Is language learning aptitude language specific or language general?

Language aptitude is usually thought to be a general ability to learn languages (i.e. non-language specific). The MLAT (Modern Language Aptitude Test) was develped by John B. Carroll, who published a few essays on this subject in the mid-1960s, and is really *the* name in language aptitude. After him, however, there hasn't been a lot of research into language aptitude, possibly because other factors, such as motivation and learning strategies, have been identified as more powerful in influencing ultimate achievement. In other words, while some people may find some aspects of learning a L2 easier because of their "language aptitude", it really comes down to how much effort they put into the process of SLA. On the other hand, someone who may score relatively low on the MLAT may be able to compensate for their lack of natural talent by devoting time and effort to the task of learning a L2. For practitioners, it it more interesting to focus on aspects that can be modified (e.g. how motivation can be sustained in the L2 classroom, how learners can be trained in using learning strategies, etc.), rather than on some fixed individual attribute that cannot be changed.

I want to believe that the specific aspects of the foreign language (i.e.phonetic sounds, melody and rhythm (i.e. tempo and tonic accents) are what make one language different from the others. In this regard, I think an aptitude test for any of those prosodic features should be language specific.

Sorry, I detached this information from the previous suggestion. If you know French, you can read Hammar's article entitled, 'La prononciation au temps des pedagogues'' in Le francais dans le monde, Numero Special, January 1998. pp. 106-117. For a theoretical framework you could also read ''Characteristics of Psychodramaturgy for Language Acquisition ''[In French: Psychodramaturgie Linguistique'' (PDL)] by Benard Dufeu (1977). My article entitled, ''le Bilinguisme et quelques problemes phonetiques et phonologiques dans l'apprentissage du francais (FLE): Le cas de Mawuli School, Ho, also discusses pronunciation of French sounds.

Language-specific; it doesn't, for example dervive from general intelligence

@ Dennis Soku: That is definitely a fascinating area - I have had several interesting experiences with students where interference from their L1 phonology really made it difficult for them not only to reproduce sounds in their L2, but even to recognise them (which I found extraordinary). For example, I had a German-speaking student who could not hear the difference between [tʃ] (as in <i>cugina</i>, cousin) and [dʒ] (as in <i>cucina</i, kitchen) in Italian, because this distinction is not relevant to his L1, German. However, in this case, research into phonological interference from the L1 would be more relevant, perhaps, than looking at language aptitude.

@ Antonella

This is a wonderful one. In the example you gave, you rightly pointed out that the learner could not hear the difference between the two sounds. It is a problem of perception of the sound rather than the articulation of it. When you stand in front of him and he does not get the difference between the sounds, stand behind him and pronounce the sound to him. If this also fails stand first at his left side and when this also fails stand at his right side and pronounce the sound. One of these positions will help this learner to perceive the distinction between the two sounds.

Thanks for the tip, Dennis. I can't wait to try that out :-)

Regarding Antonella's point that certain L2 learners cannot perceive certain L2 sound contrasts, I would like to add that there are also cases where the problem does not lie in perception (the sound contrasts can be perceived in discrimination tasks with short inter-stimulus-intervals and with no distracting information) but in storing the contrasts (so difficulties arise in discrimination tasks with longer ISIs or in tasks that demand the storage of the information). More information on the storage of suprasegmental properties of stress, tone and duration are listed below.

stress:

Dupoux, E. & Pallier, C. 1997. A Destressing ‘Deafness’ in French? . Journal of Memory and Language 36. 406 - 421.

Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S. & Sebastián-Gallés,N. 2001. A robust method to study stress ‘deafness’. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 110 (3)(Pt.1, Sep). 1606 - 1618.

tone:

Braun, B., Galts, T. & Kabak, B. (in press). Lexical encoding of L2 tones: the role of L1 stress, pitch accent and intonation. Second Language Research.

duration:

Asano, Yuki. 2014. Stability in perceiving non-native segmental length contrasts. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Speech Prosody

Thank you for all the interesting points you bring up about L2 phonology. I liked Antonella's answers saying learner's effort and motivation can be the greater factors to the successful L2 acquisition.

I want to put more focus on the aptitude issue, which is about individual difference vs. general issue of L2 phonology. Here are my follow-up questions for you.

- Are there a particular group of people among a native speaker of a language who are less likely to overcome these L2 phonology issues than others and they are likely to fail or have harder time to acquire L2 because of their poor ability in L2 phonology?

- Are these challenges are isolated to a sound or a group of sounds, or even broader?

- Can these L2 phonological challenges be overcome by other elements of learning like strategy, context, training, etc.?

Look forward to seeing more exciting discussion.

You may want to look at Susanne Reiterer's work if you are specifically interested in the sound domain. She has done a lot of research on individual differences and L2 speech/pronunciation: http://blog.susannereiterer.eu/publications/

For example, this paper may be interesting:

Xiaochen Hu, Hermann Ackermann, Jason Martin, Michael Erb, Susanne Winkler and Susanne M Reiterer. (2013) Language Aptitude for Pronunciation in Advanced Second Language (L2) Learners: Behavioural Predictors and Neural Substrates. Brain and Language, 127, 366-376.

Thanks, Alison. Very excited to find Susanne Reiterer's work.

Dear heejong

compartmentalized non-unitory approach to  language proficiency  and competence is the framework for your research.

This may be a little late, but Sparks, Ganschow and colleagues did a series of studies on training phonological/orthographical abilities using a multisensory structured language teaching approach to L2 phonology. They found that it even improved L1 phonological/orthographical skills! 

Also, in addition to Antonella's comments about aptitude, Carroll also puts forward a model of school learning where motivation mediates the effects of aptitude. In other words, if motivation is high, the effects of aptitude are fully apparent (for high- or low-level learners), but if motivation is low, aptitude will not make any discernible difference to L2 achievement.