Language aptitude and its relationship to instructional effectiveness in second language acquisition

By R. Erlam. 2005

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Experimental second language acquisition research typically investigates the effectiveness of instruction in terms of overall group gains. A particular instructional method may not, however, benefit all learners uniformly. This study, conducted in a New Zealand secondary school, establishes whether there is any relationship between the effectiveness of three instructional methods, and learner aptitude. Students (n = 60) were assigned to one of three groups (deductive instruction group, inductive instruction group, structured input instruction group) and received instruction that targeted direct object pronouns in L2 French. All students were assessed on the following three measures of language aptitude: (a) language analytic ability, (b) phonemic coding ability and (c) working memory. Results indicate that deductive instruction that gives students opportunities to produce language output may neutralize individual differences in language aptitude.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8088ed1d69f8b397c42e694b549994d83d14dfea

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

1. Shaofeng Li
2. N. Spada
3. Kazuya Saito
4. P. Skehan
5. Z. Wen
6. Karen E. Roehr
7. A. Biedroń
8. Susan D. Benson

In Language and Linguistics

1. Shaofeng Li
2. N. Spada
3. P. Skehan
4. Kazuya Saito
5. A. Biedroń
6. Karen E. Roehr
7. Susan D. Benson
8. Z. Wen

Citations in the corpus

• THE CONSTRUCT VALIDITY OF LANGUAGE APTITUDE (2015, background): “…with inductive versus deductive instruction seem to show that aptitude was more likely to be implicated in inductive approaches that favored high-aptitude learners, and that it was either unimportant or less important in deductive approaches (Erlam, 2005 ; Hauptman, 1971 ; Hwu & Sun, 2012 ).”
• Foreign language aptitude theory: Yesterday, today and tomorrow (2016, background): “First, although there have been some criticisms and skepticism, the concept of FL aptitude has stood the test of time and remained a valid concept despite the big changes that have happened in classroom practice from structure-based methods, such as audiolingualism, to the more current communicative”
• Metalinguistic Knowledge and Language Ability in University-Level L2 Learners (2008, background): “In several recent discussions of the construct of aptitude, the notion of language-analytic ability in the sense of a learner’s ability to identify and extrapolate linguistic patterns has been adopted (Ranta 2002; Dörnyei and Skehan 2003; Erlam 2005).”
• Beyond form-focused instruction: Reflections on past, present and future research (2010, background): “More recent studies include Erlam (2005) and Sheen (2007), which also report that aptitude is a predictor of L2 learning in most (not all) instructional contexts.”
• Effects of written corrective feedback and language aptitude on verb tense accuracy (2019, background): “Overall, studies have found a strong correlation between more implicit or inductive instructional conditions and higher language aptitude (e.g. Erlam, 2005; Robinson, 1997).”