Excerpt 6 June 1988)
3.4 Individual Differences: Exceptionality, Talented and Untalented Learners
lack of success in English (e.g., in negation, question formation, use of auxiliaries, and provision of subjects). Even when Schumann tried to give Alberto intensive instruction in negation, there was no lasting effect in Alberto’s spontaneous speech. The explanation was that he was simply not integrated sufficiently well into the U.S. English-speaking culture, demon- strating a social-psychological distance from it instead, which is why his English seemed unalterably fossilized.
Based on his case study and supporting research from sociolinguistics, Schumann (1978) proposed that early language development represented a kind of pidginization process, reflecting many of the simplified fea- tures of attested pidgins in various countries. However, his causal claims about acculturation became controversial, and counter-examples appeared as evidence against the strong form of Schumann’s acculturation model or hypothesis. One such study was carried out by Schmidt (1983) on his acquaintance Wes, a Japanese artist in Hawaii. Wes satisfied all the criteria for being well motivated, acculturated, exposed to ample English input and interaction in Hawaii, and so on, but nonetheless did not seem to acquire target-like morphology and syntax. Schmidt’s study revealed that learn- ers may be very competent communicators in their L2 without having acquired many of the fundamental linguistic structures in the language.
Moreover, the interest in conversational ability and pragmatics illustrated in Schmidt’s study was an indication of the broadening scope of SLA at that time.
3.4 Individual Differences: Exceptionality,
was to determine profiles associated with L2 success, especially among adults, in whom the greatest variation in L2 outcomes is found.
In a well-known study of several children learning English in Cali- fornia, Wong-Fillmore (1979) found considerable individual differences among the children’s behaviors and also in their progress in English. One of her participants, Nora, was much more socially aggressive and cognitively strategic in her language learning than the others, and ultimately more suc- cessful as well. Nora was particularly invested in her L2 learning and in her identity as an English speaker and was a precocious learner, especially in comparison with another one of the participants, a boy named Juan, who was far less outgoing or successful. Nora used to join groups quickly and pretend she could understand English even when she could not, and then would rely on friends to assist her. She was also willing to produce English even when she had quite limited linguistic means at her disposal in the L2, and formulaic or chunked expressions (unanalyzed) facilitated this.
Another case study of learner strategies involved two Spanish students in an intensive English program (Abraham & Vann, 1987). The two learn- ers were selected from clusters of 15 students in three groups: very suc- cessful, moderately successful, and unsuccessful. One learner was judged to be very successful and the other unsuccessful based on research tasks and an interview. The authors then examined the two learners’ differ- ent learning contexts and philosophies that seemed to influence their use of more or less productive or successful strategies, and considered how
“poor,” unsystematic strategy users might be trained to be more effective strategy users.
A very different approach to research examining variation investigated possible neuropsychological correlates to exceptionally efficient L2 learn- ing. Normal children, in spite of individual strategies, learning styles, and minor differences among them, appear to acquire their (oral) L1 reasonably well, and many also acquire an L2 or L3. Adults often fare much less well in learning an L2, or their success is less predictable. An understanding of the relationship between the neural or neurobiological substrate and lin- guistic behavior, it was thought, might account for some of the individual differences in SLA that otherwise could not be easily explained.
Studies of talented individuals, musical and mathematical geniuses, individuals with photographic memories, and child protégés have been done, in some cases with postmortem analysis of the subject’s brain (see
discussion of Einstein in Chapter 2; Obler, 1989; Obler & Fein, 1988;
A. Scheibel, personal communication, 1988). But aside from large-scale
“good language learner” studies in the 1970s (e.g., Naiman, Frohlich, Spada, & Todesco, 1978), there had not been comparable investigations of talented language learners from the perspective of neuropsychology or neurolinguistics, looking at brain-behavior linkages, until Obler’s work (Obler, 1989; Novoa, Fein, & Obler, 1988). Her research participant, CJ, was a 29-year-old Caucasian-American male graduate student whose L1 was English and who grew up in a mostly monolingual environment. From the age of 15 (past the onset of puberty), he had studied the following lan- guages in succession: French, German, Spanish, Latin, Moroccan Arabic, and Italian, some of which he learned at school in the United States, and others he “picked up” quickly abroad. He was recruited by Obler through campus notices seeking exceptional language learners. The native speak- ers of languages CJ spoke judged his ability, including his pronunciation, as native-like. Obler also sought details about CJ’s personal history, related to the “Geschwind cluster” (Geschwind & Galaburda, 1985, cited in Obler, 1989), which are factors apparently linked to fetal hormonal levels, believed to have behavioral correlates connected, possibly, to enhanced right-hemi- sphere development. For CJ these factors included the following: he was left-handed, homosexual, had allergies and hives, and had a twin brother and a schizophrenic grandfather (a presumably infrequent combination of factors). The battery of psychological tests CJ was given revealed that his musical and visuospatial aptitudes were only average (contrary to views about the correlation between musical and linguistic ability), his IQ—
including verbal IQ—was normal, and his language aptitude as judged by the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) was average on most sec- tions. However, on the IQ test (Weschler Adult Intelligent Scale–Revised), CJ did particularly well on the vocabulary and code-learning and retention subtests. He also obtained superior scores on cognitive subtests related to pattern matching and decoding. Finally, on the MLAT, he again excelled on subtests related to learning new codes, and also did very well on guess- ing a word when only the consonants were given. His verbal memory (but not other types of memory) was outstanding and thought to be closely linked to his highly successful L2 learning profile. Thus, the case study
See Norton and Toohey’s (2001) critique of these “good language learner” studies.
of CJ established a neuropsychological profile for an exceptional adult L2 learner (a kind of analytic generalization) with an intriguing combination of psychological/cognitive attributes and fetal-hormonal history.
