What do we know about individuals who reach near-native levels of proficiency 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.

The study, following common thought, expected to find a commonality among the highly proficient language users in age of onset, i.e. that beginning as a child results in higher proficiency. However, that was not the case. Age of onset did not matter much except for naturally correct pronunciation picked up by children (though often that was affected by interlanguage contact that happens in immigrant situations) that had to be acquired with great effort by adult learners. 

The important characteristic in terms of age of onset did not appear to be child vs adult but (1) whether the learner had been exposed to a multilingual environment as a child and (2) whether the adult had classroom instruction had higher levels of proficiency. Both of these conditions were important in speeding up the pace of acquisition as well as the ultimate level of achievement. Both of these conditions were present in most of the survey respondents.

(We will report on other 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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