Chapter 4: Teaching Foreign (Second) Languages to at-Risk Learners:Research and Practice¹

The study of a foreign language (FL) is an expectation for many secondary and postsecondary level students. About 10–15% of them are likely to experience severe difficulties learning a FL in classrooms and/or passing FL courses. Researchers have found that most poor FL learners have underlying native language (NL) learning problems and lack a strong aptitude for learning FLs. Recent research has also indicated that instructional approaches to literacy found successful with at-risk NL learners also benefit at-risk FL learners. In this chapter the authors describe some of these NL and FL learning problems and present research that supports a language basis as the primary source of difficulty. They also describe instructional practices for at-risk FL learners and conclude with suggested directions for future research.