Individual Differences in Language Education: An International Journal

Despite typological differences, children invariably attain fluency in their native languages. Foreign language learners, however, show a great degree of variation in terms of ultimate attainment even in the same learning conditions. This intriguing inter-learner variation has been a subject of academic interest since Skehan’s (1989) seminal work Individual Differences in Second Language Learning, which to a large extent laid the foundation for further investigation into factors such as aptitude and motivation as important contributors to success in mastering a foreign language (Dörnyei, 2005). Today, it is a fact beyond dispute that motivation plays a pivotal role in the acquisition of additional languages (Dörnyei, 2005), yet the preponderance of academic literature seems to focus on English learners only, leaving many lacunae to be filled. This book is an attempt to fill one of them by studying learners of languages other than English in a particular context, namely, Asia.