Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jajdude]

From what bit I have read, shyness affects about half of all people in a significant way. This may vary a bit among cultures, but it sounds like a good estimation, seeing that most of what I have read applied to Americans, that seemingly outgoing and extroverted bunch.

No wonder a foreign language is so hard. A lot of us are reticent using our native language.

Add to that the awkward teenage years. Wonder why your middle schoolers are not so keen to speak English? Other factors exist, too.

Just a thought, but maybe the outgoing, extroverted, not easily embarrassed, not so self-conscious ones have it easier with languages and foreign lands. Also helps to be smart.

[Woland]

The psychologist Peter McIntyre has started doing research with colleagues on the personality trait 'Willingness to Communicate' (WTC), which looks at the extent to which people act to put themselves in communication situations, in relation to second language acquisition. (The idea and instruments for measuring it were originally developed to look at L1 contexts.) The construct of WTC appears to be very complex and is not yet completely validated, but some evidence points to 'communication anxiety' and 'perceived communicative competence' as the strongest predictors of WTC. (I'm taking this from Dornyei's (2005) book, The Psychology of the Language Learner; London: Erlbaum.)

I don't think we can assume any easy correlation between WTC and language learning. Anecdotally, I'm a pretty good language learner, but score very low on WTC. I find it interesting to think about the idea that differences like this will affect what language you learn, that is, what situations a person will be able to deal with or what skills they'll use more effectively, rather than determining precisely how well or how much you'll learn of the language. You may want to watch your shy students and see if differences like these are there compared to the more outgoing students.