Predicting The Academic Development Of Foreign Language Majors:The Role Of Language Aptitude

The present study is designed to see the relation between language aptitude as well as its four components as measured by LLAMA with the academic scores of five foreign language majors,English,German,Russian,Japanese and French in six semesters after their registration.A further aim is to examine the predictive power of language aptitude for academic development of foreign language majors.Participants are 372 students from a reputable domestic foreign language studies university.Aptitude scores were collected in a freshman test immediately after their registration.After that,the academic scores(122 courses in total)during the following six semesters were collected from the office for undergraduate education.A correlational analysis shows that language aptitude and later academic scores are moderately related for all the language majors.LLAMA F and D weakly yet significantly relates to language academic scores in fewer cases than LLAMA total score.LLAMA B and LLAMA E in most cases have no significant relation with academic scores.A further stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that composite language aptitude as measured by LLAMA can explain 10%-20%variance of academic scores.LLAMA F and LLAMA D have less predictive value in fewer cases.LLAMA B and LLAMA E in most cases did not enter the predictive model.These findings imply that language aptitude can moderately predict the language learning outcome in an instructional setting.Previous studies have similar findings,for example,Carroll(1966)in a validation study indicates that language aptitude has moderate-to-high correlation with language learning scores in the range of.4-.6.For components,LLAMA F which measures language analytical ability and LLAMA D which measures sound recognition have an outstanding predictive effect.This finding is basically consistent with Skehan’s study(1998).He finds that different stages of language learning need different abilities.Beginning and intermediate level language learning depends more on phonetic coding ability,and language analytical ability is important for all stages.In this study,LLAMA F is important for more semesters than LLAMA D,and LLAMA D tends to be important at the very beginning.Further observation shows that the predictive power of language aptitude tends to decay gradually.It has a greater predictive power for beginning-intermediate level than the advanced stage.This finding can be supported by previous studies.Granena(2019)indicates that language aptitude is able to predict language learning in initial intensive language courses.Wink(2013)finds that language aptitude has limited predictive power for advanced Chinese learning.Wink’s(2013)account for this finding is that advanced learners rely less on FL aptitude for future progress,and they interact more with the changing environment of L2 learning,making use of varies sets of language learning related skills and abilities to move on to a higher level.Other possible causes may be:the abilities needed for advanced language learning becomes more complicated,and they go beyond what language aptitude can measure;language aptitude changes with learning experiences accumulating;advanced language learning relies more on contents and higher-order thinking abilities,etc.Across-language variations are also found,which means that language types can affect the predictive power of language aptitude.Similar findings can also be found previous studies.Fiks(1968)reported that the predictive power for common languages is greater than exotic languages,although language aptitude has modest and significant predictive power for all languages.On the whole,the academic scores of English majors have the highest correlation with language aptitude,and then Japanese,German,and French.Russian major has the lowest.In this study,Russian is the most exotic language for the participants,and therefore it has the least correlation with academic scores.This may be due to the features of Russian(pronunciation,conjugation,and vocabulary,etc.are quite different with familiar languages),which demands different abilities that are possibly not able to measure by variables of this study.To sum up,in programs that need to select foreign language talents,language aptitude can be used as a comparatively effective predictor.However,in practice,we should caution that language aptitude has more predictive power for language learning of beginning and intermediate level in a short term,and that the language types also affect the predictive performance of language aptitude.