Precerpt from My 20th Language: Language Aptitude (Leaver)
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Language Aptitude
As for my language aptitude, that
is something impossible to accurately determine so late in my language learning
journey. I’ve taken two major assessments of aptitude: the MLAT (Modern
Language Aptitude Test), where I scored a 75 out of a possible 80, and the DLAB
(Defense Language Aptitude Battery), where I received a 153—well above the 110
threshold that qualifies someone for training in “difficult” languages. On
paper, those scores suggest I have a strong natural ability to learn languages.
But that conclusion would be misleading.
By the time I took either test, I
had already earned a degree in linguistics and studied over a dozen languages.
I understood the structure of the tests and could deconstruct their constructs
with ease. My academic training and hands-on experience gave me significant
advantages in interpreting patterns and anticipating answers. In short, I was
not approaching the tests as a novice, but as someone already steeped in the
field—an “expert learner,” not someone demonstrating raw, untrained aptitude.
To know my true aptitude, the tests
would have had to be administered before age nine, when I first began
intentionally learning languages. Even by high school, my aptitude would
already have been shaped by years of informal and formal language exposure.
That early and sustained experience transformed any latent aptitude into
something honed and deliberate.
For this reason, I’m skeptical of
how language aptitude scores are used. At best, they serve as mild curiosities
or, more usefully, as formative tools for designing individualized instruction.
Unfortunately, they are rarely applied diagnostically or in ways that lead to
tailored support. And while no one denies that some individuals pick up
languages more easily than others, experience and motivation have always struck
me as more reliable predictors of success than an aptitude score alone.
When I worked at the Foreign
Service Institute (FSI), the official MLAT cutoff for Russian was 60. But I
never turned down an applicant who didn’t meet that benchmark. One determined
candidate with a score of 45 called me personally to plead for a waiver. I
asked for evidence of his potential, and he shared that he had reached ILR
Level 3 in French in just 17 weeks—a program normally scheduled for 36. That
was good enough for me. He joined the program and thrived.
At that time, most students in the
Russian program completed 44 weeks of intensive study and reached ILR-3
proficiency in both reading and listening. The success rate was high not
because everyone had high aptitude scores, but because they had the drive, the
support, and often, the benefit of tailored instruction.
I’ve seen students succeed against
considerable odds: older learners, so-called “low-aptitude” learners, even one
remarkable 63-year-old woman recovering from temporary brain damage caused by a
medication error. She reached a 2+ in listening and a 3 in reading—results that
might seem improbable on paper, but in practice were made possible through
customized teaching and strategic learning.
The lesson? Aptitude may open the
door, but it is experience, support, and motivation that carry learners through
it.
In recent years, some attention has
turned toward identifying the characteristics of aptitude not just for initial
language acquisition, but for achieving higher levels of proficiency. This is
an important distinction. Unfortunately, much of this emerging research—and
many of the traits being proposed as predictive of success—are the work of
individuals who, quite ironically, have not themselves acquired even one
language to a near-native level, let alone several. Their conclusions, while
labeled as “evidence-based,” often appear more speculative than substantive.
In my own experience, and in the
more nuanced research of respected second language acquisition scholar Peter
Skehan (1998, 2015) see his work on aptitude and task-based learning), some of
the traits currently being heralded as indicative of high-level aptitude
actually align more closely with success at lower levels of proficiency. For
example, the Hi-LAB (High-Level Language Aptitude Battery)—currently one of the
few assessments attempting to predict success at advanced levels—focuses on
areas such as phonemic categorization, working memory, and grammatical
sensitivity. These traits, however, are precisely those that Skehan associates
with success in early-stage language learning.
Skehan posits that high-level
proficiency requires a shift toward very different cognitive strengths: the
ability to automatize, to learn implicitly, and to think inductively. This
matches well with what Boris Shekhtman describes in How to Improve Your
Foreign Language Immediately (2021) —a capacity for structured
self-drilling and pattern absorption that becomes second nature. By contrast,
Hi-LAB’s inclusion of traits such as cognitive control and associative memory
again seem better suited to early-stage acquisition, not the nuanced, abstracted,
fluent performance demanded at ILR Level 4 or near-native equivalents. My own
teaching and program oversight experience—across thousands of students—supports
Skehan’s model more reliably than Hi-LAB’s.
More recently, Judith Kroll’s work
(Kroll & Bialystok, 2013; Krol et al., 2012) adds further nuance to this
discussion. She has examined the role of working memory in multilinguals,
particularly its speed and flexibility. Contrary to what one might assume, her
research shows that multilingual individuals often experience delays in
lexical retrieval compared to monolinguals. This is not a deficit, but a
function of having more mental inventory to search and sort through. I can
relate to this personally. With twenty languages at my disposal, I often find
myself momentarily stalled, not because I don’t know the word, but because I’m
filtering through multiple languages to reject the more elegant or precise word
that, alas, belongs to the wrong one. That process of internal
evaluation naturally slows down apparent working memory—but in truth, it
reflects deeper cognitive engagement, not poorer performance.
There’s also the well-known
tortoise-and-hare dynamic. Some students (the “hares”) sprint through early
language learning, especially in immersion environments, dazzling with fluency
at lower levels. But they may plateau when faced with the complexities of
advanced discourse or when required to refine and sustain grammatical accuracy.
Others (the “tortoises”) plod slowly and carefully, often struggling early on
due to their analytical or accuracy-oriented cognitive styles. Yet, over time,
it is often these learners who achieve the highest levels—precisely because
their approach demands the very precision and structure required for sustained,
high-level communication. In many standardized tests, however, these tortoises
might underperform, and their aptitude may be underestimated or
mischaracterized.
Cognitive style, especially the
well-researched field dependence/independence dimension and the
left-brain/right-brain information processing preferences, also plays a role.
Learners with sharpening tendencies—who refine distinctions and focus on
accuracy—often test poorly in tasks demanding fast responses or implicit
learning yet excel when those same traits are needed at higher proficiency.
Again, such findings caution us against taking aptitude scores at face value
without a deeper look at what is actually being measured.
Ultimately, I have come to believe
that aptitude is overrated—at least in its commonly understood sense. The real
key lies not in how well a student might learn, but in how a
student learns (Corin & Leaver, forthcoming). With the right strategies, I
believe I can teach nearly any student to reach nearly any level of
proficiency. But I must understand their cognitive preferences, learning
habits, and emotional patterns. That information matters far more than a test
score.
And so, for me personally—across
twenty languages and counting—knowing how I learn has always been more
valuable than knowing how well I learn or how “apt” I supposedly am.
Language aptitude tests have little meaning for someone who long ago learned to
construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct the path to fluency from the inside
out.
For more posts about language learning, click HERE.
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