What about natural aptitude for second language learning?

At the current time it is not particularly fashionable to talk about natural aptitude for subjects at school, the current preference being for the notion that with good teaching and practice all students have the potential to achieve well. This is no doubt a good message to be sending to pupils, but it does seem to fly in the face of language teachers' everyday experience, namely that some students, for whatever reason, seem to pick up languages much quicker than others.

Over the years research in psychology and applied linguistics has focused a good deal on language learning aptitude and motivation, both of which show good correlations with language learning success in formal learning contexts. In this blog, I'm going to look at aptitude and summarise where we are on this issue, using as my source parts of a chapter about individual differences in second language learning, written by Zoltán Dörnyei and Peter Skehan. The chapter appeared in The Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, ed. Catherine Doughty and Michael Long (2008).

http://www.zoltandornyei.co.uk/uploads/2003-dornyei-skehan-hsla.pdf

Firstly, the writers ask some useful questions:

1. Is a natural talent for second language learning innate?
2. Is it relatively fixed?
3. If it is not fixed, is it amenable to training?
4. Is second language aptitude a distinct ability, or does it relate to more general abilities, such as intelligence, effectively functioning as a subset of a more general view of human variation?
5. Could such a talent be used as the basis for prediction of language learning success? If so, how effective might it be for such prediction, and how would predictions based on it compare with predictions made from other sources?
6. Could such a talent be used as the basis for adaptation of instruction?
7. Does such a talent always apply in a similar manner without influence of learning context or learning methodology.
8. Is such a talent undifferentiated, or does it have sub-components?
9. What is the theoretical basis for any such talent or sub-talents?
10. Can such a talent be measured effectively?

I'll leave you to think about those questions, to which there are no certain answers.

The work of psychologist J.B. Carroll

Carroll is the most famous name in this field of research. He began studying foreign language aptitude in the 1950s and he is still much quoted. Together with Stanley Sapon he designed tests (Modern Language Aptitude Tests - MLATs) which tried to predict the future performance of students. Carroll produced a four-component model of aptitude:

• Phonemic coding ability - a capacity to decode unfamiliar sounds, store the knowledge in memory and retrieve it.
• Grammatical sensitivity - the capacity to identify grammatical functions in sentences or utterances.
• Inductive language learning ability - the capacity to extract syntactic and morphological patterns in a sample of language.
• Associative memory - the capacity to form bonds in the memory between L1 and L2 words.

To simplify this further, we might sum up by saying: having a good ear, an ability to spot and use patterns and a good memory! This would seem uncontroversial to most teachers.

The above components were used as the basis for the aptitude tests which did, indeed, correlate quite well with performance.

Research after Carroll

Since Carroll, the nature of aptitude research has not changed a great deal, even if it has become more marginal in the field of applied linguistics. Why has research into aptitude fallen out of favour? Firstly, Dörnyei and Skehan echo something I mentioned in my introduction:

"One reason for this has been that aptitude is perceived as anti-egalitarian, in that if a fixed, immutable interpretation of aptitude is taken, it is seen as potentially disadvantaging many learners, with no hope offered of overcoming the handicap of low aptitude."

In other words, the study of aptitude, along with, for example, the study of IQ and genetics, looks a little politically incorrect these days. The writers also mention that standardised text books seem to assume that all learners are effectively the same and benefit from similar input and instruction.

Secondly, Carroll's work was done at a time when the prevailing teaching methods were based on explicit teaching of grammar, audio-lingual approaches and structural drilling. When alternative, nativist approaches came along (think of Krashen) and even, to some extent, European-style communicative approaches, language learning is no longer seen in Carroll's terms: it is seen to resemble first language learning where individual differences in achievement are far less marked. If second language learning happens almost entirely "beneath the radar", unconsciously, how, therefore, can the ability to identify grammatical patterns in a formal test predict future success? (This is an issue for schools who wish to produce baseline tests for students arriving in the schools, largely for accountability purposes.)

By the way, it is worth mentioning that some scholars take the view that tests can predict success in both formal teaching environments and with more naturalistic, input-based contexts.

In sum

For many years aptitude was isolated from the wider field of second language learning and acquisition. It has been perceived as quite effective as a predictor of learning success, but "undemocratic with respect to learners, out of date conceptually, and of little explanatory value." More recent research has, according to Dörnyei and Skehan, indicated that this judgment is incorrect.

Aptitude may well be a particularly useful notion now that a focus on grammatical form has started to come back into fashion. If you believe that a totally meaning-based approach to language teaching is unwise or just unworkable in school contexts, then aptitude is most likely a good predictor of progress. Even if you favour little or no focus on grammatical form, some research suggests it is still relevant.

My own view, for what it's worth, and having worked with school students for 35 years, is that natural aptitude (whether it be general intelligence or language learning-specific) is a key factor in progress, but only one of several. I also had the feeling that some students favoured formal approaches over naturalistic, immersion settings and vice versa. I would have to say also that, in the contexts I worked, natural ability often trumped hard work. Now that's not a fashionable thing to say!