Working within the same general research domain, Schneiderman and Desmarais (1988a, 1988b) differentiated between talent and aptitude for L2 learning. They referred to talent as “an exceptional ability to achieve native-like competence in a second language after puberty” (1988b, p. 91).
Their case study participants were two English learners of French, by then in their 20s and 30s, who had started L2 learning after the age of 11. Both had native-like French proficiency, excellent memory and decoding skills, and evidence of greater than usual right-hemisphere involvement in both French and English tasks. The researchers hypothesized—and found—that highly talented adult L2 learners have greater neurocognitive flexibility, and that the right hemisphere of their brains plays a greater role in lan- guage processing than in their “untalented” counterparts. In other words, their language functions were not restricted to the left side of the brain pri- marily. Like the earlier studies of exceptional learners, the two learners in this study also displayed characteristics from the Geschwind cluster, such as family left-handedness, eczema, allergies, albinism, and schizophrenia, and both subjects were fluent in languages other than French as well (all learned as young adults or adults).
Ioup, Boustagui, El Tigi, and Moselle (1994) also explored exception- ality in adult language learning by demonstrating, through extensive test- ing, the native-like proficiency attained by a British naturalistic learner of Egyptian Arabic. Julie, the case study participant, had immigrated to Cairo at age 21 when she married her Egyptian husband. She had since then lived in the country for 26 years and used Arabic at home with her children and other family members. Within 2.5 years of her arrival in Egypt, Julie passed as a native speaker and had, in the meantime, mastered the intricate discourse structure of the language as well as all aspects of syntax and phonology in her oral production and intuitions of grammaticality. She was also able to distinguish among various other varieties of Arabic and could discriminate among Egyptian dialects (e.g., Cairene).
Another participant in the study, Laura, also performed very well (native-like) but not to the level Julie demonstrated. Julie’s success was attributed to basic language learning “talent,” or language aptitude, likely based on exceptionally good cortical (brain) organization, flexibility, and
functioning that enabled her to perceive linguistically significant contrasts in the L2 input and to organize the new grammar as a system independent of her L1. This case was also cited as evidence against a critical period for L2 learning, since Julie was well past puberty when she began to learn Arabic. Ioup (2005) also notes that Julie’s and Laura’s relative success in language learning was not simply because they were exceptionally well motivated or were professional language teachers, because other equally motivated participants in the study with similar life histories and jobs in Egypt had achieved L2 fluency but were much less native-like in Arabic.
Smith and Tsimpli’s (1991) case study also featured a highly talented language learner, a so-called “savant linguist” named Christopher, who had apparently achieved varying degrees of proficiency in 16 languages despite other mental challenges that left him institutionalized. The anal- ysis involved generative grammar parameters such as the “pro-drop”
parameter, related to obligatory versus optional subject suppliance in lan- guages. It focused on Christopher’s ability to translate to and from English the various languages, and in particular examined his proficiency in mod- ern Greek. The authors concluded that Christopher’s L2 learning was not subsumed under his general cognitive processes. Rather, the L2 was some- how modularized and governed by “specific neural architecture” encapsu- lating language (p. 327), allowing him to translate quite masterfully.
Finally, at the opposite extreme on the success continuum are those people who unfortunately experience considerable difficulty and lack of success learning other languages. Examples include:
Ehrman’s (1996) study of a 40-year-old member of the U.S. Foreign Ser- vice, a very unanalytic learner who, to his great frustration, progressed very little in his L2 study, despite several tours of duty to regions in which the target language was spoken, and instruction in the U.S. preparing him for that
Shapira’s (1978) study of a Guatemalan immigrant to the United States who progressed very little in English even after three years
Ioup’s (1989) study of unsuccessful adolescent ESL learners who had immigrated to the United States as children and would now be character- ized as “Generation 1.5” students. I elaborate on Ioup’s study below.
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Ioup (1989) focused on a Chinese teenager in New Orleans, Jeanne, considered to be a bright and capable student, especially in courses requir- ing little writing, but was a very unsuccessful English writer. She was fully proficient in Chinese reading and writing, having attended school in Taiwan up to age 9, and 10 years later still enjoyed reading both Chi- nese and English literature. She was also good in music and mathemat- ics. Yet, despite her native-like English pronunciation and her success in high school, Jeanne had to repeat two required nonintensive ESL courses multiple times after she entered university. She produced sentences like Because of many influences and education are for the making money (p.
166). Ioup then compared this student to a Vietnamese male student, Minh, who had mastered English as an adult and had only lived in an English- speaking environment for five years. On the basis of a series of linguistic and neuropsychological (cognitive) tests, the major difference that emerged between them was their verbal memory subscores and performance on tests of linguistic knowledge (e.g., semantics) and composition, in which Jeanne obtained much lower scores than Minh. Ioup found the results baf- fling, especially considering the length of exposure to English Jeanne had enjoyed from childhood in a city without an established Chinese-speaking community outside of the family home. There were no obvious affective or sociolinguistic explanations.