Language Aptitudes

Language aptitude in the modern era witnessed its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, characterized by the development and use of several language aptitude tests that are prevailing today. This chapter traces developments of cognitive language aptitude models and test batteries from an interdisciplinary perspective, with a view to delineating the nature, structure, and measurement of the construct. Future research should aim to develop new tests of aptitude which are situationally and developmentally sensitive and can predict successful learning in different implicit, incidental, or explicit learning conditions, across the range of proficiency levels, from beginner to advanced stages of second language development. The original motivation of Hi-LAB had been to develop an aptitude battery that could serve to distinguish high-level language achievers who acquire foreign languages after the post-critical period. The relational dynamics can exist either between the multiple components themselves or between aptitude constructs and L2 learning tasks or real-life situations/scenarios, which aptitude complexes model by Robinson illustrates amply.