BASIC CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

Let us start our discussion with some basic conceptual issues. This is neces- sary because the terms ability, aptitude, and intelligence are commonly used in everyday parlance and therefore it is all too easy to mix up their popular meaning with their scientific definition. The general term (human) mental

ability is typically used in psychology to refer to a variety of human traits

that are involved in thinking, reasoning, processing information, and ac- quiring new knowledge. In other words, mental abilities reflect cognitive processes and skills. When describing such processes and skills, experts and non-specialists alike use several terms, most notably ‘ability,’ ‘aptitude,’ and ‘intelligence.’ How do these differ from each other?

Although some scholars distinguish between ability and aptitude, in typical practice the two are used synonymously. Furthermore, in educational contexts such as second language learning, ability is often used to mean ‘learning ability,’ that is, the individual’s potential for acquiring new knowl- edge or skill. Thus, ‘language aptitude’ means exactly the same as ‘language ability’ and is typically meant to denote ‘language learning ability.’ What about intelligence? Intelligence is yet another synonym for ‘ability’ but when it is used on its own (i.e., not in a phrase such as ‘spatial intelligence’ or ‘verbal intelligence’) it usually has a broader meaning, referring to a gen- eral sort of aptitude that is not limited to a specific performance area but is transferable to many sorts of performance. This general usage is explained by the fact that scores on all subtests of abilities measured by intelligence tests are positively intercorrelated, which makes it possible to compute a single higher-order factor, usually labeled as ‘g,’ that describes the common- alities of the various abilities. The famous/infamous IQ coefficient is in- tended to assess this general g factor.

‘Intelligence’ in the scientific sense is not a unitary construct and sev- eral theories have been proposed in the past to describe the hierarchical organization of the many constituent abilities identified. Describing these theories would go beyond the scope of this book but to illustrate the kinds of constructs we can find in the literature let me briefly mention a few famous taxonomies. In the 1920s, Spearman described intelligence as a combination of a general factor (g), which is available to an individual to the same degree for all intellectual acts, as well as several specific factors which vary in strength from one act to another. Ten years later Thurstone distinguished seven primary mental abilities: verbal comprehension, word fluency, number facility, spatial visualization, associative memory, perceptual speed, and rea- soning. In the 1960s, Guilford’s famous structure-of-intellect model con- tained an elaborate structure made up of as many as 150 different factors. At about the same time, Cattell’s influential theory divided up general intelli- gence into fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence

is the ability to adapt to novel situations, as manifested in performance on tests of reasoning ability about sequences of abstract shapes or manually assembling larger objects from groups of novel shapes. Crystallized intelligence consists of knowledge and skills acquired by experience and education, and is specific to certain fields and domains, such as knowledge of history or mathematical skills. Currently Gardner’s (1983) ‘multiple intelligence’ model and Sternberg’s ‘successful intelligence’ construct at- tract particular attention (the latter will be further discussed in a separate section).

This brief description illustrates well two important points about apti- tude: (a) There is no universally accepted theory or definition of intelligence and neither is there a canonical list of ‘real’ mental abilities. (b) The multi- componential nature of mental abilities implies, by definition, that we can expect some variation within individuals with regard to their specific abili- ties; that is, for example, someone with a superior verbal ability may be relatively weak at reasoning tasks.

Ability and Language Learning

As we have seen above, the term intelligence is often used to denote the ‘ability to learn’ and in fact, the first ever intelligence test, the 1905 Binet- Simon Intelligence Scale, was originally developed to identify pupils who could not benefit from regular instruction in school classrooms because of their limited mental ability. Ever since these early days, intelligence has been closely associated with learning success, and therefore it was only a question of time that attempts were made to conceptualize the specific abil- ity to learn a foreign language. This ability has been referred to under a vari- ety of names, ranging from ‘language aptitude’ and a special ‘propensity’ or ‘talent’ for learning an L2 to more colloquial terms such as a ‘flair’ or ‘knack’ for languages. Indeed, language aptitude is one of those psychologi- cal concepts that are readily recognizable for researchers and laypeople alike, and nobody would question that the innate ability to learn another lan- guage, as a child or as an adult, varies significantly from individual to indi- vidual. Yet, when we give the concept a closer scrutiny, it also becomes clear that what lies behind the popular surface meaning is rather ambiguous: Even language teaching experts would find it difficult to define what exactly this ‘language flair’ involves and, similarly to their colleagues in mainstream psychology, scholars specializing in language aptitude research display considerable diversity in the conceptualization of the construct.

The crux of the problem is that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as ‘language aptitude.’ Instead, we have a number of cognitive factors mak- ing up a composite measure that can be referred to as the learner’s overall

capacity to master a foreign language. In other words, foreign language ap- titude is not a unitary factor but rather a complex of “basic abilities that are essential to facilitate foreign language learning” (Carroll & Sapon, 1959, p. 14); thus, the concept concerns a variety of cognitively-based learner differ- ences. While this definition has been adequate for several decades, recent re- search into specific cognitive skills and capacities related to learning, such as ‘working memory’ or ‘phonological coding/decoding,’ makes it question- able as to whether it is still useful to use the umbrella-term of ‘language ap- titude.’ However, because standard measures of language aptitude remain relatively good indicators of learning success across a wide range of situ- ational parameters, the concept is still widely used in the general sense, making it similar to the generic term of ‘intelligence.’

LANGUAGE APTITUDE RESEARCH: FROM THE BEGINNINGS