Language Aptitude Reconsidered

ERIC Educational Reports, Dec 01, 1989 by Charles W. Stansfield

The Canadian Public Service Commission, which provides language training to 20,000 government employees each year, uses the MLAT and Parts V and VI of the PLAB. Native French speakers are administered a French version of the MLAT, the "Test d'aptitude de langues vivantes." Scores on these tests are used to select employees for full-time language training, to place them by language learning ability level, and to determine how long it will take them to develop language skills to a specified proficiency level. Part scores on these tests are also used as a diagnostic measure by teachers who wish to better understand student learning problems.A NEW VIEW OF APTITUDEIn September 1988, an invitational conference was held in Washington, D.C., under the sponsorship of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics and five agencies belonging to the U.S. Government's Interagency Roundtable. The purpose of the conference was to bring together people interested in the prediction of success in second language learning. The conference was motivated by a number of concerns. The aptitude tests currently in use are now between 15 and 30 years old. They do not take into account new insights, revealed by the works of cognitive psychologists, on the human learning process in general and on the language learning process in particular. Nor do they take into account the work of social psychologists who have studied the relation of attitudes, motivation, personality, and other emotional characteristics and predispositions to second language learning. Nor do they take into account the work of educational psychologists who have identified variables such as individual cognitive styles, personal learning strategies, and brain hemisphericity that also seem to be related to successful language learning. These learner variables might be affected by other factors: personal characteristics of the teacher; the instructional method employed; the task or language skill to be learned; the classroom environment in which the learning takes place; and the proficiency level that needs to be acquired. All of these variables need to be examined in a systematic way. A new program of language aptitude research, test development, and data collection and analysis might improve our ability to predict successful language learning and to tailor the classroom environment and instruction to individual students. Perhaps the time has come when the notion of foreign language aptitude needs to be expanded and refined, and related to factors other than the learner. A revised notion of language aptitude might extend beyond a few specified cognitive variables to encompass many other pertinent variables that are related to success in learning a second language. The collection of papers presented at the above mentioned conference (Parry & Stansfield, forthcoming) is intended as a step in that direction.REFERENCESCarroll, J.B. (1962). The prediction of success in intensive

foreign language training. In R. Glaser (Ed.), "Training research