Universidad de Oriente Ncleo de Sucre Escuela de Humanidades y Educacin Departamento de Idiomas Modernos Seminario de la Metodologa de la Enseanza del Ingls

Analysis of the Contextual and Intra-Personal Factors in the English Learning Process in High School Students

Students: Garca, Carla C.I: 19.869.304 Gil, Laurenis C.I: 19.238.230 Professor: Mislet Ramos

Cuman, Marzo de 2011 The English language is spoken as a native language by 380 million people approximately; but there exists a much bigger group between 100 and 1000 million

people that learn it as a foreign language all around the world (Crystal, 1995). Due to its versatility, today it is still considered to be a lingua franca, as it is a shared language among those that do not have the same mother tongue. In this sense, English is used for economical and touristic transactions, academic, political and social events as a product of globalization (Ruiz, 2003).

However, the English learning process depends on several factors, which are going to determine the consolidation of the objectives that are expected to be achieved in the subject. These factors can be at the cognitive, inter-personal, intrapersonal, socio-economical, and physiological level. All these variables are connected with each other and affect directly in the learning process of each individual. The existence of these factors in the Venezuelan Educational System have influenced in the English learning of our students. We are concerned about how this process is carried out at high school level because we know that this is a very fundamental stage for students as it is the first contact they have with English as a foreign language. Unfortunately, this process of learning is affected by those existing deficiencies in Venezuelan institutes, in general. So, we might say that students' motivation and interest and the environment in which they are learning have a direct relationship.

Just for illustrating the gravity of this situation it is necessary to mention that students do not have an appropriate evaluation system, which most of it consists

on isolated examples with empty blanks that have to be filled by the students with the right verb, noun, adjective or auxiliaries. With this non challenging test, most of the times, students prefer not taking the test even when the teacher explains what it is going to be about and how they have to answer the questions. There is no learning at all, and no comprehension about the language, despite the facilities of the learning process. Besides, there are other contextual factors we consider affect the learning process of the foreign language, for example: the time arranged for the class seems to be insufficient for tests and classes activities as well. Plus, students are not obliged to bring English books in public institutions, but they do not provide libraries either for students to use books in case they need them. Also, when talking about infrastructure, public and private institutions have several deficiencies with lighting, chairs, blackboards, classroom with not enough space, lack of equipment (printers, TV's, stereos, computers,) and audiovisual aids, etc. The noise outside the classroom constitutes a contextual distraction that influences in students' behavior. Also when the amount of students in the class is too big, it is difficult for the teacher to pay attention to each doubt or problem generated in the class. So if the student feels that the teacher is careless about his/her problems this is going to affect his/her motivation and interest about the subject. All the factors mentioned make us think about the students comfort in the classroom, their interactions with the teacher and their interests about succeedingin the subject. Nevertheless, we cannot forget about the intra-personal factors which are

also important when it comes to motivation. It is considered that there are a lot of students that are not affected by contextual factors but by affective needs (absence of any parental figure), and individual factors as motivation, attitude, self steam, anxiety, learning strategies, inhibition, etc. It is necessary to take into account all these factors in order to understand the negative attitude to the learning of English, which is very obvious in the poor academic performance students have. But this observation has to be taken from the students perspective because they are the ones who know their own learning process. These results are extremely important because they will let us face the different personalities and characteristics of a significant proportion of the population. Having different weaknesses, needs, strengths and potentialities make us think that the environment is going to affect students' learning in a different way. Now, understanding factors as those elements that influence or cause a situation (Longman, 2005) we have to comprehend them as responsible for any result in a specific investigation. For this study, we have decided to consider the contextual factors, also known as situational factors, which are related to the organization of the teaching method and the class structure, as for example: the evaluation system, the professor's attitude, the type of tasks and activities (Garca y Betoret, 1997), the bibliographical resources and equipments, the time, etc.Plus, it is important to include in this investigation the intra-personal variables as they constitute a fundamental part of human behavior and there would not be any sense if we do not study the factors concerning the emotional aspects of learning a foreign language (Brown, 1980). A General Objective for this study would be as the following:

To analyze the intra-personal and contextual factors in English language learning in high school students.

Specific Objectives would be as the following: To determine the contextual factors affecting English language learning in high school students. y To identify the intra-personal factors affecting English language learning in high school students. y To determine which of these factors is predominant in English language learning in high school students.

If we want to give an appropriate reason for this investigation we should start stating that it is originated from the need to comprehend those factors that interfere in the learning process of our students. This analysis will probably benefit our institutes at the cognitive level and contextual level, as well. For the reason that at the present time not enough bibliographical material about the matter can be found. Our intention is to illustrate to a great extent the behavior of the situational or contextual factors, information that can be taken as valuable reference to future studies on the same field. Being the objectives of our investigation focused on the factors affecting the learning process of a foreign language, in this case English, it is thought that these factors can be generalized to the learning process in general. Moreover, it is of great importance to study the intra-personal factors controlling the learning process

of high school students as well. As it is explained in the statement of the problem, each individual is different from others thanks to those personal characteristics and the environment in which they subsist. Therefore, it is relevant to know the characteristics of the population studied in order to overcome the difficulties affecting the learning process. So in the future they can benefit from it. The methodology for this research would be carried out as a fieldwork investigation because it will allow us to gather information and data directly from the population chosen for this study. Besides, we consider that the nature of this paper have shown to be an explanatory investigation for it proposes to establish a relation among contextual and intra-personal factors in the English language learning process, identifying the indicators found in the population chosen for this study to indicate their presence and their influence towards the subject and the academic performance of the students.

The precedents related to this investigation are the following: Professor Beatriz Delfn (2006) from Instituto Universitario de Tecnologia in Trujillo State did a study on the attitudes of the university students of the career Servicios de Hospitalidad from the mentioned institute towards the learning of English. The investigation was carried under a qualitative model, on which the methodology was phenomenological-interpretive. y Elena de Prada (1991)In an article of the Spanish Magazine of AppliedLinguistics, did an analysis on the affective factors in the

learning process of a foreign language, penetrating into those aspects of the personality that influence the process in great magnitudes.

Rodrigo Cornejo and Jesus Redondo (2001)this study was carried out in Chile by the psychologists on the basis of the school climate in the educational institutions and proves how some aspects can determine the personal characteristics of the students.

Magnusson and Endler (1977) (mentioned by Cornejo and Redondo, 2001) conceive the development of the conduct from the interactions that the person has with the environment and that this process shapes our personal characteristics.