Socio- psychological barriers to effective language learning in adult EFL classroom in context of Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper inspects the socio-psychological barriers that adult learners face in classrooms while learning a foreign language, in this case, English. It also studies how these barriers are working negatively for the whole learning process. The context of this research is Bangladesh, and qualitative data were collected through face to face and online interviews. To learn about the experiences of the adult learners, the researcher conducted research on 21 adult students who are currently taking foreign language learning courses. The interviews reveal five significant challenges that adult learners face, such as fear of new language, previous learning experience, classroom anxiety, age and motivation. Most of the existing literatures work on how the issues with classroom management, teachers training, teaching methods etc. can be barriers to the learning process whereas this study enlists all the socio psychological issues that adult learners face by analyzing real life experiences of the participants.