UNIVERSITY OF CALOOCAN CITY
Biglang Awa St., Corner Catleya St., EDSA, Caloocan City
COLLEGE OF EDUCATION
(SUBJECT/COURSE)
SUBJECT CODE: 502
TOPIC OR LESSON: Individual Influences related to Different Rate of SLA
WEEK: 3
SUB-TOPIC/S:
A. Foreign Language Aptitude
B. Motivation
OVERVIEW OF THE TOPIC
In this chapter we will discuss language aptitude and motivation as the most attractive sources of
individual differences in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Particularly, we will discuss the following
A. What is Foreign Language Aptitude?
B. What is Motivation?
LEARNING
At the end OUTCOMES
of the module you will be interrogate to explain aptitude and motivation as individual
difference (ID) factors in L2 learning.
LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
At the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
a. share viewpoint about aptitude and motivation as the two best sources for SLA;
b. define aptitude and motivation
c. identify learning preferences and learning styles in studying second language
ENGAGE
Guess that gibberish. They need to guess the word for 5 seconds.
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1. Hay qua sea shone (acquisition)
2. Most tea vision (motivation)
3. In divide dual (individual)
4. Eat no buy tally tea (ethnovitality)
5. Cone nay shown (conation)
EXPLORE
What characteristics of an
individual exert amount of
influence on the Second Language
Acquisition?
How motivated you are in
learning second language?
EXPLAIN
Language aptitude and language learning motivation have traditionally been seen as the primary
individual difference (ID) variables in the study of a second/foreign language (L2), that is, the learner
characteristics that have been found to exert the greatest amount of consistent influence on the SLA
process.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE APTITUDE
Aptitude in general is a talent. Aptitude can be considered as a talent in one individual because it
is a competency to do something. It can be mentally or physically depends on the individual itself. It is
not knowledge or the ability to understand, learned or acquired abilities or attitude. In a foreign or second
language acquisition, aptitude actually refers to the prediction of how well an individual can learn the
second language in given time and conditions.
3 Psychological Factors (Ortega, 2009)
- Cognition – how learners process information.
- Conation – learner’s need to perform an action. How humans use will and freedom to make choices that
result in new behaviours
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- Affect – learner’s emotions and feelings. Encompasses issues of temperament, emotions and how
humans feel towards information, people, objects, actions and thoughts.
LEARNING AND NOT LEARNING FRENCH: KAPLAN VS. WATSON
Alice Kaplan grew up in Minnesota in the 1960s. In her 1993 book, she tells the story of the
development of her unconditional, life-long affiliation with French. Her memoirs begin at the age of
eight, when her father, a Jewish lawyer who prosecuted Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, died. Kaplan
explains that she felt a deep connection between feeling the loss of her father and feeling different from
others in her pursuit of French: ‘Learning French was connected to my father, because French made me
absent the way he was absent, and it made me an expert the way he was an expert’ (pp. 203–4). She
began studying French in grade 5, and at the age of 14 attended a French immersion summer programme
in Maine. The two formative experiences, however, were a year abroad in a French-medium school in
Switzerland at the age of 15, while still in high school, and another academic year abroad in Bordeaux
three years later, while she was a French literature undergraduate. Her interest was always as intense for
French culture as it was for the French language: ‘even in beginning French classes, you knew there was a
French beyond the everyday, a France of hard talk and intellect’ (p. 138). By the end of the two full-year
study abroad experiences, a complete self-identification with the new community and culture had taken
place. She later became a French language teacher and eventually completed a doctorate in French. To
this day, Kaplan is committed to a life in which both French and English play prominent roles.
Richard Watson grew up in Iowa in the 1930s. In his 1995 book, he describes his strenuous and
anxiety-driven attempts at learning to speak French at age 55. As a college philosophy major, at the age
of 19, he had successfully completed a French course that involved ten weekly hours of intensive reading-
only instruction over an academic year. He went on to do a Master’s and a doctorate in philosophy in the
early 1960s. His speciality being in Cartesian philosophy, over the next 25 years of his successful
academic career he regularly read and translated complex philosophy texts in French and he also
frequently travelled to Paris and other locations in France, spending much time in French libraries. In
1986, at the age of 55, a serendipitous life event made him want to learn how to speak (not just read and
translate) French. He was invited to deliver a paper in French at an important Cartesian conference in
Paris. This propelled an intense desire in him: ‘All those years of guilt and embarrassment at being a
Cartesian scholar who could not speak French … I would learn to speak French, whatever it took,
however long’ (p. 65). He took French tutorials for three hours a week during six months prior to his
travel and then decided to take more French classes at the Alliance Française after the conference, while
he was spending his summer in Paris. Despite all these efforts, he failed his final examination (‘the first
course and the only examination I had ever failed in my life’, p. 122) and could not move on to the next
curricular level at the Alliance. The book ends with a painful dialogue during a dinner conversation
towards the end of Watson’s three-month stay in Paris. He is curtly informed by a famous French
Cartesian specialist: ‘Don’t try to speak French. Your French is terrible’ (p. 133). With this ending,
readers cannot but conclude that Watson will never achieve his dream to ‘sit at a table in a restaurant in
Paris with a group of French Cartesian scholars, and … talk’ (p. 65). Almost inexplicably, he had been
defeated in his pursuit to learn to speak French.
Language aptitude has been suggested as “one of the central individual differences in language
learning.” (Skehan, 1989, pp. 25, 38 as cited by Harley & Hart, p.379). It has also been declared to be the
most consistent predictor of one’s success in learning a foreign language (Skehan, 1989 as cited by
Harley & Hart, p. 379 and Dörnyei, p. 61, 2005). Due to the conceptual issues involved, the matter of
differentiating among ability, aptitude, and intelligence must be considered. Aptitude is commonly used
in reference to a specific area of performance, intelligence carries a broader meaning; it is not specific to a
discipline, but rather entails all areas of learning. two best-known tests used for measuring linguistic
aptitude are the Modern Languages Aptitude Test (MLAT), developed by Carroll and Sapon in 1957 and
the Pimsleur – Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB), developed by Pimsleur in 1966. Dissatisfied with the
previous aptitude tests, predominantly based on grammar-translation methodology, Carroll and Sapon
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devised the MLAT test, which puts forward the four-component view of language aptitude (Skehan,
1989).
The components measured by this paper-and-pencil test battery are:
1. Phonemic Coding Ability – the ability to link sounds and symbols so that they could be recalled later,
i.e. the capacity of handling phono-orthographic material;
2. Grammatical Sensitivity – the ability to identify the grammatical functions that words have in
sentences;
3. Inductive Language Learning Ability – the ability similar to grammatical sensitivity involving
capacities to analyse language learning material and find patterns;
4. Memory and Learning – the ability to bond stimuli (native language words) and responses (target
language words) which affects learner’s speed in acquiring new vocabulary.
Pimsleur’s LAB test was devised for testing children aged 13 to 19 (Skehan, 1989). It is similar to
the MLAT in terms that it also takes into account sound discrimination and sound-symbol association
(Pimsleur, 1966).
Dr. Paul Pimsleur of Ohio State University also researched the subject of language aptitude,
which led to the development of the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery. Pimleur’s research led him to
identify two main factors of language aptitude in addition to motivation and study habits.
The MLAT consists of five sections, each one testing separate abilities.
- Number Learning This section is designed in part to measure the subject's memory as well as an
"auditory alertness" factor which would affect the subject's auditory comprehension of a foreign
language.
- Phonetic Script This section is designed to measure the subject's sound-symbol association
ability, which is the ability to learn correlations between a speech sound and written symbols.
- Spelling Clues/Hidden Words This highly speeded section is designed to test the subject's
vocabulary knowledge of English as well as his/her sound-symbol association ability.
- Words in Sentences This section is designed to measure the subject's sensitivity to grammatical
structure without using any grammatical terminology.
- Paired Associates This section is designed to measure the subject's rote memorization ability,
which is a typical component of foreign language learning.
Pimsleur’s Components of Language Aptitude
Verbal Ability – ability to handle the mechanics of learning a foreign language.
Auditory Ability – ability to hear, recognize and reproduce sounds in a foreign language.
The final version of the PLAB contains six parts
Part 1 – Grade Point Average – calculates the student's grade point average in areas other than
language learning
Part 2 – Interest – measures the student's interest in learning a foreign language and is a measure
of motivation
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Part 3 – Vocabulary – tests word knowledge in English and is a measure of verbal ability
Part 4 – Language Analysis – tests the student's ability to reason logically in terms of a foreign
language and is another aspect of verbal ability
Part 5 – Sound Discrimination – tests the ability to learn new phonetic distinctions and to
recognize them in different contexts and is a measure of auditory ability
Part 6 – Sound-Symbol Association – test
MOTIVATION
THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH: THE AMTB AND MOTIVATIONAL QUANTITY
Motivation is usually understood to refer to the desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort employed
to sustain it, and in lay terms we all understand it to be a matter of quantity, as in the everyday
observation that some learners are highly motivated and others have little or no motivation. In the late
1950s, Canadian researchers Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert developed what would become the
dominant model of L2 learning motivation, which they framed within a wider model of foreign language
learning known as the socio-educational model (Gardner and Lambert, 1972; Gardner, 1985).
