The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

Research Writing 109 able to assist the other due to a lack of motivation. For others, the accountability partners were a major asset. For instance, the author of essay 9 writes that most of his or her group meetings proved to be successful. These meetings resulted in successful vocabulary and pronunciation review. Ultimately, most of the writers benefitted from having a partner or two but found it difficult to establish meeting times. One recurring issue that appears in the essays regards those who worked with a language not based off the Latin alphabet. Alphabetical problems complicated the issues of those who were already struggling with poor motivation. For example, the author of essay 15 writes that he or she found the Arabic alphabet to be painfully different from the Latin alphabet. The writers of essays 10, 13, 14, and 15 all report struggles with learning a new alphabet. In a nice summary of the general attitude towards the new alphabets, the author of essay 10 writes, “If anything, this experience has given me a desire to learn every language that DOES share a Latin alphabet with English (Essay 10, pg. 2).” Overall, the motivation of the students contributed heavily to the success or failure of their second language acquisition. Of Time As the writers attempted to overcome falling levels of motivation, a lack of time to study further strained the authors. From this lack of time, a plethora of problems arose. A consistent, pronounced issue was the authors’ failure to set effective and realistic goals. The authors of essays 13 and 15 mention a lack of planning, which led to inconsistent, fruitless meetings. Several authors write that they had trouble meeting with their partners and/or getting any fruitful results from the meetings. Specifically, the author of essay 13 writes that he or she failed to meet with his or her partner as many times as originally planned because no set number of meetings was required. The author of essay 15 states that he or she met with his or her partner infrequently, which became a factor that contributed to poor meeting results. Similarly, a serious problem arose in the inability of some authors to find time to meet with their partners. Such was the case with the author of essay 10. At times, even the best meeting plans came to ruin. The author of essay 12 states that, despite having prepared opportunities