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Psychological Traits Affecting Both Cultural Adaptation and Foreign Language Acquisition

This empirical study goes a long way in determining the psychometric variables that predict individual differences in terms of the degree of success in both cultural adaptation and foreign language acquisition (FLA). Ever since Schumann (1978) introduced his Acculturation Model, the most well-known attempt to link cultural adaptation with FLA, a number of empirical studies have sought to determine these psychometric variables with mixed results due to the wide variation in the research methodologies applied in terms of learning targets, achievement measures, types of treatment, etc. (Dörnyei, 2005). This study overcomes the weaknesses of many previous studies. The experiment involved 86 Chinese students studying at a major private Japanese university in Japan. The 16 psychometric scales of the Kozai Group’s Global Competency Inventory (GCI), a validated psychometric instrument for measuring psychological traits affecting success in cultural adaptation, were employed as independent variables. The dependent variable was “Japanese Ability” in terms of oral/aural performance measured by six native Japanese raters reviewing video-recorded individual structured interviews conducted in Japanese with the Chinese students by a Japanese native speaker. Out of the 16 GCI psychometric scales, 14 demonstrated highly significant associations with the “Japanese Ability” of the Chinese students participating in the study. The results are very promising in elucidating the psychological traits modulating both cultural adaptation and foreign language acquisition. Introduction A company assumes a substantial financial risk when sending an executive abroad and it is imperative to discern individual differences in cultural adaptation. Thus, there are numerous psychometric instruments that seek to provide such a service. Likewise, accounting for individual differences in foreign language acquisition has been the goal of researchers in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) or foreign language acquisition (FLA). In this paper it is hypothesized that since language and culture are so interrelated a validated and robust psychometric instrument used by corporations in the expatriate selection process, such as the Kozai Group’s Global Competency Inventory (GCI), may also serve to predict individual differences in foreign language acquisition. For many years numerous researchers in SLA such as Taylor (1974), Schumann (1975), and Brown (1980) have argued that success or failure in foreign language acquisition is largely the result of social, psychological, and affective (SPA) factors. Though instruments that incorporate SPA factors, such as the GCI, have been used successfully to predict individual differences in cultural adaptation, there has not been much success in developing psychometric instruments comprised of SPA factors to predict individual differences in foreign language acquisition with a particular focus on oral/aural performance in the foreign language. Thus, there are two main related research questions that informed the experiment reported in this paper. The first is “what psychological traits (including attitudinal, affective and personality factors) make some people better at foreign language acquisition and oral/aural performance than others?” Subsequently, “do the psychological traits that help explain why some people adapt to cultures better than others also help explain individual differences in foreign language acquisition, particularly in terms of oral/aural performance?” Schumann’s Acculturation Model (1978) is one of the most well known early attempts to explore the relationship between cultural adaptation and SLA/FLA. Schumann’s (1986) acculturation model predicts that learners will acquire the target language to the degree they acculturate to the target language group. Schumann (1986) argued that two groups of variables – social factors and affective factors – cluster together into a single