Most of the studies used the same instrument, the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB; Gardner,
1985). Therefore, all illustrations in this section and the following ones come from items in the AMTB,
unless differently indicated.
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In the socio-educational model overall amount of motivation is quantified via three dimensions, each
reflected in a separate scale in the AMTB:
● Motivational intensity, which we can explain as how much effort people reportedly expend in
learning the language (as in ‘I keep up to date with French by working on it almost every day’ and ‘I
don’t pay much attention to the feedback I receive in my French class’).
● Attitudes towards learning the L2, which we can see as probing how much enjoyment people report
feeling when they learn the language (as in ‘I love learning French’ and ‘I hate French’).
● Desire to learn, which can be generally understood as how much personal
investment in succeeding in the language people claim for themselves (as in ‘I want to learn French so
well that it will become second nature to me’ and ‘To be honest, I really have little desire to learn
French’).
INTEGRATIVENESS AS AN ANTECEDENT OF MOTIVATION
Antecedents or motivational substrates give form to the structure of motivation. It explains what
variables contribute to increases or decreases in motivational quantity. Of all antecedents,
integrativenessis the one that has played the most central role in the development of a theory of foreign
language motivation. Integrativeness is an attitude defined as ‘a genuine interest in learning the
second language in order to come closer to the other language community’ (p. 5). It involves three
dimensions:
Favourable attitudes towards L2 speakers (‘if Canada should lose the French
culture of Quebec, it would indeed be a great loss’).
General interest in foreign languages and low ethnocentricism (‘I would really like to learn a lot
of foreign languages’)
Endorsement of reasons for learning the L2 related to interaction with L2 members or, in
Gardner’s terms, an integrative orientation (‘studying French is important to me because it will
allow me to meet and converse with more and varied people.)
For learners who score very high on integrativeness (i.e. on the three dimensions above combined),
complete identification with the L2 community may be observed. For example, learners may express
desires to think and behave like a person from the L2 community, at times to the point of detachment
from the L1 community. Some signs of this extreme case of integrativeness can indeed be found in
Kaplan’s (1993) account, when she writes: ‘Why do people want to adopt another culture? Because
there’s something in their own they don’t like, that doesn’t name them’
Gardner (2001) believed the highest and most facilitative form of motivation is what he called the
integrative motivation, which is attained only when three conditions are met: (1) the antecedent of
integrativeness itself is high, (2) motivation quantity (that is, the combined amount of effort, enjoyment,
and investment) is also high, and (3) attitudes towards the learning situation (teachers, curriculum) are
positive.
OTHER ANTECEDENTS: ORIENTATIONS AND ATTITUDES
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Table 8.2 presents a synopsis of most antecedents of motivation that have been identified over the
years. They comprise at a minimum three central ones: integrativeness (which we just examined in
section 8.2), orientations (that is, reasons for learning the L2) and attitudes (both towards the L2
community and its speakers and towards teachers and curriculum in the instructional setting). The
affective variables of foreign language anxiety and communicative self-confidence are also considered
key in predicting motivation.
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Orientation refers to reasons for learning the L2, because they contribute to the setting of goals that
will propel and sustain motivation of varying intensities and qualities. Of course, reasons are not
antithetical or mutually exclusive, and therefore a given individual may exhibit several orientations at
once.
There are five orientations for learning a language that L2 learners most commonly report across
contexts:
● instrumental when pragmatic and utilitarian reasons are important, such as getting a better job or
pursuing a higher level of education in the L2
● for knowledge or enlightened understanding of one’s own identity, language or culture and to become a
more knowledgeable person
● to facilitate travel to other countries or parts of a country
● for fostering general friendship with members of the target language
● for integrative reasons related to identification with the target culture and a genuine desire to become
more like members of the L2 group (as a reminder, in the socio-educational model this integrative
orientation is only one of three components of integrativeness, which in turn is only one of several
components of the integrative motivation; see section 8.2).
