Innovation in Language Learning

Evaluating individual features, we should not only mention such characteristics as personality traits, cognitive and affective variables or learning styles but also certain acquired properties - like learning or communication strategies, which are being shaped via the whole scholastic life of an individual. Personality involves both innate individual properties which are conditioned by age, intelligence, aptitude, personality type and other individual features such as attitudes, motivation and strategies. Learning and communication strategies have been found to play an important role in the process of language acquisition by accounting significantly for variation in language learners’ achievement. However, despite numerous research studies in the field, researchers mostly concentrate on the strategies employed by good language learners, and do not do anything to assist poor students to take on these strategies in order to be successful in language learning too. Students prefer different strategies just as they learn employing different styles. Assessment of learning styles can give teachers an overview of the strategies that students are likely to use in the process of language acquisition. So far, no-one has ever given an answer which style is the best or which style guarantees success in language learning. The studies present only an overview of styles and strategies used by individuals and imply that the more flexible the learners are the greater the possibility to be successful language learners. No-one denies that our students’ ways and outcomes of learning are affected by individual differences, but it is difficult to enumerate these factors and exactly check how they influence this process. Besides, different scholars propose competing divisions and taxonomies of individual differences, dividing them in diverse ways and providing various names and labels for the same concepts.