This study investigated the multitrait‐multimethod validity of the Attitude/ Motivation Test Battery and in addition made use of laboratory procedures to examine the role of language aptitude and attitudinal/motivational attributes on the rate of learning French vocabulary. Subjects were 170 volunteers from an introductory psychology course. The results indicated that all but two measures adapted from the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery evidenced acceptable convergent and discriminant validity and that they were largely independent of social desirability. Indices of language aptitude and integrative motivation were independent correlates of indices of French achievement. The effects of language aptitude, integrative motivation, and mode of presentation on the rate of learning 25 French/ English vocabulary pairs were investigated using a paired associate learning paradigm. The results demonstrated that all three factors influenced rate of learning. Subjects high in language aptitude learned faster than those who were low, those high on integrative motivation learned faster than those who were low, and the rate of learning was more rapid under visual/ written conditions as compared with aural/oral ones. Other results indicated that subjects' perceptions of their effort and interest on each trial were influenced by their level of integrative motivation but not by language aptitude, suggesting the different roles these two factors play in second language learning.

This study investigated the nature of second language (French) skills lost by grade 12 students over the course of the summer vacation, and the role played by attitudes and motivation in promoting language achievement and language maintenance. The results demonstrated that students rated many of their skills somewhat weaker after the summer vacation, but these effects were more general for items dealing with understanding skills than for speaking skills, and somewhat intermediate for reading and writing skills. Comparisons on objective assessments appeared to indicate improvement over the summer months on some skills, except for grammatical accuracy, that decreased, but these were interpreted as quite probably reflecting measurement artifacts. Although the attitude and motivation measures correlated quite meaningfully with the various measures of French proficiency, they did not correlate with loss of skill as indexed by simple change scores. A causal modelling analysis indicated nonetheless that attitudes and motivation were implicated in second language acquisition and retention, the latter primarily because motivational variables determine the extent to which individuals will make use of the second language during the summer period.

This study investigated the nature of the linguistic features lost in oral French over the summer vacation period by 89 English speaking Grade 9 students. These students had been studying French in a regular second-language program since Grade 6 and had completed an average of 120 hours of instruction. Global analyses revealed significant reductions in total time, speaking time, number of pauses, quantity of production and grammatical accuracy on tasks requiring production of discourse, suggesting a general deterioration in language proficiency. There was, however, no significant reduction on tasks requiring production of individual vocabulary items. A more molecular analysis focused on the use of various grammatical structures and specific parts of speech. The results of this latter analysis indicated that losses take place in most grammatical elements, but that effects were most pronounced for those elements that were learned most recently. These results were discussed and contrasted with first-language loss where vocabulary elements appear to suffer loss before grammatical forms.

This study investigated the relations of a series of attitude, motivation and aptitude variables to the acquisition and retention of French language skills. Subjects were drawn from a sample of 105 students registered in an intensive French language summer training programme in Trois-Pistoles, Quebec, who completed a series of tests at the beginning and end of the course. A factor analysis of data from the 89 students with complete data identified four factors, French Achievement, Integrative Motive, Self-confidence with French, and SelfPerception of French Competence. These results suggested that the roles played by language aptitude and attitudinal/motivational variables differed somewhat, and reflected the socio-cultural conditions under which language learning took place. Investigation of language loss suggested that language use and attitudinal/ motivational characteristics were major factors involved in the retention of second language skills in the period following intensive training.

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