolve around passive knowledge acquisition; it includes externalization of a person’s experience. The passion to form part of a class may be triggered by an individual adult’s vision on who he or she wishes to be. On physiological basis, the students will constantly be involved in definition and redefinition themselves, relating that to the entire society along with discovery, development and fulfillment of personal potential. Whereas it is tricky generalizing about ESL learners given that they come from different backgrounds, success with acquisition of English language is dependent on factors such as the age of learners, the level of literacy of parents, reason behind immigration and the learner’s native language. As far as age is concerned, older learners basically have difficulty in assuming a second language in a natural way. This paper will specifically attempt to provide answers to the question “What are the major social and psychological challenges faced by adult ESL learners and how do they cope? “ Research Question What are the major social and psychological challenges faced by adult ESL learners and how do they cope? What are the barriers and incentives that are influential in the adult ESL learners’ motivation? Section 2 Paradigm-Qualitative and quantitative approach Ontological Perspective  The study design will take both a qualitative and quantitative approach so the research paradigm will be ontological and epistemological.  According to Dudwic et al. (2003), qualitative studies are ideal for studying phenomena within real-life context. This approach relates well to the constructivist learning theory where learning involves acquiring knowledge through self. Data from these approaches will provide a desirable description of the phenomenon of adult ESL learners and the influences in there learning processes. It has been realized through these studies, that educational research is a characteristic of dimensional variability that occurs from one person to the other. The variability is often portrayed in the types of learners, learning environment and the study approaches used by researchers. The choice of a research problem is informed by the fact that language has been found to be key in the acquisition and exchange of ideas. The use of language has been proven to be context dependent in communication. Context helps create situations that cues its use and brings forth their associated meanings and practices. Therefore, in order to understand our lessons as ESL learners, we need to know the different vocabularies of the language and how they are used in different context in order to derive various meanings of our study. The development of such understandings will enable one to engage in the activity of learning using different cues of the language to express him/herself easily. Epistemological Perspective The paradigm will be studied through the use of qualitative and quantitative data that will be gathered from both areas of successful curriculum delivery and those that are not successful in curriculum delivery on ESL leaning. This will help in finding the correlation between curriculum delivery, age and the cultural background of the learner and their performance as ESL learners. It will determine factors such as age and cultural background will affect a learner’s personal behavior like response to questions and level of participation and performance in class. This research study will analyze some of the challenges faced by adult ESL learners within social and psychological contexts, and how they cope with them. The study will also help determine whether future curriculum development needs to consider the inclusion of adult ESL learners as part of the mainstream academic quest for self enhancement. Research tools such as interviewing questionnaires and surveys will be deployed in this study for both qualitative and quantitative data acquisition. Section 3  Methodology Methodologically, this study will rely on the data that will be obtained from the classrooms. This is deemed efficient since collecting data from a small group and putting it in comparison over a long period of time will reveal practitioner competence which will be considered as possession of relevant practical skills coupled with practice-relevant research. In this case, I will base my study on qualitative research to determine whether the results obtained are significant enough to justify the need for change with regard to research question. The research question will further be broken down into ‘Who is considered as an adult?’, ‘Does a learner’s expectation in classroom have anything to do with age’ and ‘What challenges do the adult ESL learners face?’ Since the study here is not based on the analysis of the impacts of the research questions on gender, it is therefore convenient to adopt the dualism approach of data production and analysis. The qualitative data will allow the practice of generalisability of the findings that will reflect beyond learners and classrooms. Research Participants The participants will be selected through random sampling from local colleges. The individual interviews will involve four people. For purposes of this research, we will call them student 1, student 2, student 3 and student 4. The interviewees will have to be adult ESL students for at least one term/semester. Some of the interviewed students will have some experience with adult teaching whereas others will have neither experience nor gone through the psychology regarding the same. However, there is a higher likelihood that the selection pattern used will offer a context where students will have an opportunity to boldly speak about the challenges they have earlier on encountered in class during ESL learning. In addition, focus group sessions will used. Just like the individual interviews, focus group interviews will also use face to face pattern as a way of improving constructionist. Data Collection Data collection will be done through the method of participant participation. This is because this method helps in producing data that are more reliable and relevant to the interconnected world of investigation ((SHAWER, 2010). The data will also be produced using both qualitative and quantitative approach. For purposes of this research a structured questionnaire will serve as a quantitative instrument whose validity has been established through an intense literature review. The instruments to be used for data collection will be in the form of interviews using two types of structured questionnaires – one for individual interviews and another for focus group sessions. All interviews will be conducted face-to-face both for individuals and groups. The face-to-face are likely to be faster in comparison with other methods like mail questionnaires though the cost incurred might be higher. Qualitative Study Qualitative study will be carried out through a literature review and the academic literature for use will be restricted to the publications that have been done within the past 15 years. Contents of different sources will be reviewed then data triangulation employed to make the research valid and reliable. Kottler et al. (2009, p. 132) recognizes that a number of the adults enrolling in English courses do so out of their own will. They may have varying needs though the truth still remains that they are interested in learning. Out of those that register for English courses, there are those whose interests are exclusively centred on improving English communication skills for purposes of improving their businesses whereas others seek to increase their chances of career progress. Also present in this category of learners are individuals desiring to move to English speaking countries but aspiring to move around on their own without anybody else’s effort. According to Gilbert et al. (2008), self-consciousness seems to dominate adults especially in view of their manner of speaking and pronunciation. Again, there is a tendency for them to become frustrated in an easy way. An adult is likely to get discouraged