Assignment on Barriers to ESL Learning

Running head: BARRIERS TO ESL LEARNING
BARRIERS TO ESL LEARNING FOR ADULT IMMIGRANTS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

BARRIERS TO ESL LEARNING1
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Culture Shock and Language Shock as a hurdle.........................................................................3
Cultural Stereotyping as a hurdle................................................................................................3
Socio-Political atmosphere and geographical factors as barriers................................................4
Intrapersonal aspects and lack of motivation as hurdles.............................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7
Questions.........................................................................................................................................9

BARRIERS TO ESL LEARNING2
Introduction.
While considering English as a Second / Foreign Language (ESL / EFL) learning, there
are a series of factors associated that facilitates the learning process and supports it in positive
ways. However, there are also factors that affect the learning process in detrimental ways. Adult
immigrants form a part of the entire ESL learning demographic around the world. While various
learners employ various strategies in order to facilitate their ESL learning process, there are
elements like social and cultural factors which indirectly affect the same. It has been seen that
the sudden change in the socio – cultural environment for the adult immigrant ESL learners,
prove to be a significant deterrent for their language learning process (Menard-Warwick, 2012).
This essay will focus on those obstacles and analyze various ways the learners can maneuver the
barriers for a better ESL learning experience.
For adult immigrant ESL learners, the social, cultural, political and geographic factors
affect their ESL learning process and can also prove to be a barrier for the same. In certain cases
the sudden change in culture resulting in culture shock can hinder the learning process by putting
the learner in an uncomfortable learning environments (Dogan, 2013). The linguistic background
of the immigrants also matter in this case as the learner’s native language may or may not be
conforming to the particular syntactic structure of English. This essay will discuss these specific
factors in correlation with prior research in order to highlight the hurdles that the immigrants
face when it comes to ESL learning.