INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES

I started learning English when I start my secondary school in the early 1980s. In fact, my whole family does not have English background, but due to the awareness that English is important and has an advantages to secure better career in the future, I started to work hard to learn this language, to master as well as to develop my communicative skills. In the early stages, I found myself difficult to adjust and cope with my goal. As a student with no English basic surely I encountered many obctacle in acquiring this language. English was being spoken during class session, when we are outside or at home, mother tongue was my main languages. Lack of confidence, discouragement are part of the problem that has a great influence in acquiring and to have good mastery in English. I am sure that lack of confidence exists due to my limited mastery in English. When this happen, I become uncertain and these decrease my motivation. As a pure Dusun speaker, the assumption mostly on negative perspective, to state a few, people says English was a foreign language that has no advantage at all. These opinion surely a very discourage comments. Mastering the target language in the contexts of Malaysian students expecially in the rural area are hard due to the lack of experty and specialist to teach. As we have seen, language learning is affected by many factors, among these are the personal characteristics of the learner, the structure of the native and target languages, opportunities for instruction with speakers of the target language and access to correction and form focused instruction. It is clear that teacher do not have control over all these factores, however a better understanding of them will permit teachers and learners to make the most of the time they spend together in the twin processes of teaching and learning a second language