Foreign language learning differences: Affective or native language aptitude differences?

immersing an adult in a foreign language culture would force or motivate that individual to learn the language.' In the same audience sat a woman who admitted to having spent two years in each of three northern European countries with her husband, who had failed to learn any of the languages involved.2 Testimonials continued as conference participants relayed their various frustrating experiences with learning a foreign language. Why the topic of learning a FL was even discussed at a conference on dyslexia is an appropriate question. Its answer forms the springboard for our hypothesis here: namely, that students who experience difficulties learning a FL may have native language problems that impact upon their L2 learning as it is currently taught in schools. In this paper, we use the terms FL and L2 interchangeably to refer to the learning of an unfamiliar language. Dyslexia, a disability associated with reading and writing difficulties in individuals with average to superior intelligence (104; 120; 121), is one such native language disability. Learning disabilities (hereafter LD), defined in Public Law 94-142 (Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975) as ". . . a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written . .. ," is the generic term. For the past five years the authors, both LD specialists, have been studying the native and FL learning characteristics of high school and college s udents who are unable to fulfill FL requirements.3 In reviewing research on LD and dyslexia, we have found numerous references alluding to the difficulties these students have in FL classes. Many of these "at-risk learners" are diagnosed as LD only after college entry and only after failure in FL classes.4 Our recent explorations into the FL research literature indicate that FL educators, too, have been puzzled by the dilemma of why some persons learn a FL quickly and easily while others, given the same opportunities to learn, fail at the task. Among FL educators, these students commonly have been referred to as "underachievers."5 Aptitude and motivation for learning a FL have been issues of concern among FL educators in their search to understand indi-