Aptitude, Part 2

For completeness, as promised, I add a quick summary of two different frameworks for assessing language learning aptitude. It’s a bit technical, and if you’re not put off, then you should certainly read the whole article, only parts of which I’ve paraphrased here. The article is the first in a special issue of the journal Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 2021, dedicated to aptitude in language learning. This issue, plus a special issue of the journal Studies in Second Language Acquisition, (2021, Vol. 43, 3) devoted to implicit language aptitude, are required reading for those interested in tackling this very hot topic, which is, of course, a key area of SLA with enormous relevance to ELT. While they need careful reading, the advantage is that you have enough material in these two places (add Wen, Skehan, & Sparks (2023) for good measure) to write a very good paper for your MA.

As we saw in Part 1, foreign language aptitude generally refers to a set of specific cognitive abilities that enable some individuals to learn additional languages more quickly and efficiently than their peers when all other language learning success factors (e.g., time, quality of instruction, motivation) are equal. The reawakening of interest in language aptitude research is due to a paradigm shift away from applying language aptitude testing scores to predict success among language learners towards a better understanding of the aptitude construct and its constituent components. While early research focused on broad macro abilities such as grammatical sensitivity from the MLAT, or sound-symbol association tests, such as in the PLAB, now, there is more interest in the details of the microprocesses involved in language acquisition, and the conceptualizations of language aptitude are evolving as researchers design aptitude studies which focus on particular processes such as feedback and how some learners gain more from it than others. ?

In their 2021 paper, Wen and Skehan explore the relationship between two frameworks for characterizing language aptitude: Skehan’s Stages Model and Wan’s P/E Model, the former being an approach grounded in SLA perspectives of language aptitude and the latter emphasizing working memory as a central component of language aptitude. By comparing these two theoretical approaches, the authors argue that both language and memory are fundamental to understanding and characterizing the nature of language aptitude.

The Stages Approach to Language Aptitude

Skehan (2016) proposed exploring whether there is a sequence of stages in the course of interlanguage development and whether individual differences exist in a particular development stage. If so, a battery of subtests linked to different stages could be more effective at predicting development than a global aptitude test and would have the benefit of not being tied to any particular view of foreign language instruction. Therefore, it might prove to be more wide-ranging in terms of its domain of application.

Skehan proposed nine language acquisition stages, listed below.

The first stage to consider is input processing and handling sound. At this stage, the challenge is to hold input material in the phonological buffer while analytic processes operate. The analytic processes involve segmenting the speech stream into units then analyzing these units to extract meaning, drawing upon long- term memory. If these processes are successful, then the buffer can be cleared, and the listener can move on to new input. The next stage, noticing, concerns how some aspect of the material held in the buffer is extracted and focused on with greater attention (Schmidt,1990). Whatever is noticed at this stage is not analyzed deeply. The noticed element is merely recognized as worthy of attention and could become the trigger for later inter- language development, drawing on explicit or implicit processes. Beyond noticing, there are a set of stages concerned with the processing of patterns in language. At the simplest level, this could involve only pattern identification itself. Examples of noticed elements could be word order regularities, a repeated function for intonation, or agreements between elements. The point is that what was previously only noticed as perhaps curious is now put into an organizational frame, a process referred to as complexification. Complexification processes can include generalizing, restructuring, or integrating what were seen as two smaller-scale systems into one larger-scale system. Linked to all these stages is the role of feedback as learners engaging in interaction are provided with information, explicitly or implicitly, relevant to what they have said. Feedback may relate to errors, a gap in interlanguage, or any other feature of what the learner has said.?

To address production, we also need to consider processes such as automatization, and how what may be initially fragile insights are converted over time into fluent performance with progressively fewer errors.?

In sum, the Stages Approach: (a) proposes a set of stages of acquisitional develop- ment, and (b) considers the impact of individual differences in learning’s effectiveness at that stage, so that (c) there is a case for aptitude subtest development. For example, a researcher could develop an aptitude subtest to investigate the impact of better input processing skills on some aspect of language development.?

An Outline of the P/E Model of Working Memory

Working memory (WM) refers to our limited cognitive capacity to simultaneously maintain and manipulate a small amount of information in our heads while completing some mental tasks, such as solving a mental arithmetic problem. WM has been a buzzword in cognitive science since its debut in the 1960s, boosted significantly by Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) seminal multicomponent model.?

