Native Language-based Foreign Language Learning Difficulties

Obviously, familiarity with foreign languages is a must in the multilingual society we live in today. Thus, a foreign language requirement has to be fulfilled at schools and universities, posing a substantial burden on a number of students, who repeatedly demonstrate varying degrees of difficulty in learning a foreign language, quite frequently at the same time doing well at other courses. Many explanations have been proposed and debated in order to explain this phenomenon. Suggestions included lack of foreign language aptitude, poor attitude, low motivation, high levels of anxiety, failure to use appropriate learning strategies, mismatch of teacher-student learning styles, much less personality variables. Seemingly, some correlational linkages between affective variables and successful foreign language learning appeared to be strong. However, no single variable or set of variables have been proved to account for successful or unsuccessful foreign language learning. Foreign language researchers have not managed to explicitly specify any clear pattern of the relationship between foreign language achievement and cognitive, attitudinal and personality variables (Brown, 2000; Ellis, 1994; Lundberg, 2002; Sparks, 1995, 2006).

In the 1960s, Carroll attributed individual differences in foreign language learning to the overall language ability of the learner and to variables related to instruction. Pimsleur observed that foreign language underachievers tend to demonstrate poor sound discrimination skills and hardness in sound-symbol learning, responsible for the foreign language learning differences that could not be explained by low motivation or intelligence. Dinklage documented cases of students achieving well at other courses, yet failing their foreign language component at Harvard University. Again, the failure could not be traced back to lack of motivation or poor attitude, as their attempts to perform well in foreign language courses and positive stance were evident. Dinklage was the first to suggest that the hindrance experienced by those students resembled dyslexic problems, namely, difficulties in learning to read and spell, occurrence of letter/symbol reversals, sound confusions, poor discrimination of sounds in a foreign language and verbal memory deficit (Ganschow et al. 1989, 1991, 1992b, 1995b).