Testing aptitude with the MLAT-EC in young learners: The role of age and beyond

Abstract

Young learners’ language aptitude is understudied due to a lack of tests covering this period of life. Also, young learners are still acquiring their L1 while developing their literacy skills. Consequently, a language-dependent aptitude test for them should be carefully designed. An additional challenge is found when the testees are bilingual, as is the case of the Catalan/Spanish community in Catalonia. This was the scenario for the adaptation of the Modern Language Aptitude Test –Elementary in Spanish (MLAT-ES – Stansfield, Reed, & Velasco, 2005) into Catalan (MLAT-EC – Suárez, 2010). Despite the linguistic proximity between these languages, several issues had to be considered across grades, such as the use of certain words, the test font type and size as well as the distractors. The resulting MLAT-EC test has proven to tap into the same factors as the original in several contexts and, therefore, is a valid and reliable measure despite the challenges in its adaptation.