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 last week's post, one of the motivational frameworks considered was extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. succeeding in foreign language study. Many individuals were both extrinsically and intrinsically motivated; each form of motivation contributed in its own way to the individual’s willingness to continue learning through near-native levels of proficiency. Roughly 88% of the interviewees identified their motivation as something that could be classified extrinsic, including 82% that were clearly instrumentally motivated; 48% identified their motivation as intrinsic. Obviously, 30% of the interviewees reported both instrumental and integrative motivation.

Extrinsic Motivation

For most individuals, extrinsic motivators were in some way or another associated with financial rewards (e.g., annual bonuses for Level 4 proficiency), reputation, survival (in foreign degree programs, in foreign work environments, or as an alternative to something considered life threatening), better social status, and/or job requirements (financial benefits, better social status, and job requirements could also be classified as instrumental motivation). Not one of the respondents said that a particular teacher’s influence or any positive motivational techniques used in the classroom directly led to his or her long-term and high-level success in language acquisition; in fact, several actually stated that they continued in spite of negative teacher motivation—and, in some cases, they had a secret goal “to prove the teacher wrong.”  On the embedded checklist that queried the level of importance of various kinds of direct instruction, none of the interviewees checked teacher instruction, but many checked native speaker (non-classroom) instruction. Whether this level of independence in learning—and need to control one’s own learning—was present in these individuals from the very beginning or reflect a natural evolution of teacher-student relationships with increasing foreign-language proficiency has not yet been made clear by this study.

A subset of individuals moved permanently to the foreign country. For most of the individuals in this study, the reason for the move was to be with a spouse; these individuals had married a native speaker. For them, learning the language well (i.e. to advanced levels) meant survival and wellbeing. Learning it very well, i.e. to native-like levels, meant better survival in the form of improved job opportunities, more responsible job levels, and increased pay. 

Intrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation, as reported, took two forms: 1) a special interest in the language being taught, and 2) a general interest in foreign languages and linguistics. In addition, there were elements of achievement orientation and tenacity that might be considered related to intrinsic motivation; in some cases, it was difficult to sort these various motivations out because they were intertwined—a typical characteristic of high-level foreign language users.

As for individual, specialized reasons, there were almost as many reasons for special interest in the language being learned as there were interviewees mentioning such an interest. Some of the specific reasons give were (1) heritage; (2) interest in the literature, science, or work-related subject for which the language was used; (3) earlier study of related languages; where pertinent, (4) the challenge of studying a language considered difficult; and (5) interest in learning multiple languages of one language family.

However, not all individuals had a special interest in the language that they had acquired. Some had been assigned their language as young government employees and had little, if any, choice about which language they were assigned. Surprisingly, some did not like the language and culture they had been assigned at all, had avoided direct contact with the culture (including travel abroad) as much as possible, and had used immigrant communities for immersion and models. All of these individuals were polyglots. Their high level of language aptitude (these individuals had been identified for their ability to study foreign languages on the basis of the Defense Language Aptitude Test, for those who began their study many years ago, or the Defense Language Aptitude Battery, for those who began their study in the 1980s or later), as well as generally good learning skills, might explain their ability to succeed in learning a language that they neither chose nor liked.

 Nearly all of the interviewees had studied several languages (although not necessarily to the point of having attained near-native proficiency in more than one of them. The language they succeeded in sometimes was their first foreign or second language; more often, it was not. Some actually had reached near-native levels in more than one foreign language, and they formed an interesting subgroup, the polyglottic group that has been mentioned previously in this volume. All but one of the polyglots was intrinsically motivated in language study; for some, the language of study did not have any special significance to the learner—it was just one of many languages. One of the interviewees had studied 16 languages and had achieved high levels of proficiency in four of them. In the case of all these languages for this individual, the motivation was intrinsic (but not integrative), although there were some extrinsic/instrumental influences.

 (We will report on motivation in greater depth 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.

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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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