Running head: ENGLISH LEARNIG 1

English Learning Difficulties for Adults

Ayuka Tamagawa

Madonna University

ESL 4230 Informative paper (D2)

March 27, 2017

ENGLISH LEARNING 2

English Learning Difficulties for Adults

English has been spoken by an unprecedented amount of people in a variety of situations

such as diplomacy, science, foreign trades and international conferences. Most people would

agree that English is a language that they commonly use when they communicate with

foreigners. Due to the worldwide spread of English, for example, the number of adult English

learners is increasing in Japan. People who can speak English skillfully tend to get jobs easily.

However, language acquisition takes a long time and most adult English learners face some

problems learning. This makes them abandon learning English. English has the possibility to

spread all over the world increasingly in the future. Understanding how adult English learners

approach the difficulties and develop the solutions in order to overcome them is very important.

Also it helps people think about how adult English learners improve their learning efficiency.

Therefore, the learning problems are needed to be identified and adult English learners have to

deal with them properly so that they can overcome and succeed in English acquisition.

For instance, Cozma (2015) said these challenges relate to students and teachers

characteristics involving physical, cognitive and affective variables. Adult English learners come

from different backgrounds, so they face multiple challenges, but there are some common

difficulties. One of the common difficulties is memorizing the huge amount of vocabularies. This

is a physical or cognitive problem. Adult English learner have to memorize meanings and how to

use them in order to be proficient at English. However, this usually takes a huge amount of time.

The Center for Applied Linguistics and The National Center for Family Literacy (2008) explains

that:

Vocabulary knowledge includes both the number of words one knows and the depth of

knowledge about those words. Depth of knowledge refers to the pronunciation, spelling,
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and various meanings of the word; the contexts in which it can be used; the frequency

with which it is used; its various parts of speech and forms; and how it combines (or

collocates) with other words (p. IV5).

Understanding all of the information about vocabularies such as meanings, spellings, and

collocations also takes much longer. Cozma (2015) mentions that there is a common myth in the

domain of education that adult students are more ineffective as language learners than younger

students who have more flexible brains and cognitive functions. However, many researchers

challenge this myth, and they say adults are more likely to be able to acquire the proficient skill

of a language (Coama, 2015, p.1210). Although this is a myth and many other studies show

hopeful results for adult English learners. This is because they strongly care about their ability to

remember. However, they compare themselves to younger English learners and how fast they

learn, which discourages their enthusiasm for studying English.

Another common difficulty for adult English learners is building their confidences of

speaking English. According to the questionnaire, which was taken place by Duboviien and

Gulbinskien (2014), 40% of adults think listening is the most difficult communication skill, and

37% of them choose speaking. Therefore, listening and speaking are considered to be the most

demanding communication skills as they need a huge amount of knowledge, time and practice to

obtain them. Especially, speaking skill is a high-demanding communication skill, but they have

difficult time learning. If they want to master the same English level as native speakers, their

learning becomes extremely hard. For example, in 2014 Wu, Wu and Le found that A large

majority of participants (94%) agreed that adults especially find difficulty in obtaining a native-

like accent, and adults who missed ESL learning thus lose confidence (p.1134). The level of

goals that adult English learners have to achieve depends on each person, because the term that
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they have to finish learning, the fundamental English skill they have and the requirement that

their workplace consider are different. The more they need perfect speaking skill, the more they

have to figure out how to obtain proficient speaking skill. Furthermore, related to the first

difficulty, they do not have a confidence in their intellectual abilities and they do not feel they

progress fast enough, so they are afraid of making mistakes and losing face, which make them

hesitate to participate class (Cozma, 2015, p.1212). That become an obstacle of develop their

growth of English skills of speaking, and they lose their confidences.

There are so many difficulties that adult English learners face, and identifying what

difficulties make them annoyed to study is the first procedure to improve their English learning.

Then, as the second procedure, the method to approach challenges has to be thought out in order

to overcome difficulties. Challenges would vary but they can be approached and resolved by two

aspects both students and teachers. Mathews-Aydinli (2007) illustrated about the process done by

teachers that teachers role is not just giving students knowledge and managing the lessons;

teachers must encourage students to work on identifying problems, support their problem-solving

process and give feedback and evaluation of their participation and what they worked on

frequently with the certain goal that teachers help them develop their language and literacy skills

and problem-solving. Teachers and adult English students can approach a variety of difficulties

by modern technology, proper textbooks and continuous practices. Furthermore, the teachers

who are respectful, friendly, honest and supportive always play an important role, and they need

to pay attention carefully to each adult students because their personal errors are more likely to

affect their self-confident (Cozma, 2015, p.1214). These teachers role greatly give the influence

to adult English learners when they are in the process of problem-solving. Mathews-Aydinl
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(2007) gave an explanation of the process that students would follow and the role of teachers in

Figure 1.

Figure 1. Student and Teacher Roles in Problem-Based Learning. From Problem-Based

Learning and Adult English Language Learners, 2007, p.2. Retrieved from

http://www.cal.org/adultesl/pdfs/problem-based-learning-and-adult-english-language-

learners.pdf
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After following each process, Cozma (2015) said that the review methods are also an effective

approach to remember contents. The evaluation or review is important to make adult English

learners learning better, and the teachers can also get many types of teaching styles in order to

support each student appropriately.

The population of English speakers will increase in the future as the world

internationalizes. This implies they are more likely to face many kinds of challenges that are

related to their age, learning efficiency, and teaching methods. Therefore, these difficulties must

be considered as critical obstacles that make adult English learners discouraged. Additionally

adult students and their teachers have been working on how they develop the quality of learning

English so that adult learners will be able to achieve language acquisition. Identifying what

difficulties adult English learners have and dealing with these difficulties appropriately to

overcome have to be done from two aspects both adult English learners and their teachers.
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Reference

Cozma, M. (2015). The challenge of teaching English to adult learners in today's world,

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences. 197. 1209 1214. doi:

10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.07.380

Duboviien, T and Gulbinskien, D (2014). Learning / teaching EFL to adult learners at

language courses. Man and the Word. 16 (3) 138 149. DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/10.15823/zz.2014.019

Mathews-Aydinli, J. (2007). Problem-based learning and adult English language learners.

Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/adultesl/pdfs/problem-based-learning-and-adult-

english-language-learners.pdf

The National Center for Family Literacy and The Center for Applied Linguistics. (2008).

Practitioner toolkit: Working with adult English language learners. Retrieved from

http://www.cal.org/caela/tools/program_development/CombinedFiles1.pdf

Wu, R. Wu, R. & Le, V, T. (2014). Challenges of adults in learning English as a second language:

Focus on adult education in China. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 5(5),

1132+. Retrieved from http://madonnaezp.liblime.com/login?

url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?

p=GPS&sw=w&u=lom_madonnaul&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE

%7CA383459794&asid=e90fdb21f68d58793903079b85372d04