This MA dissertation looks into the factors that mostly influence the process of foreign language learning/acquisition, and into some effects of multilingual practice. It reveals how certain cognitive factors, such as age, personality characteristics, intelligence and aptitude, facilitate or hinder language learning processes, what the role of motivation and attitude during foreign language learning is, and in what ways formal and informal approaches can contribute to becoming fluent and/or accurate user of a particular foreign language. It also points out some benefits of multilingual practice together with its potential drawbacks which may occur at some points when simultaneously operating more than two foreign languages. The background and the motive for the topic of this dissertation is my own experience with learning foreign languages, which is further analyzed together with the experiences of six other multilingual speakers through long semi-structured interviews. The analyses of the interviews show that high expectations and low exposure to a target foreign language as well as time pressure mostly cause anxiety and discomforts in the process of its acquisition. Strong motivation, both instrumental and integrative, can serve as the tool for overcoming potential difficulties especially in cases when a person lacks some language learning aptitude.
|
