The Empirical Study Of Language Apititude Frame-work Based On MLAT In Higher Vocational Colleges

Language aptitude, also named language learning proficiency, has received more and moreattention as one of individual differences affecting foreign language acquisition. To test learners’language aptitude, MLAT is widely applied in America and Canada, while it is attached littleimportance to in China. There is little application in studying language aptitude of students in highervocational colleges. In this thesis, MLAT being used as the main measuring tool, the study isconducted to find out the main language aptitude situation of students in higher vocational colleges, toknow how language aptitude affect English achievement, to draw the path model of the factors’affecting language aptitude, and to figure out why there exist differences of English achievementsamong the students with the similar level of language aptitude. Thereby, relative suggestions are ableto be given to improve the English teaching reform.120students from JSCAT are chosen to be the participants, the study is conducted by use ofMLAT, English test paper and questionnaire as testing tools, after statistical analysis with SPSS16.0,this article educes conclusions as:(1) Measured with MLAT, the language aptitude scores of higher vocational college studentsshow normal distribution, indicating their reasonable situation of language aptitude. According to thePublic Service Commission of Canada, the participants of the study mainly stay in a medium level oflanguage aptitude, and there is no extremely high or low digital existing, nor is the extreme difference.(2) The total marks of MLAT drop with the participants’ growing grades. Due to the differentlearning frequency and environment, the dropping trend varies. Continuous improvement of languageachievements throws a feedback to language aptitude.(3) Language aptitude predicates language achievement significantly with a positive correlationbetween them. All the five learning abilities of language aptitude affect language acquisition withapparent effects, while the influence of each part varies from student to another.(4) There is no significant correlation between language aptitude and gender. The participantshave different levels of language aptitude between the ones who major in English and the ones whodo not. Each factor of language aptitude reacts mutually, in quite different ways. A path model isdrawn in the study to show the interrelationship between them.(5) Students perform differently in foreign language learning even they stay in similar level oflanguage aptitude. The main factors possibly affecting their acquisition concern motivation, learningstrategy and the self-efficacy. On the basis of the results of the study, the author believes that language aptitude tested byMLAT can predict English achievement of students in higher vocational colleges as expected. And itwill achieve a far reaching significance by making language aptitude part of student analysis and theteaching evaluation system as well for the sake of improving language teaching and college Englishteaching reform.