Drawing on emerging insights from WM, Wen proposed the Phonological/ Executive (P/E) Model. Based on the extensive research in these two traditions, this model explores the extent to which WM can be considered a language learning device in the second language case, paralleling claims by Baddeley et al. (1998) for first language learning. The aim of this partial model of language aptitude is to predict and explain second language acquisitional processes and learning outcomes. As it is still a relatively young model, there is still room for discussion how wide-ranging or limited this model might be.

The construct of WM, as conceived in the P/E Model, can be conceptualized and operationalized from three distinctive yet interrelated levels of analysis. These comprise from the bottom up?

(a)??? its bidirectional relationship and interactions with long-term memory content and knowledge, which can be further demarcated into declarative and procedural memory;

(b)??? its multiple components of the phonological loop (phonological memory), the visual-spatial sketchpad, the episodic buffer, and the central executive; and

(c)??? its finer-grained subprocesses and executive functions subsuming information, ?updating, task switching, and inhibitory control.?

More specifically, the “P” part of the P/E Model refers to the phonological compo- nent of WM (sometimes referred to as phonological short-term memory, or PSTM). Given its instrumental and facilitative roles in the storage, chunking, consolidation, and retrieval of newly acquired phonological forms, phonological WM is positioned by the P/E Model as a language learning device. The P/E Model posits that simple versions of storage-only memory span tasks (e.g., the letter span, and the nonword repetition span) provide an appropriate measure of phonological WM. Conceived this way, phonological WM is likely to underlie the acquisitional and developmental aspects of language domains, such as the acquisition and development of lexis or vocabulary, phrases or formulaic chunks, and grammatical structures or morphosyntactic constructions in both L1 and L2 alike.?

In contrast, the “E” part of the P/E Model refers to the attention control and executive functions of WM. The P/E Model postulates that executive working memory (EWM) serves to constrain selective processes during L2 comprehension, production and L2 interactions. EWM is normally measured by more complex versions of WM span tasks and now includes finer-grained dynamic memory span tasks such as the running memory span task and the N-back task.?

The authors then compare the two models and argue that both emphasise the need to see language aptitude as affecting a large range of abilities and skills, rather than rely on the four elements used in earlier tests. At the input processing and noticing stage, the P/E Model provides a framework within which all psycholinguistic processes operate, addressing issues of storage and analysis and operations upon stored material and connections with LTM. The P/E Model also offers many measurement options. An aptitude-based approach draws upon these WM insights and findings, but it has a more prominent role for the processing of specifically linguistic material, linking the capacity to code such material with memory that is more than fleeting. In many ways, the two accounts of the Stages Approach and the P/E Model, while distinct, use different terminology to refer to the same things.?

With pattern identification and complexification, while WM contributes to this stage, it is essentially facilitative and provides an arena for other, more language-oriented processes to operate. However, its contribution is clearly more important at lower proficiency levels, where holding the material in WM while higher- level processes operate is a more demanding challenge. With more language analytic aptitude, it is clear that there are connections with microprocesses within acquisition and that higher aptitude is often associated with greater success in focused microstudies. It is also worth noting that there has been a growing tendency for language analytic ability to mean inductive language learning rather than grammatical sensitivity.?

The roles of language analytic ability and WM seem to be slightly reversed as far as feedback is concerned, since it is the latter that assumes greater importance. In this case, a more analytic ability does have importance in relation to the detailed impact of the feedback that is being provided. WM, though, is pervasive in its influence, since feedback presupposes storage pressure as well as linkages being made between current WM and long-term memory. Size and speed of WM may assume a major role in this case.?

The big takeaway is that recent research has shown up the inadequacies of earlier tests of ability in language learning and allowed for a much more evidence-based approach to studies which attempt to finally pin down this hitherto very slippery construct. Note that Wen sees working memory as probably the most important factor influencing ability, while others, including Skehan, Doughty and Robinson, see ability as composed of multiple elements, working memory being just one of them, albeit an important one.

References

Wen, Z., and Skehan, P. (2021), Stages of Acquisition and the P/E Model of Working Memory: Complementary or contrasting approaches to foreign language aptitude? Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 41, 6–24

Wen, Z., Skehan, P. and Sparks, R. (2023), Language aptitude theory and practice. Cambridge University Press.

Special issue of Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2021, Vol. 41 on Aptitude.

Special issue of Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2021, Vol. 43, 3, devoted to “implicit language aptitude: conceptualizing the construct, validating the measures, and examining the evidence”.