Chapter 7 Foreign Language Aptitude

This week we have dealt with individual differences. When we discuss individual differences, we have to be aware that there are three areas in this domain as psychologists have traditionally made a distinction: cognition, conation and affect. In this chapter language aptitude, an issue of learners’ cognitive feature is mainly discussed. With respect to the two contrastive cases of Kaplan, a successful L2 French learner and Watson, who is judged as an unsuccessful learner despite his high L2 literacy, it is persuasive that some people are born with gifts in language learning ability. However, should language aptitude be prioritized as the absoluteness in language leaning? The answer is that it is not necessarily be so, but it could predict L2 learning rate, which was revealed by the result of MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test). It has been acknowledged that most privileged component of L2 aptitude is memory capacity although the emerged picture of memory and differential L2 facility is complex.

Regarding age and aptitude, the most striking finding is that language aptitude only matters to adults and adolescents, but not for young learners and that difference in proficiency among younger learners correlated to individual differences in memory ability, whereas for older learners, proficiency differences were more related to individual differences in analytical ability.

On Thursday, we read two articles regarding this issue and had discussions facilitated by a group leader. The study conducted by Fitzparick et al. (2006) investigated the effectiveness of L2 memorization in a real conversation. Although memorizing as one of the strategies to enhance learners’ idiomaticity has been considered to be effective, what they found is that despite their well-prepared memorized strings, there existed some hindrances in real conversations, depending upon personality, motivation, identity, and preferences to a specific strategy, which impeded learners from displaying their memorized materials. Given the fact that higher level learners tend to modify memorized materials in a real conversations, we can acknowledge that the degree of deviation from memorized material can be predictive of learner’s language proficiency.

The study of Irena O’ Brien et al. (2007) examined the correlation between development of aural fluency, phonological memory and learning context. Based on the theoretical framework of phonological loop and working memory, ample studies have been conducted focusing on the impact of phonological memory on children’s oral production skills. Given that, this study shed light on the degree of contribution of phonological memory to adults’ L2 learning. The finding was that those with better phonological memory in an immersion environment made even greater gains in L2 fluency development than those who stayed at home. Further, this relationship between phonological memory and L2 learning is not constrained by age but extends into adulthood.

Reflecting common issues in both studies in discussion, we concluded that learners’ individual differences, namely biological factors such as phonological memory, learning context and learners’ motivation and personality are tightly intertwined and each of these factors equally plays a significant role in language learning. In the future, based on the findings from the ample studies, what is expected to be examined is that how instructional approaches can be designed to facilitate L2 learning, taking individual differences into consideration.

Lastly, on behalf of the group leaders, I would like to express our deepest gratitude for everyone that you were all well-prepared, contributing to the activities and discussions that we had in the class. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the time and the content we presented.