Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

8.3 Aptitude: are some people better at learning a
second language than others?
Individual differences in L2 users and L2 learners
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Why do you think some people are good at learning other languages?
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Do you think the same people learn a language well in the classroom as learn
it well in a natural setting, or do these demand different qualities?
Focusing questions
aptitude: this usually means the ability to learn the second language in an aca-
demic classroom
Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT): testing phonemic coding, grammat-
ical sensitivity, inductive language learning ability, rote learning
memory-based learners: these rely on their memory rather than grammatical
sensitivity
analytic learners: these rely on grammatical sensitivity rather than memory
even learners: these rely on both grammatical sensitivity and memory
Keywords
Everybody knows people who have a knack for learning second languages and
others who are rather poor at it. Some immigrants who have been in a country 
for twenty years are very fluent. Others from the same background and living 
in the same circumstances for the same amount of time speak the language 
rather poorly. Given that their ages, motivations, and so on, are the same, why are
there such differences? As always, the popular view has to be qualified to some
extent. Descriptions of societies where each individual uses several languages
daily, such as central Africa or Pakistan, seldom mention people who cannot cope
with the demands of a multilingual existence, other than those with academic
study problems. Differences in L2 learning ability are apparently only felt in soci-
eties where L2 learning is treated as a problem rather than accepted as an every-
day fact of life.
So far, the broad term ‘knack’ for learning languages has been used. The more
usual term, however, is ‘aptitude’; some people have more aptitude for learning sec-
ond languages than others. Aptitude has almost invariably been applied to students
in classrooms. It does not refer to the knack that some people have for learning in
real-life situations, but to the ability to learn from teaching. In the 1950s and 1960s,
considerable effort went into establishing what successful students had in common.
The Modern Languages Aptitude Test (MLAT) requires the student to carry out L2
learning on a small scale. It incorporates four main factors that predict a student’s
success in the classroom (Carroll, 1981). These are:
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Phonemic coding ability: how well the student can use phonetic script to distin-
guish phonemes in the language.

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Grammatical sensitivity: whether the student can pick out grammatical func-
tions in the sentence.
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Inductive language learning ability: whether the student can generalize patterns
from one sentence to another.
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Rote learning: whether the student can remember vocabulary lists of foreign
words paired with translations.
Such tests are not neutral about what happens in a classroom, nor about the
goals of language teaching. They assume that learning words by heart is an impor-
tant part of L2 learning ability, that the spoken language is crucial, and that gram-
mar consists of structural patterns. In short, MLAT predicts how well a student
will do in a course that is predominantly audio-lingual in methodology rather
than in a course taught by other methods. Wesche (1981) divided Canadian stu-
dents according to MLAT and other tests into those who were best suited to an
‘analytical’ approach and those who were best suited to an ‘audio-visual’
approach. Half she put in the right type of class, half in the wrong (whether this
is acceptable behaviour by a teacher is another question). The students in the
right class ‘achieved superior scores’. It is not just aptitude in general that counts,
but the right kind of aptitude for the particular learning situation. Predictions
about success need to take into account the kind of classroom that is involved,
rather than being biased towards one kind or assuming there is a single factor of
aptitude which applies regardless of situation.
Krashen (1981a) suggests aptitude is important for ‘formal’ situations such as
classrooms, and attitude is important for ‘informal’ real-world situations. While
aptitude tests are indeed more or less purpose-designed for classroom learners, this
still leaves open the existence of a general knack for learning languages in street
settings. Horwitz (1987) anticipated that a test of cognitive level would go with
communicative competence, and a test of aptitude with linguistic competence.
She found, however, a strong link between the two tests.
Peter Skehan (1986, 1998) developed a slightly different set of factors out of
MLAT, namely:
1 Phonemic coding ability. This allows the learner to process input more readily
and thus to get to more complex areas of processing more easily – supposing
that phonemes are in fact relevant to processing, a possibility that was queried
in Chapter 2.