Intelligence and aptitude

[Sergio Meira S.C.O.]

> >Dear Funknetters,
> >Last week I mailed a question about the relationship among some
> >psychological concepts(mind,thought,cognition and intelligence),and I
> >received many helpful comments and suggestions.I would like to thank you all.
> >However,another problem has come up, and I wish to have your opinion about
> >the relationship between Intelligence and Aptitude.
> >In foreign language teaching,it is believed that some people "have a knack
> >for learning languages".There are also some tests which claim to measure
> >this aptitude.But do you think that aptitude is really different from
> >intelligence?Don't you think that a person who is intelligent also knows how
> >to learn a foreign language (through his use of language learning
> >strategies),and in a sense linguistically more talened than the others?
> >And is it not the case that a person who is claimed to have a high aptitude
> >for learning a foreign language is in a sense capable of solving his
> >problems(in this specific case,linguistic problems) ,and as a result more
> >intelligent? I look forward to receiving your comments.

It seems to me that there is a high involvement of other aspects of the
learner's personality, that may increase/decrease the efficiency with
which a foreign language can be acquired.

Personally, I like to learn foreign languages (I am Brazilian and have a
reasonable degree of fluency in 5 to 8 languages, depending on how
strictly you define 'reasonable'), and one thing that always helped me was
a deep and almost intimate positive feeling for the languages in question.
The emotional reaction-- the feeling that 'the language is beautiful', or
that 'this specific word is cool', or that 'this structure is wonderful'--
is such a great motivation, that I wonder if other people get lower
results simply because structures, words, irregularities (the
'idiosyncratic stuff') doesn't have this effect on them. People who look
at a complicated inflectional system and say 'uh-oh' instead of 'yummy'
may be building 'negative-reinforcement-like' endless loops in their minds
that may dramatically reduce their efficiency at using their foreign
language learning capacity.

Sergio Meira
meira at ruf.rice.edu