| Students at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) are required to study a foreign language. In order to place students into the "appropriate" language courses, especially strategic languages like Chinese or Arabic, effective language placement policies are essential. This study examines USAFA's current language placement policy, which considers general intelligence, language aptitude, and student language choice. The alternative language placement policy models include a measure of first language ability, a more precise measure of language aptitude, and a motivation variable, in addition to student choice. This quantitative policy study employs binary logistic regression to examine the existing language placement policy model and three proposed models to determine whether a more effective predictor of foreign language learning success can be identified. The placement of USAFA's Class of 2013 into Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian students was reviewed. The effect on language placement of students' first choice language, academic composite scores, ACT/SAT Verbal scores, DLAB language aptitude scores, and motivation was assessed. There were no substantial differences between the existing language placement model and the proposed models in terms of predicting the likelihood of successful foreign language acquisition. However, a proposed model consisting of DLAB scores, ACT/SAT Verbal scores, Student Language Choice, and Motivation, represented the best predictive model of the four. It correctly classified the most cases, and its goodness of fit indicated that the model fit the data fairly well. More importantly, its theoretical foundation for the inclusion of each variable was solidly grounded in current second language acquisition research. Although USAFA intends to discontinue DLAB language aptitude testing, based on recent second language acquisition research, it seems more prudent to retain some form of language learning aptitude assessment, such as the MLAT. Further research into the motivation aspect of second language acquisition, and the development and validation of a reliable motivation assessment instrument should be emphasized. |