FIRST SIGNS OF RENEWAL: SELF-DETERMINATION THEORY AND INTRINSIC
MOTIVATION
What Is Self-Determination Theory?
Self-determination theory suggests that people are motivated to grow and change by three innate and
universal psychological needs. The concept of intrinsic motivation, or engaging in activities for the
inherent rewards of the behavior itself, plays an important role in self-determination theory.
Self-determination theory grew out of the work of psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, who
first introduced their ideas in their 1985 book Self-Determination and Intrinsic Motivation in Human
Behavior. They developed a theory of motivation which suggested that people tend to be driven by a need
to grow and gain fulfilment.
Introjected Regulation - extrinsic regulation, then, can undergo a process of internalization, resulting in
two intermediate states between absolute external regulation and complete self-regulation. Introjected
regulation happens when people ‘buy into’ the external pressure, by developing feelings of guilt or shame
that then can only be avoided via compliance with the expected behaviour (as in ‘I would feel ashamed if
I couldn’t speak to my friends from the second language community in their native tongue’).
Identified Regulation - by the same token, is closer to the intrinsic pole. It happens when external values
are accepted and adopted as one’s own and an individual comes to see the relevance and meaningfulness
of an activity that in principle was not self-determined. In the LLOS instrument, for example, an item
tapping identified regulation is ‘I choose to be the kind of person who can speak more than one
language’.
Amotivation - in extreme dysfunctional cases, individuals may fail to see any internal or external value to
their actions. This happens, for example, when some students in compulsory foreign language courses say
they do not know why they are studying the L2 or they express resentment at what feels like a waste of
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their time. These learners suffer from amotivation, and their performance in formal learning
settings is predicted to suffer from it too.
Two key assumptions of the theory:
The need for growth drives behavior. The first assumption of self-determination theory is that
people are actively directed toward growth. Gaining mastery over challenges and taking in new
experiences are essential for developing a cohesive sense of self.
Autonomous motivation is important. While people are often motivated to act by external rewards
such as money, prizes, and acclaim (known as extrinsic motivation), self-determination theory focuses
primarily on internal sources of motivation such as a need to gain knowledge or independence (known
as intrinsic motivation).
According to self-determination theory, people need to feel the following in order to achieve
psychological growth:
Competence: People need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills. When people feel
that they have the skills needed for success, they are more likely to take actions that will help
them achieve their goals.
Connection or Relatedness: People need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to
other people.
Autonomy: People need to feel in control of their own behaviors and goals. This sense of being
able to take direct action that will result in real change plays a major part in helping people feel
self-determined.
Imagine a person who fails to complete an important project at work. If this person is high in self-
determination, they will admit their fault, believe that they can do something to fix the problem and take
action to correct the mistake.
If that same person was low in self-determination, they might instead look for other things that they
can blame. They might make excuses, assign blame, or refuse to admit that their own role. Most
importantly, perhaps, is that this person won't feel motivated to fix the mistake. Instead, they might feel
helpless to control the situation and believe that nothing that they do will have any real effect.
While social support is important, there are other factors that can also help or hinder the three
elements needed for growth.
Extrinsic motivators can sometimes lower self-determination. According to Deci, giving
people extrinsic rewards for already intrinsically motivated behavior can undermine autonomy. As the
behavior becomes increasingly controlled by external rewards, people begin to feel less in control of their
own behavior and intrinsic motivation is diminished.
Positive feedback and boost self-determination. Deci also suggests that offering unexpected
positive encouragement and feedback on a person's performance on a task can increase intrinsic
motivation. This type of feedback helps people to feel more competent, which is one of the key needs for
personal growth.
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DYNAMIC MOTIVATION: TIME, CONTEXT, BEHAVIOUR
The times are now ripe for such changes, after the legacy accrued from four decades of systematic
development, validation and critique of several previous models. These newer perspectives are related to
an emphasis on the dynamic nature of L2 motivation and were fuelled by Dörnyei and Ottó (1998), who
for the first time argued that L2 motivation was mostly portrayed as static in the extant research, whereas
in reality we all know that motivational changes over time are to be expected.
Now SLA researchers feel compelled to investigate L2 motivation not only as a generalized trait, but
also as a state trait (as Gardner et al., 2004 call it) or a set of goal-directed predispositions to act (or not to
act) in a certain way (as Dörnyei and Ottó, 1998, prefer to describe it) that is subject to change over time.
