Can Aptitude for German Be Predicted?

Abstract

Most teachers would be glad to know at the beginning of the year what grades the students seated in front of them were going to get at the end. That tall boy: will he be my brightest student, or a troublemaking failure? Which of these kids, whose names I don't yet know by heart (though I soon will), will be the good learners who make my year worthwhile? Which the depressing laggards? If teachers knew these things, they could take steps accordingly: prepare enrichment for the best students and remedial work for the poorest, perhaps exchange some students with another teacher. They could avoid some of the discouragement and frustration that misplaced students inevitably cause. The way classes are chosen at present, by accidental assignment, the teacher doesn't find out about his students until too much of the school year has passed for any changes to be made. Is it utopian to think we can know, before he starts, how well a student will learn German? Yes, it is unrealistic to expect to know precisely what grade each student will get a year hence. But it is quite within reason to expect some clues, like this student will probably be good, that one probably fair, and that one probably poor. There is a test which does this. Here is how it was used in three schools during the 1965-66 school year.1 At the beginning of the school year, the Pimsleur Language Aptitude Battery was given to all ninth graders about to begin German: 122 of them. The aptitude scores were not disclosed to the teachers, who proceeded to teach first-year German as they normally do. At the end of the year, the final grades were collected. The point was to match the aptitude scores against the final grades. Of the 122 students who started, 113 were left at the end; their aptitude scores and final grades are shown in Table 1. How well did the aptitude test predict the students' final grades? The table shows that the students who got the highest aptitude scores (stanine 9, 8, and 7) also got high grades in German; mainly A's and B's. Those who got the lowest aptitude scores (stanine 1, 2, and 3) got poor or failing grades in German; there were no A's among them, and only one B. The middle aptitude