Article published In:
EUROSLA Yearbook: Volume 11 (2011)Edited by Leah Roberts, Gabriele Pallotti and Camilla Bettoni
[EUROSLA Yearbook 11] 2011
► pp. 5–29
Edited by Leah Roberts, Gabriele Pallotti and Camilla Bettoni
[EUROSLA Yearbook 11] 2011
► pp. 5–29
Aptitude, age and cognitive development
The MLAT-E in Spanish and Catalan
In the validation studies of the Modern Language Aptitude Test-Elementary (MLAT-E) (Carroll & Sapon 1967) and its Spanish version, the MLAT-ES (Stansfield & Reed 2005), the total scores across grades increase unsteadily. At no point, though, has this increase been discussed. Similar results are found in the present study, which addresses this issue from two viewpoints, age and the supposed stability of language aptitude. The participants in this study are bilingual Catalan-Spanish children in grades from 3 to 7. 325 participants took the MLAT-ES and 304 participants took its Catalan version (MLAT-EC). The analyses of the children’s performance in both tests suggest that the higher the grade, the higher the final score. However, the difference between the means of the total score is consistently larger between grade 3 and 4 than between the other grades. Besides, this increase seems to plateau between grade 6 and 7. Results are discussed in relation to the influence that children’s age and cognitive development in middle childhood seem to have on children’s language aptitude development.
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Costley, Tracey, Christina Gkonou, Florence Myles, Karen Roehr-Brackin & Angela Tellier
2020. Multilingual and monolingual children in the primary-level language classroom: individual differences and perceptions of foreign language learning. The Language Learning Journal 48:5 ► pp. 643 ff.
Muñoz, Carmen & Elsa Tragant
2023. English at the End of Primary School: Explanatory Factors. In Ten Years of English Learning at School, ► pp. 29 ff.
Suárez, Maria-del-Mar & Charles W. Stansfield
2023. Young learners’ bilingual status and cognitive development in foreign language aptitude testing. ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 174:2 ► pp. 291 ff.
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