just because of a feeling that he has failed or made little progress; this common case with advanced students who might have belief that they are already at a language plateau. Another common behavior among adults is setting of unrealistic expectations such as perfect pronunciation. Similarly, adult learners are likely to level criticism against a teaching method that is employed while children seem to have a greater level of trust towards their teachers (Leberman, Mcdonald & Doyle 2006). This-they say- is likely to reduce the morale of a teacher tackling an adult class. According to Shawer (2010), understanding every process in the students’ selves would be an appropriate step towards involving an adult student in learning. If this knowledge to the teaching context, there is need to employ the motivation techniques intended to provide positive reaffirmation on the adult’s idea of their selves helping them reinstate harmony through learning. Most teachers find themselves teach younger people. On the other hand there is a large of number of teachers who find themselves teach adults especially those that participate in business English (Sutherland 1999). Ushioda adds that the situation becomes more challenging if the adults to be attended to are older than the teacher involved (2013). Many are the factors to be considered if adult ESL learning is to be successful. Respect and evading situations that are likely to leave the adults feeling patronized are examples of values worth embracing. Social and psychological factors are the most useful implication to deal with in any method to pronunciation teaching. The simple truth that an adult ESL learner can have his or her level of TL production varied should communicate to teachers that they have got students who are able to improve their rates of TL production provided see and feel a need to do so. Data Analysis The data gathered will be analyzed using SPSS statistical tools prior to presentation. The VALIDATEDATA procedure in the SPSS will be helpful in identifying every invalid case or data value. The specific options used will be cases and case identifiers. The former will help in establishing empty cases whereas the latter will help in establishing incomplete or duplicate case identifiers. Findings There are a number of findings that will be obtained based on the interviews conducted. To begin with, it will be revealed that the needs of the adult learners seemed to be different in comparison with that of the youngsters in primary schools. Secondly, it will be revealed that there is a wide variety of social and psychological challenges that adult ESL learners face. An example of a particular challenge identifiable is that there will be lots of coping techniques ranging from individual ones to support one can get from institutions, the government, and other professionals. Third, it will be discovered that teachers occasionally forget to consider that students as well as adults could be having responsibilities, work, family or social duties outside the school context. They (teachers) are often drilled into the examination results and achieving grades for school and colleges, especially at moments when semesters or terms are almost coming to an end. The statistical analyses that will be carried out will into picture some effects that did support the initially stated research question. This will serve as evidence that the findings of the research could be extended to other disciplines outside the context of ESL to help the adult learners (SHAWER, 2010). Discussion The purpose of this research is to establish how age and cultural background impacts on the process and abilities of ESL learners. In order to cope with the social and psychological challenges in ESL learning, adult ESL learners would need to put certain measures in place to ensure that they succeed. First, the learners should learn to set realistic goals. They should seek clarity regarding what every course program entails for a given year alongside whatever they are expected to learn. They should also acknowledge the fact that the brains they have are less likely to be flexible in comparison with what the children have, a major reason why children find it almost impossible to lose their accent. It has been found by Nunan (1999), that adult learners have enamours opportunity for improving their manner of pronunciation, but rather, it will make them have an accent that is reflective of what they are. Second, teachers can help the learners to track their progress by marking the end of a lesson by questions like “What did we learn during the lesson?” They could have been taught about a sub-topic like subject-verb agreement. But the teacher has to make sure that the learners are aware of it. Finally, instead of excusing them from taking part in homework, the teacher ought to give numerous though short questions for adults to carry out. For example, a teacher could resort to a 30 minutes assignment instead of one that takes up to 2 hours. Such assignments can be done while they are on lunch breaks or between meetings. Another approach that is workable would be to have the adults watch a 10 minutes video during a 4 o’clock tea followed by summary. This would work well in case the teacher is dealing with a group whose level of concentration is likely to decline during listening. Recommendations There would be need to identify individual case studies from one to one interviews during data collection for the reason that varied paradigm positions alter the perspective that an interviewer pays attention to in every specific case. This according to Bruner (1996) is important in revealing the new gained knowledge to the interviewer. Inclusion of a great deal of contextual material helps the readers of the research paper to understand the cultures and processes of the research context. Future research could resort to an ethnographic approach which aims at establishing how cultural contexts and backgrounds can shape meaning and this could overlap with the constructivist learning theory. Even with this approach, the research paradigm will still be manageable considering that ethnographic work entails studying part of other people’s lives within a short period of time. According to Grenfell and Harris (1999), when the research study is focussing on a broad range of challenges, it would be better shifting focus to specific challenges in future if the research grows. Conclusion In the light of the need to empower the adults with improved communication skills to enable them meet their changing needs, it would be in order that the involved teachers be familiar with and find the best way possible to address the social and psychological challenges so that the learning exercise turns helpful for the adult learners (SHAWER, 2010). References DUDWICK, N., GOMART, E., & MARC, A. (2003). When things fall apart: qualitative studies of poverty in the former Soviet Union. Washington, DC, World Bank. GILBERT, J., REINER, M., & NAKHLEH, M. B. (2008). Visualization theory and practice in science education. [New York], Springer HOARE, C. (2006). Handbook of Adult Development and Learning a Handbook of Theory, Research, and Practice. New York, Oxford University Press. KOTTLER, J. A., & KOTTLER, E. (2009). Students who drive you crazy: succeeding with resistant, unmotivated, and otherwise difficult young people. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Corwin Press. LEBERMAN, S., MCDONALD, L., & DOYLE, S. (2006). The transfer of learning participants perspectives of adult education and training. Aldershot, England, Gower. SUTHERLAND, P. (1999). Adult learning: a reader. London, Kogan Page. SHAWER, S. (2010) Communicative-based curriculum innovations between theory and practice: implications for EFL curriculum development and student cognitive and affective change, The Curriculum Journal, 21:3, 333-359 USHIODA, E. (2013). International perspectives in motivation language learning and professional challenges. New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan. Read More