What do we know about individuals who reach native-like levels in a foreign language?

 



Achieving Native-Like Second Language Proficiency (Speaking) by Betty Lou Leaver is a research-based catalogue of factors that would seem to predict ability to reach the highest level of foreign language proficiency and is based on common characteristics shared by more than 200 near-native speakers, identified by self-report, survey, and interviews by master testers.

Following up on previous posts, one of the motivational frameworks considered was the desire to pass for a native speaker. Some of the interviewees (13%) mentioned the goal of passing for a native speaker. This goal sometimes coincided with integrative motivation. In this case, the interviewee indicated the desire to blend in with and be part of the culture in order to be accepted and experience its nature the way native speakers do. However, far from all who expressed the native-speaker goal were integratively motivated and far from all who were integratively motivated had set a goal of passing for a native speaker. For some, it was more of an achievement motivation, or even what Ehrman might call a “narcissistic drive” (Ehrman, 2002): That was the highest form of success that they could imagine—to speak the language so well that no one would know that they were a foreigner. Some of them formed friendships (and even wed) for the instrumental purpose of reaching this goal.

The motivation of passing for a native speaker may very well depend on the L1-L2 relationship. For some cultures, e.g., in which European descendents are studying a European language, passing for a native speaker may be more an ideal than pragmatic, but not totally unreasonable. For many culture combinations, it is not a reasonable goal at all. As one Level 4 speaker of Chinese commented, “I would never consider passing for a native speaker to be a goal; in fact, it sounds rather ridiculous.” Looking at his 6-foot-plus height, blue eyes, and blond hair, one would have to agree.

(We will report on more aspects of motivation and on other learner characteristics in future Thursday blog posts.)

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MSI Press publishes the only journal dedicated to the topic of teaching and learning to near-native levels of foreign language proficiency: the Journal for Distinguished Language Studies (JDLS). 

We have available for individual purchase each of the feature articles from issue 8 of the JDLS at a very accessible price and will make the feature articles available from other issues as time goes on. Check our webstore to see what we have at any given time. We will announce and link each of these individually in upcoming blog posts.

The Journal for Distinguished Language Studies is available by subscription. JDLS is a biennial journal, and it is easy for time to slip by and miss the next issue. Subscription will take care of that. Subscribe HERE and never miss a copy. (Publishes typically in December of even-numbered years.)

Also, don't believe Amazon's listing of previous issues of The Journal for Distinguished Language Studies as out of print. It is very much in print and available at the MSI Press webstore. Subscription service available as noted above, and issues 1-6 are on sale for $5 each!


Amazon is selling issues 7 and 8.

For more posts about the JDLS, click HERE.

For more posts about near-native language acquisition, click HERE.

If you have a post to contribute to the Thursday high-level-language-proficiency topic, we would love to see it. Please send it to editor@msipress.com.


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