We all know that each person learns at their own pace; we saw it at school with our students or at the university with our classmates.
But some aspects influence positively and negatively when learning a second or third language.
It’s inevitable to change some of these factors that impact the learning process, such as the age at which you learn, what is your native language, or even your personality.
However, there are other factors that you can control, such as environmental, emotional, cognitive, affective, personal, and cultural factors.
Age, for example, plays an important role when learning a new language. The younger the people, the higher the level of proficiency they’ll reach.
Children have a more flexible brain and are ready to absorb all knowledge, naturally understand the language they’re learning, and even gain a native-like sense.
It doesn’t mean you cannot learn a new language as an adult, especially since you’ll have a more mature brain to understand complex grammatical structures that help comprehension and conversation.
The native language also impacts how fast you learn a foreign language.
Usually, languages similar to your mother tongue will make you spend less time learning them. For example, English speakers need approximately 600 hours of classes to learn Spanish.
Cognitive factors connect with your mind and help you learn a new language. Those who have high intelligence, memory, and language aptitude will be able to learn languages faster as they’ll have the necessary skills.
We will find feelings, values, beliefs, and attitudes toward language learning in the affective factors. Motivation influences your willingness to undertake and continue learning a foreign language.
Personality factors influence how much you want to expose yourself and interact with the new language you’re learning.
Your personality will dictate what language learning activities you prefer to be in contact with the language if you prefer to receive online, face-to-face, group, or individual classes, etc.
Environmental factors can influence where and how you’ll learn a language.
Some people prefer to learn in immersive situations where they gain fluency and strong communication skills but low levels of grammatical knowledge.
Some people prefer more traditional environments, such as face-to-face classes in academies. These persons manage to have good grammar and vocabulary but find it challenging to apply it in real situations or with native people.
And finally, there are the cultural and social factors that include feeling accepted by the community of the language you’re learning. This affects the motivation to learn the language and the level of success you’ll have.