Individual Differences Among Learners

Most theories of learning are attempts to describe universal human traits in learning.

They seek to explain globally how people perceive, filter, store, and recall information. (Brown, 1994:103)

 These models of learning do not account for the plethora of differences across individuals in the way they learn. While we all exhibit inherently human traits of learning, every individual approaches a problem or learns a set of facts from a unique perspective.

 Other than individual traits such as intelligence, motivation, attitude, personality, level of first language, empathy and age, cognitive variations such as aptitude, learning styles and learning strategies do encourage or inhibit second language learning.

 The development of individualised instruction is partly due to a wish to release the learners from the need to work at the same rate. Another possibility is to stream students into different classes for different levels of aptitude, say highfliers, average, and below average. Providing different teaching methods and final exams for different types of aptitude might not be such a good ideas as this would be a luxury in terms of staffing and expertise.

 Moreover, the student whose performance is dismal in one subject may be gifted in another. Thus, only in individualised or self-directed learning perhaps can this be overcome. It is common knowledge among teachers that learners differ in their preferences in language learning. Some need to learn grammatical rules, others claim to know them intuitively. Some cannot remember anything unless they write it down, other have very good memories.

 These have been attributed to differences in cognitive or learning styles in individuals. Learning styles mediate between emotion and cognition and refer to the ways a student prefers to go about learning (Chitravelu et al., 1995:11) Cognitive style has also been defined as a persons typical ways of thinking, seen as a continuum between field-dependent cognitive style in which thinking relates to context and field-independent style in which it is independent of context (Cook, 1991: 86)

 In second language learning, it may be incorrect to assume that learners should be either field-dependent or field-independent. It is more likely that people have general inclinations, but given certain contexts, can exercise some degree of an appropriate style.

 Learners of different learning styles employ different strategies of learning (De Bono, 1976; Toncheva, 1992; & Chryschocoos, 1992 in Bahiyah, 1993: 32) As such, Chitravelu (1995:12) suggests that a teacher should be sensitive to and accommodate the students preferences for learning styles and strategies to bring about improved learner satisfaction and attainment.