Accounts of Adult English Language Learners in Their Classroom Communication: A Phenomenology

This qualitative study described the accounts of five (5) adults English language learners from Gani L. Abpi College Incorporated, Datu Piang, Maguindanao. The study is based on Cross's (1981), theory that adult learning characteristics have been primarily focused on understanding how adults learn. Thus, it was utilized the phenomenological research design described by Colaizzi’s, (1978) seven steps strategy that provided a meticulous analysis of data. The transcription and translation, as well as classifying statements into themes, were employed with in-depth interview with the participants purposively chosen. The findings revealed that adult English language learners met different factors in learning English in the classroom communication. Agism, English language is interesting, anxiety affects English language learning, English language is not easy to learn were all highlighted as personal factors in learning the language. Teaching strategy and style matter, teachers’ attitude affect learning, teacher-student age gap affects learning, and teachers’ command of the English language is relevant were all identified as teacher factors. Peer factors entailed adopting to the group, peers encouragement is important, peer learning and guidance play a vital role and past experiences and misunderstanding affect learners. English as a factor for future endeavors, complexity of the subject matter, the learners’ interest affect learning of the subject matter and the difficulty of the subject matter depends on the learners’ perceptions highlighted as subject matter factors. Thus, the four factors, personal factors, peer factors, teacher factors, and subject matter factors influenced the accounts of Adult English language learners in their classroom communication resulted to challenges in learning second language in the classroom communication.