4. What is language aptitude? - 2

In my earlier post (What is language aptitude? - 1) I said in the conlcusion that language aptitude understood as a set of language learning abilities is available to anybody however to a various degree. Let us now develop this idea a little bit further in order to understand its collosal importance for langauge learning and, what interests me more, for language teaching..

In this post I will focus on one aspect of the observation made earlier, namely on the idea of 'componentiality of language aptitude', which simply means treating aptitude as being made up of several relatively independent sub-abilities. Observe that I used the word 'set' with reference to language aptitude. What it means is that language aptitude is not understood as one, uniform ability but as a composite of several sub-abilities. Language aptitude is not to be thought of as a monolithic, self-contained characteristic of a human being but as a construct of several parts making it up. Those sub-abilities, or components as we may say, may vary independently of each other in any person. And this is indeed the case. The classical model of language aptitude, proposed by Carroll and Sapon in 1959, assumes that there are four different components of aptitude which they named: phonemic coding ability, grammatical sensitivity, inductive language learning ability and rote memory (those will be defined in a different post - here our focus is on the idea of componentiality of aptitude). Now, the importance of the idea of componentiality of aptitude is this:  

 

Any human being differs from any other human being not by the kinds or types of abilities they have at their disposal (everyone has got the same set of abilities) but by the intensity in which those abilities are present in a given individual. 

 

What this means is that a given person may have different levels of different abilities available to him/her. In other words this particular person's ABILITY PROFILE may be established as his unique characteristic making him different from any other learner. The paramount importance of this view cannot be underestimated. What it means in practice is that success in learning a language is possible to be achieved BY DIFFERENT ROUTES. That is, learners with different ability profiles can achieve success in FL learning IF in language learning/teaching they make use of the abilities which are best developed in them. Or in other words, if they rely on those abilities which are the strongest. What follows from this is that to know his aptitude profile is beneficial for a learner and will make him more aware of the resources available to him and thus make his learning more willful, self-conscious, autonomous and purposeful. Alike for the teacher - to know his learners' profiles will enable him to adjust (within reasonable limits) his teaching to his learners' abilities, to attend to the learners' actual abilities and to enhance their motivation. Idealistic you say? Not at all, I'd reply. Many teachers have done that, including myself, but I must admit, not many enough. 

Here are a few issues that are related to what I've just discussed and which I leave for other posts:
1. How to find out about a learner's aptitude profile? (this is about aptitude tests)
2. What is the importance for a teacher to know his learners' profiles? (this is about aptitude profiles diagnosis and teaching)
3.  Is it realistic to match FL teaching to a learner aptitude profile in the context of school learning?