ABSTRACT
One of the most widely recognized facts about L2 learning is that some indivduals are more successful in learning an L2 than others. In this chapter, we examine some of the factors that may be responsible for these differences, focusing in particular on non language factors, such as age, aptitude, motivation, attitude, and socio - psychological influences. In addition to some learners being more successful language learners, there is also the well-known phenomenon of fossilization, which has been part of the field of SLA since the middle part of the 20th century. The phenomenon of being stuck in the L2 seems to occur to most, if not all, learners, even at the most advanced stages (see Han, 2004).1 There are many reasons for an apparent lack of success, many of which (but not all) are not related to language or psycholinguistic factors, but relate to the individual him-or herself. These are the subject matter of this chapter.
