Nasrin Eftekhari Guilan University

Social Psychological aspects and SLA

What do you think about second language acquisition? Imagine yourself in a foreign country

and acquire their language during one night! If it were so, how fantastic world we would have.

What about your identity, is it fantastic change to another person by learning a new language?!

Have you ever think about the relationship between second language acquisition and learners’

identity? In fact, Norton (1997) supported identity theory with a comprehensive study of language

learning by proposing social psychology concepts like; learners’ motivation, learners’ investment

and learners’ imagined communities.

Motivation plays important role for the second language learners. For one thing, integrated

motivation leads learners to know more people of target language, their customs, cloths, foods and

tastes so; they are motivated to accomplish their goals of learning. For instance, I had a friend who

was very eager to know Canadians’ culture, ceremonies, politics and nature of country. Thus, he

decided to study their language. He always studied strictly and energetically. Another thing,

instrumental motivation is a path to direct learners automatically. For instance, increase their

academic knowledge or increase salaries are the factors by which learners are encouraged to study

more and learn the target language thoroughly.

Learner’s motivation is incomplete without learner’s investment. Investment reveals learners’

endeavors to achieve the goal. The goal was learning second language. As a case of point,

allocating enough time for studying, attending to particular class with professional teachers, using

various sources of studying such as textbooks, movies and other materials all are the principles or

strategies that learners deploy to foster second language studying thus, preserve motivation in

logical way.

At last, the third dimension is learners’ imagined communities. Imagined communities come true

particularly for acquiring foreign language. It is presupposed that there is no face to face

communication so, the learners should visualize themselves in imagined situations like change their

names, suppose talking to natives, etc. In other words, they might prepare content such as target

language content. The more imagined communities, the more investment. So, learners become more

enthusiastic to learn new language.

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Nasrin Eftekhari Guilan University

Generally, the teacher’s heavy reliance on the social psychological features of SLA such as;

learners’ motivation, investment and imagined communities would be promoting nature meaning of

learning. How would be great that our educational system utilize and apply learning strategies with

attention to psychological aspects of second language acquisition in all around our country, isn’t it?!

Ref: ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION; Edited by Dwight Atkinson

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