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Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

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2. Attitude <strong>and</strong> Aptitude in <strong>Second</strong><br />

<strong>Language</strong> <strong>Acquisition</strong> <strong>and</strong> Learning<br />

Another area of second language research <strong>and</strong> practice that the acquisition-learning<br />

hypothesis helps to interpret is work in second language aptitude <strong>and</strong> attitude, providing<br />

a parsimonious explanation for what had appeared to be a strange finding: both language<br />

aptitude (as measured by st<strong>and</strong>ard tests) <strong>and</strong> attitude (affective variables) appear to be<br />

related to second language achievement, but are not related to each other. It is possible<br />

to have high aptitude <strong>and</strong> low attitude, low aptitude <strong>and</strong> high attitude, or both high, or<br />

both low. In this section, we survey research in these two areas, focusing specifically on<br />

the hypothesis that much of what is termed aptitude is directly related to conscious<br />

learning, while attitudinal factors my be more closely linked to acquisition.<br />

Aptitude<br />

Foreign language aptitude, which Carroll (1973) defines as the "rate at which persons at<br />

the secondary school, university <strong>and</strong> adult level learn to criterion" (p. 5), has most<br />

recently been measured by st<strong>and</strong>ardized test such as the Modern <strong>Language</strong> Aptitude Test<br />

(MLAT) <strong>and</strong> the <strong>Language</strong> Aptitude Battery (LAB). According to Carroll (1973), there<br />

are three major components of modern aptitude tests. The first, phonetic coding ability,<br />

is the ability to store new language sounds in memory. This component will not be of<br />

concern to us here. The other two components appear to relate directly to learning.<br />

Grammatical sensitivity, the second component, is defined as "the individual's ability to<br />

demonstrate his awareness of the syntactical patterning of sentences in a language"<br />

(Carroll, 1973, p. 7). Carroll makes it clear that although performance on this component<br />

does not<br />

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