Difficulties in Learning English As a Second Or Foreign Language

Anxiety 
Also, the data showed that the learner experienced fear, nervousness, and 
anxiety, which hindered her willing participation in interaction that could have played 
a key role in her continued learning. Language learning anxiety or foreign language 
(FL) anxiety not only inhibits interaction, but also, according to Krashen (1985a, 
1985b, as cited in von Worde, 1998), “inhibits the learner’s ability to process 
incoming language and short-circuits the process of acquisition” (p. 31). According 
to MacIntyre and Gardner (1991, as cited in von Worde), language anxiety can 
interfere with the acquisition, retention, and production of the new language, while 
Crookall and Oxford (1991, as cited in von Worde) suggested that language anxiety 

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may cause problems with self-esteem, self-confidence and risk-taking ability and 
“ultimately hampers proficiency in the second language” (p. 33). It is possible that 
this learner’s English language anxiety might have interfered with more than her 
capacity to socially interact in the target language, but also with her cognitive ability 
to acquire the target language. 
Ching reported that she was unaware of her English mistakes and said that she 
felt happy when someone corrected her mistakes so she could learn from them.
Young (1991, as cited in von Worde, 1998) found that students who suffered from FL 
anxiety felt that correction caused anxiety, as did the absence of correction. Making 
mistakes is a part of new language experimentation, and instructors need to let their 
students know this and also that it is alright to make mistakes. The most important 
aspect of correction is in how it is done. According to von Worde, instructors should 
model corrections, and students should be allowed the opportunity for success after 
the correction is modeled. 
Motivation 
The findings showed that this learner experienced a number of challenges in 
learning English, but there are some hindrances that can have a negative effect on all 
attempts to learn a foreign language (FL). Some of these hindrances are behavioral or 
psychological and pertain to personality. Motivation is perhaps the key affective 
variable. Dsrnyei (2002a, as cited in Moss & Ross-Feldman, 2003) identified 
motivation as “why people decide to do something, how long they are willing to 
sustain the activity [and] how hard they are going to pursue it,” (p. 75). Ellis (1997) 

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identified four types of motivation and observed that motivation involves the attitudes 
and affective states that influence the degree of effort that learners make to learn a 
second language, and that it may vary dynamically depending on the context or task 
of the language activity. Ching had been forced to learn English; it was not an 
interest or a curiosity she developed on her own. Studies by Gardner (1985) and 
Masgoret and Gardner (2003, both cited in Moss & Ross-Feldman) supported the 
theory that one particular type of motivation promotes successful acquisition of the 
second language, regardless of age, that is, integrative motivation, learning the 
language in order to identify with and become a part of the community that speaks the 
language. Ching might have enjoyed becoming a part of her community, but was not 
driven to learn English by this integrative type of motivation to the extent that it 
would help her overcome her difficulties. 
Ellis contrasted the integrative motivations of those who are interested in the 
people and culture of the target language with those who are motivated to learn the 
target language by a desire to stand up to and overcome the people of the target 
language. Ching was not driven by this flip side of integrative motivation either. She 
was not interested in overcoming the people of her new home culture and language, 
even the thought would be absurd to those who knew her; she accepted and wanted to 
be accepted by everybody.
An excellent complement to integrative motivation is resultative motivation, 
an energy that comes from the experience of success in the language learning process 
that creates the drive to continue (Ellis, 1997). According to Moss and Ross-Feldman 
(2003), research on improving learner motivation suggests that social factors such as 

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learning environment, group dynamics, and even a partner’s motivation, affect a 
learner’s attitude, effort, classroom behavior and successful language acquisition 
(Dsrnyei, 2002b, as cited in Moss & Ross-Feldman). While the social aspect plays a 
major role in developing learner motivation, a learner must experience success in 
language learning and experimentation in order to enjoy the resulting motivation; for 
Ching, those successes were few and far between.
Perhaps the primary type of motivation for many successful ESL learners,