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[johnslat]

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"Essential Factors Affecting EFL Learning Outcomes: A Personal Reflection
Willy A Renandya
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University Singapore


What could be some the key factors that can account for this lack of success in learning English? For the past 10 years or so I have been reflecting on this question and have had numerous discussions with ELT colleagues at academic conferences and with classroom teachers at seminars and workshops that I conducted. I have discussed factors that relate to cognitive, affective and social dimensions of language learning and how they might impact instructed classroom learning in EFL contexts; I have also reflected on teacher factors (e.g., teacher’s content and pedagogical knowledge), curricular factors (e.g., types of curricula and how the curricular contents are organized and sequenced, ), learner factors (e.g., motivation, attitudes and strategies) and situational factors (e.g., class size and availability of learning resources). There are indeed numerous factors that can impact language learning. But for the purpose of this paper, I have selected eight factors (i.e., roles of input, ouput, fluency, formulaic expressions, motivation, grammar, vocabulary, intensity of instruction) that in my opinion deserve serious consideration.
I am not suggesting that we should focus solely on these eight factors in our teaching. There are other factors that we need to take into account depending on the unique teaching contexts we find ourselves in. Nor am I suggesting that these factors would guarantee that every student would reach a high level of proficiency. What I am suggesting is that if these factors become the focus of our instruction, our chance of being successful in raising our students’ level of proficiency up to a working or functional level may become higher."

Should you be interested, the complete paper can be downloaded here:

http://www.academia.edu/4099239/Essential_Factors_Affecting_EFL_Learning_Outcomes_A_Personal_Reflection

Regards,
John