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 achievement motivation. Twenty-six percent of the interviewees mentioned several aspects of achievement motivation. Many of them said that performing well in language learning was important to them, or at least had been so in at early levels of proficiency when they were in beginning language classes. In a few cases, interviewees defined “doing well” as getting a good grade; more commonly, these being adult learners, they defined it as earning the respect and approbation of their peers in the same class. (Teacher approbation has not been spontaneously mentioned by any of the interviewees to date and when questioned, most have simply said that they had many teachers but did not consider the approbation of any to be a motivator of any sort, although it could be difficult to recall with precision the emotions and motivations 17 or more years earlier.) In other cases, interviewees defined “doing well” as a personal sense of accomplishment.
One interesting aspect of
achievement in general is that tortoises appeared to win the race over hares.
That is, a sizable number of interviewees, including polyglots with Level 4
proficiency in multiple languages, reported difficulties in early stages of
language learning—not necessarily with all languages studied but specifically
with the language(s) in which Level 4 was attained, as discussed in Chapter 4.
They mentioned the frustration of seeing classmates pass them by and then the
delight when late in the race, they passed by those same classmates who were
still resting at Levels 2+ and 3. They hypothesized a rather disparate set of
reasons as to why this might have happened, but much seemed to be associated
with learning style: those who self-reported styles related to being ectenic also tended to report themselves as being painfully accurate in
early stages of learning. Fluency just did not seem to come to these
individuals, whereas those who might self-reported styles related to synoptic
learning were “awfully” fluent (but
inaccurate) during the early period of study on and
later had to work very hard to develop the necessary precision to reach and exceed Level 3. One might conjecture that the hares
whom the tortoises passed may still be asleep on the road because they could
not develop the sharpening and detail-orientation skills typical of ectenic
learners that are needed for the higher levels of proficiency. Clearly, this is
yet another hypothesis that warrants testing as the current study continues.
(We will report on more aspects of motivation and on other learner characteristics in future Thursday blog posts.)
---
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.
 |
Follow MSI Press on Twitter, Face Book, and Instagram.
Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC?
Planning on self-publishing and don't know where to start? Our author au pair services will mentor you through the process.
Want an author-signed copy of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.
Julia Aziz, signing her book, Lessons of Labor, at an event at Book People in Austin, Texas.
Want to communicate with one of our authors? You can! Find their contact information on our Authors' Pages.
Comments
Post a Comment