Foreign Language Aptitude And Changes In Its Definitions And Conception

It is common in language learning that each individual differs in various aspects such as differences in speed of learning or how well one can learn. These differences draw an attention of scholars from various areas such as cognitive, social, cross-cultural and psychological fields to study what they called ‘individual differences’ in order to explain the variations. The focus is on the ‘cognitive abilities’ or what is widely known as ‘aptitude’. If we refer to ‘aptitude’ from its traditional meaning, it can be defined as an ability of a person in processing the information in his/her mind. It is believed that aptitude is innate, natural born, a gift or a talent and that is why different people differ in how fast or how well they learn. However, if we look from this perspective alone, the definition of aptitude can be too narrow and restricted. Hence, the attempts to scrutinize the real meaning of aptitude happened by a number of scholars. For example, one of the first and prominent scholars studying aptitude is Carroll (1959) who proposed the new dimension of the definition of aptitude to be more applicable and measurable. Consequently, Carroll also proposed the four aptitude components along with their definitions of abilities or the four-factor aptitude model namely: phonemic coding ability which is a capacity to code the unfamiliar sounds, grammatical sensitivity which is an ability to identify the functions of words in sentences, inductive language learning ability which is a capacity to predict and form new sentences, and associative memory which is a capacity to form links in one’s memory. Later, Carroll (1993) then tried to distinguish ‘ability’ and ‘aptitude’: ability is a potential of a person to perform and it is a trait which is stable or stay for a long period, whereas aptitude is an innate state of a person’s capacity for learning a language, a foreign ones in particular. It is also a kind of an ability of a person, though it can also be trained.

Additionally, Sasaki (1996) added ‘intelligence’ into more interpretation of the concept of aptitude. Sasaki stated that intelligence is an ability to analyze an information which is different from an aptitude which is an ability in phonetic coding and memorizing.

Lastly, Harley and Hart (1997) regarded aptitude as an ability that can be measured by measuring the memory for text which can be used to predict the success of the learners in learning a foreign language. The studies went further by taking age of the learners into account. It is claimed that an aptitude for early immense students (pre-critical period) relates to memory, though for late immense learners (post-critical period) relates more to language analytical abilities.

As we can see from the changing of the studies of aptitude across time, it is clear that the definition of aptitude is not only a gift or a talent a person is born with as we first perceived its concept, but the definition of aptitude has been changed since it also relates to various abilities of a person and it also affects learners differently from different ages. Thanks to the integrated studies from various fields from education, cognitive psychology, to neuro-science, suggests that aptitude is more of a construct of various cognitive abilities such as phonemic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, inductive language learning ability and associative ability which can be categorized roughly into two types including an analytical ability (especially for late learners) and memory (for early learners).