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 tenacity. Contrary to the popular notion that learners who reach very high proficiency levels are highly talented students for whom language learning is easy, nearly every interviewee (94%) reported difficulties at some stage of learning the language. If it was not in early learning (“tortoises”), then it was at a Level 3 plateau (“hares”). Nearly all also stated that if it were not for some form of tenacity, they would have given up and not attained native-like proficiency. Tenacity was reported by people with all forms of motivation: instrumental, integrative, intrinsic, extrinsic, outcomes-based achievement oriented and satisfaction-based achievement oriented. As reported, it was a sense that “I will overcome, no matter how long it takes.”

In the few cases where no difficulties were mentioned but tenacity was, it was as a matter of endurance and developing patience for years of study (formal and/or informal). The terminology used by interviewees was “kept plugging along,” “tried to use the language a little every day,” “patience over time,” and “not giving up when things took a long time.

Tenacious individuals, in general, persevere for telic reasons. Their motivation consists not simply of the unwillingness to give up, but rather of the need or desire to complete the task or even overcome it, no matter what effort or how long it takes. With 17 years as the average period of time that it took interviewees to reach Level 4 from Level 0, there seems to be a prima fasciae need for tenacity! Tenacity might be especially important considering the amount of time that it takes to move from Level 3 to Level 4 alone; progress is not as evident at the upper levels as it is at the lower levels, and learners have to face some discouraging moments when plateaus seem to last forever or language skills seem to slip instead of gain (both phenomena were reported by nearly all interviewees). 

(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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