Hopeless Cases or Just Hard Nuts to Crack? Stories of “Difficult” Foreign Language Learners
Hopeless Cases or Just Hard Nuts to Crack? Stories of “Difficult” Foreign Language Learners

Summary/Abstract: In accordance with the assumptions of the sociologically grounded labelling theory, anindividual’s self-perception and, consequently, their actions, might be influenced by wordsused to describe them. Also, in the context of education, including the field of foreign languagelearning, such a process of defining learners in a simplified way, has been proven tohave profound consequences of psychological nature. The main purpose of the article is tooutline the results of a study in which 37 teachers of English shared the stories of their most“difficult” students. The qualitative analysis of the gathered descriptions allowed the identificationof some common features characteristic of, so-called, hopeless cases, among whichmotivation-related problems are the most often enumerated ones. Additionally, many teacherswrote about their struggles while teaching students with special educational needs. The viewsexpressed by the participants of the study might help understand the way in which opinionsabout students are formulated as well as point to the need for significant changes to be madein the area of foreign language teacher education and training.

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