Even newer perspectives have been a most recent but also most natural addition to this vibrant
landscape of change. The main thrust for these changes is the recognition that L2 motivation is dynamic
rather than static, which in turn has resulted in increased attention to time, context and behaviour. These
themes are likely to be integrated in future research with what is an important new concept: the ideal L2
speaking self.
ELABORAT
E
Fill in the blanks.
Choices: Aptitude Motivation Cognition Enjoyment Effort
1. Attitudes towards learning the L2, which we can see as probing how much __________ people report
feeling when they learn the language. (Enjoyment)
2. In foreign or second language acquisition, __________ actually refers to the prediction of how well an
individual can learn the second language in given time and condition. (Aptitude)
3. Motivational intensity, which we can explain as how much __________ people reportedly expend in
learning the language. (Effort)
4. ____________ is usually understood to refer to the desire to initiate L2 learning and the effort
employed to sustain it. (Motivation)
5. ___________ refers on how learners process information. (Cognition)
EVALUATE
B 1.These two are best-researched sources of individual differences in second language acquisition.
A. environment and behaviour B. aptitude and motivation C. attitude and cognition
A 2. It is the psychological formulation behind the intuition that some people have a gift for additional
language learning while other seem to struggle.
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A. Language aptitude B. Language acquisition C. Second language learning
C. 3. It is a construct that is "mostly cognitive".
A. attitude B. motivation C. aptitude
A. 4. It is the best known and most widely employed test of language aptitude
A. MLAT B. PLAB C. AMTB
A. 5. It refers to the desire to initiate second language learning and the effort employed to sustain it.
A. motivation B. aptitude C. attitude
A. 6. It is an attitude defined as genuine interest in learning the second language.
A. Integrativeness B. Motivation C. Antecedents
C. 7. It is also known as "motivational substrates".
A. Integrativeness B. Motivation C. Antecedents
B. 8. They created the Modern Language Aptitude Test.
A. Gardner and Lambert B. Carroll and Sapon C. Deci and Ryan
A. 9.It refers to the sociopolitical presence of the language in the community.
A. Ethnovitality B. Social Support C. Inter-Group Contact
C.10. It suggests that people are motivated to grow and change by three innate and universal
psychological needs.
A. Instrinc motivation B. Autonomy C. Self-determination theory
B. 11. He is the first person who talk about language aptitude
A. Robert Gardner B. John Carroll C. Stanley Sapon
B. 12. It was developed as an alternative to MLAT, measures a very similar range of abilities but has no
test of verbal memory.
A. Self-determination theory B.Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery C.
Attitude/Motivation Test Battery
A.13. It tests word knowledge in English and is a measure of verbal ability.
A. Vocabulary B. Language Analysis C. Grammatical Sensitivity
B. 14. It tests the ability to learn new phonetic distinctions and to recognize them in different contexts and
is a measure of auditory ability.
A. Sound-Symbol Association B. Sound Discrimination C.
Phonetic coding ability
B.15. It measures the student's interest in learning a foreign language and is a measure of motivation.
A. motivation B. interest C. integrativeness
C.16.It is an ability to recognize the function of a leximal statement in a sentence.
A. Phonetic coding ability B. Language Analysis C. Grammatical sensitivity A.17. They
developed a wider model of foreign language learning known as the socio-educational model.
A. Gardner and Lambert B. Carroll and Sapon C. Deci and Ryan
C.18. It is an ability to perceive and remember distinct sounds and their associated symbols.
A. Sound-Symbol Association B. Sound Discrimination C.
Phonetic coding ability
B.19. It is how learners process information
A. conation B. cognition C. affect
C.20. They developed a theory of motivation which suggested that people tend to be driven by a need to
grow and gain fulfilment.
A. Gardner and Lambert B. Carroll and Sapon C. Deci and Ryan
REFERENC
ES
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Ortega L. (2009). Second Language Acquisition. Understanding Language Series. Hodder
Education
ADDITIONAL
MATERIALS
All Answers Ltd. (November 2018). Language Aptitude in Second Language Acquisition
(SLA). Retrieved from https://ukdiss.com/examples/second-language-acquisition-language-
aptitude.php?vref=1
Cherry K. (2019). Self Determination Theory and Motivation. Retrieved from
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-determination-theory-2795387#:~:text=This
%20theory%20suggests%20that%20people,role%20in%20self-determination%20theory
PREPARED BY:
Princess Mher A. Alegado
Clare Joyce C. Añasco
Jean Lee C. Balatico
Arnie G. Bondad
Camila Mae S. Burgos
Jasper Kim B. Caba
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