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The Modern Language Aptitude Test - Elementary version in Spanish (MLAT-ES) is an adaptation of the original test in English (MLAT-E), developed by John Carroll and Stanley Sapon. This test was designed to measure foreign language aptitude in children, that is, the ability (or lack thereof) to learn a foreign language. The MLAT-ES eis meant for students between 8 and 11 years of age.

The MLAT-ES was developed by the Language Learning and Testing Foundation staff during the 2004-2005 academic year, in collaboration with several schools in Latin America and Spain for children from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries, as well as for native speakers of Spanish from the USA.

The Modern Language Aptitude Test - Elementary version in Spanish (in English, MLAT-E) is based on the well-known Modern Language Aptitude Test, the MLAT. The MLAT was devised to measure the foreign language aptitude of students beyond 14 years old, while the MLAT-E is aimed at children between 8 and 11 years of age. The Language Learning and Testing Foundation currently distributes these tests.

Work by John Carroll on foreign language aptitude
Foreign language aptitude has been defined as the ability or the amount of time needed for someone to reach a certain competence level in a foreign language. As it happens with other aptitude measures, it is believed that foreign language aptitude is relatively stable during one's lifetime.

John B. Carroll, an influential psychologist in the educational linguistics field, developed a theory on how certain abilities might affect one's language aptitude. These are distinct from verbal intelligence and motivation. Having detected these four distinct abilities, Carroll developed the MLAT, a foreign language aptitude test for adults.

The abilities Carroll identified are:


 * Phonemic ability: the ability to perceive sounds, to associate sounds with symbols and to remember that association
 * Grammatical sensitivity: the ability to recognize the grammatical function of a lexical element (word, sentence, etc.) in a sentence without any explicit grammar training
 * Associative learning: the ability to learn associations between words in a foreign language and their meanings, and to remember this association
 * Inductive language learning: the ability to infer or induce the rules behind the structure of a language.

MLAT-ES description
As both the MLAT and the MLAT-E were created for native speakers of English, and given the potential to administer this sort of tests to native speakers of other languages, Drs Charles Stansfield and Daniel Reed created a framework to adapt the MLAT so it could be used with native speakers of languages other than English. This modern language aptitude test - Elementary version in Spanish (MLAT-ES) was the first test of this kind developed within this adaptable framework.

Three of the parts of the MLAT-E (and of the MLAT-ES) are adaptations of the MLAT for a younger population; one of the parts is brand new. These parts measure traits inferred from a factor analysis and can be described as follows:

1. Hidden Words
As vocabulary appropriate for ages 8 - 11 is used in this part, it measures not only the students' vocabulary in their mother tongue but also the ability to associate symbols with sounds.

This part corresponds to the Spelling Clues section of the MLAT. The phonetic script used in the MLAT to measure this ability together with memory for speech sounds was not used either in the MLAT-ES or the MLAT-E because it was found to be very difficult for lower school levels.

2. Matching Words
This part was designed to measure grammatical structure sensitivity without using formal grammar terminology. Oral instructions and examples are used to teach students to recognize the function that a given word has in a sentence, and to find the word that has a similar function in another sentence.

This part corresponds to the Words in Sentences of the MLAT.

3. Finding Rhymes
This part measures the ability to hear speech sounds. Students have to choose words that rhyme with each other.

This part was developed exclusively for the elementary versions of the MLAT.

4. Number Learning
In this part, the students learn the names of numbers in an artificial language. After practicing recognizing and combining these numbers, the student listens to a series of numbers in the new language and writes them down. This part was devised to measure the memory component.

This part corresponds to the Number Learning part of the MLAT. At higher levels, in the MLAT, it was found that "the part also has a fairly large specific variance, which one might guess to be a special 'auditory alertness' factor which would play a role in auditory comprehension of a foreign language" (Carroll and Sapon, 1959).

Piloting and normative study
The pilot test phase of the MLAT-ES was carried out in Costa Rica. It was administered to 235 students from grades 4 to 6. After an item analysis and other statistical analyses, the best items were selected for a normative version of the MLAT-ES. During the 2004-2005 academic year, a study was carried out to establish the international norms (typical patterns in the distribution of scores) for the test. The study used around 1,200 students from private and public schools in Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico and Spain. Carrying out this study with participants from countries where Spanish is the dominant language, instead of doing so in the USA, guaranteed that the students had enough competence and knowledge of Spanish so their aptitude to learn foreign languages could be examined.

Using the results of the normative study, more statistical analyses were run to create the final version of the MLAT-ES. The norms were also included in the guide to administer this test from grades 3 to 7 (for ages 8 to 12).

MLAT-ES use
The MLAT-ES was designed for native speakers of Spanish between 8 and 13 years of age. It can be used both in countries where the dominant language is Spanish and in countries like the USA, with children who can read and write in Spanish.

Use in Spanish-speaking countries


 * It can be used a psychometric test to diagnose several learning disabilities, including the disability to learn a foreign language.
 * It compares the scores of the students against international norms for Spanish-speaking children.
 * It is of advice to students whose ability to learn foreign languages is either high or low. Thus, students could be allocated in classes with classmates with similar abilities so they can learn at an ideal rate. The students whose foreign language learning aptitude is high will be advised to start learning a foreign language at an early age.

Use in English-speaking countries


 * It helps to diagnose foreign language learning difficulties in Spanish-speaking children learning English.
 * It helps in the study of foreign languages when the students' dominant language is Spanish so they can obtain results that reflect their aptitude to learn foreign languages with precision.

Use in Spanish- or English-speaking countries


 * It helps to develop profiles of the strong and weak points of all students, which can give information for foreign language teaching, (including English).
 * It can be used to create expectations tables that show the relationship between the scores in the foreign language aptitude test and the grades received in the foreign language course (including English as a second language).

Use in applied linguistics research


 * The MLAT-ES can be used in language acquisition research. To date, this use has resulted in the validation of this test taking into account the cognitive development that occurs in the age range covered by the test (Suárez, 2010). This would confirm that, as opposed to the stability of language aptitude in adults, foreign language aptitude develops with age in children. Likewise, as opposed to what previous studies show, David Rosa (2011) did not find any relationship between aptitude and motivation, although aptitude measured by the MLAT-ES explained, along with motivation, 68% of the variance in the proficiency measures used in his study.

Other versions and adaptations
James Milton and Thomaï Alexiou (2004; Alexiou 2005) have carried out several projects revolving around aptitude in very young learners (aged 5-9) using the MLAT-E and Esser and Kossling's (1986) cognitive tests. Their studies also found an evolution of aptitude in young learners. Kiss and Nikolov (200) also developed and validated a new aptitude test inspired in Ottó (1996), based on the the MLAT and Pimsleur's Language Aptitude Test with a sample of 419 12-year-old students who were Hungarian learners of English. Suárez (2010) also adapted and validated the MLAT-ES in Catalan, the MLAT-EC.

In Spanish

 * La evaluación del área curricular de la lengua extranjera

In English

 * Center for Applied Linguistics - Foreign Language Test Database
 * LD Online
 * Language Learning and Testing Foundation