Language Aptitude

"Language aptitudes are reliable predictors of rate of classroom foreign language learning and of level of ultimate attainment in naturalistic SLA. Aptitude is a central interest in the field, therefore, as reflected both in increasingly detailed analyses of the construct itself and in the development of several new aptitude measures in recent years. Language Aptitude: Advancing Theory, Testing, Research and Practice provides an authoritative historical overview of aptitude research, analyses of its sub-components, and instrumentation, surveys of current work on relationships among age of onset, aptitudes, and ultimate L2 attainment, and chapters on related cognitive and neurocognitive models, concluding with suggestions for future work and potential applications in language teaching. The contributors are experts, and the book will be a vital resource for SLA researchers, applied linguists, graduate students and language teachers for years to come."

Michael H. Long, University of Maryland, USA.

"Individual differences in language ability form a new frontier for the language sciences. To make progress, we need more advanced ways of measuring variation in language skills. Encapsulating the state of the art and outlining possible future directions, Language Aptitude will be invaluable not only to researchers in second language learning but also to language scientists, more generally."

Morten Christiansen, Cornell University, USA.

"This impressive collection of papers by leading researchers provides a much-needed state-of-the-art overview of developments in the theory and measurement of language learning aptitudes that have accumulated steadily in recent years. Understanding aptitudes for learning successfully from different conditions of exposure and pedagogic interventions is now a major area of SLA research, and one of great educational consequence, as this important book clearly describes. Authoritative, comprehensive, forward-looking, and highly recommended!"

Peter Robinson, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo