and the importance of various personality characteristics in the learning process. All of these
characteristics originate and develop in the overall cultural context as well as the immediate
family. In North America, it is generally accepted that Europeans are better at learning
languages than North Americans, and whether or not this is true, it can influence the North
American’s beliefs about his/her own success. Hence, we hypothesize that the cultural context
can have an effect on the individual’s ultimate success in learning the language. A general
overview of the model is presented in Figure 2.