Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52

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Learning and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lindif

Markers of success: A study of twins' instructed second

language acquisition
Inés Antón-Méndez a,⁎, Elizabeth M. Ellis a, William Coventry a, Brian Byrne a, Victor H.P. van Daal b
a
University of New England, Australia
b
Edge Hill University, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We examined the association between proficiency in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) and previous
Received 6 May 2014 bilingualism, starting age of ISLA, language anxiety and attitude. The analyses were conducted on 564 adolescent
Received in revised form 4 April 2015 Australian twins. Additionally, by examining discrepancies within approximately 100 pairs of monozygotic
Accepted 15 August 2015
twins, we sought to specifically identify the environmental effects related to attitude and anxiety on achievement
Available online xxxx
(i.e. with genetic effects removed). We found a clear relationship between attitude towards language learning
Keywords:
and proficiency in the second language. Furthermore, the analyses on the monozygotic twins point to the possi-
Second language acquisition bility that higher language anxiety is associated with higher proficiency. On the other hand, bilingualism and
Attitude starting age of ISLA appear to be unrelated to proficiency in the language being learned.
Bilingualism © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Starting age
Anxiety

1. Introduction high heritable component in the variability of students' attainment in

It is obvious to researchers and practitioners in education that
students' academic achievements at a particular grade level vary
substantially; even within a relatively constant setting, such as children
in the same class who share the same teacher and who study the same
curriculum, some students progress quickly and some more slowly. If
the educational landscape expands to include different classrooms,
different schools, and different ways of teaching the curriculum, then
the factors that can influence academic achievement multiply rapidly.
Identifying which of these many factors, as well as that of the child's
“native” ability, are the most influential is a challenging task for re-
searchers, one that has important consequences for designing and deliv-
ering school curricula.
This paper considers some of the prominent factors hypothesized to
be associated with learning a second language1 (L2) in a classroom set-
ting; namely previous bilingualism, starting age of acquisition, language
anxiety, and learner motivation. Given previous findings of a relatively
⁎ Corresponding author at: Linguistics (E11), University of New England, Armidale,
NSW 2351, Australia.
E-mail address: iantonm2@une.edu.au (I. Antón-Méndez).
1
We use the term ‘second language’ (L2) in this paper to mean a language or languages
that students are studying at school; which may in fact be a second or third or fourth lan-
guage to them. We use this term in preference to ‘foreign language’, which has fallen into
disuse because of its connotation of difference and disconnect, or ‘additional language’,
which may in some contexts be reserved for immigrant learning of the dominant language
of the community. In the Australian school system, these languages are referred to as LOTE
(Languages Other Than English), but this term is not widely used internationally.
the foreign language classroom (Coventry et al., 2012), further de-
scribed below, the aim of this study was to explore factors associated
with variability in attainment beyond innate ability.
Consideration of innate ability, which usually refers to a child's ge-
netic endowment for a particular subject, places the issue of differential
academic achievement within the broad “nature–nurture” debate: In
essence, the question is: how much of the variability in a characteristic,
such as school achievement, can be attributed to genetic differences
among individuals and how much to environmental differences. As it
turns out, for virtually all school subjects so far studied within a design
sensitive to the relative influences of genes and environments, half or
more of the differences among students are attributable to genetic
differences (see Byrne et al., 2005, for literacy; Oliver et al., 2004, for
mathematics; and Plomin, Kovas, & Haworth, 2007, for science). The
finding of relatively substantial genetic influence on academic achieve-
ment, however, should not be a cause for alarm, as it sometimes is
among educators (Grigorenko, 2007; Plomin & Walker, 2003). It is
true that we cannot alter a child's genetic makeup, but well-designed
and well-directed interventions can compensate children whose genet-
ic endowments for a particular academic activity do not match others'
(Byrne, Khlentzos, Olson, & Samuelsson, 2010). More importantly for
present purposes, showing that genes matter up to a point implies that
the environment matters beyond that point, and encourages the search
for aspects of a child's experiences that play the biggest roles in academ-
ic development. And as it further turns out, the very methods that
are used to identify degrees of genetic influence, often using the nat-
ural experiment afforded by monozygotic (“identical”) and dizygotic

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.08.012
1041-6080/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52
(“fraternal”) twins, can be turned to identify environmental factors. In
particular, differences between monozygotic twins, as used here, can be
especially revealing.
In the paper mentioned earlier (Coventry et al., 2012), we reported
findings from behaviour-genetic analyses on the language learning
achievements of monzygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins. The
paper also outlines how twins are used to estimate the heritability of ac-
ademic achievement and the relative contributions of environmental
factors, and the reader is referred to that paper for in-depth explana-
tions. Our results showed that, at least as demonstrated by teacher rat-
ings, success at learning a second language in school is heritable, with
about two-thirds of the variability among students attributable to
genes. Shared environment, that is, environmental factors that twins
within a family are likely to share, accounted for about one fifth of var-
iability, while non-shared environment, that is, environmental factors
unique to individual children within the same family and which in-
cludes measurement error, accounted for about one-quarter. These
non-shared environment effects are simply the differences between
identical twins, which we explore herein.
In this paper we adopt a mixed approach to focus on the environ-
mental influences of several key factors on instructed second language
acquisition (ISLA) among adolescent Australian twins where both
twins are studying a second language at school. On the one hand, we
ignore the fact that the respondents are twins, referred to hereafter as
non-twin analyses, to explore associations between different factors.
On the other hand, we also present one of the first applications of
twin design to further explore the specific influence of contextual
factors in second language achievement in the classroom by examining
discrepancies between MZ twins for clues as to the types of environ-
mental effects that predict achievement. MZ twins share 100% of their
genes as well as sources of shared environmental influence on a trait
(e.g., family attitudes and backgrounds, twins' shared friends), which
means that any differences between the two twins in a pair, if not due
to measurement error, should be due to differential non-genetic influ-
ences, that is, unique environment. Examples of this would be one
twin but not the other suffering an illness, having separate peers,
being instructed by separate teachers, and so on. Thus, examining
which variables correlate with or characterize difference scores be-
tween MZ twins for a given trait could give an indication of which
environmental factors influence that particular trait.
The question of which factors impact L2 acquisition – with a view to
both explaining differences and improving outcomes in second and
foreign language learning – is one that has received a great deal of atten-
tion in the instructed second language acquisition and pedagogical liter-
ature. Some inquiry methods focus on the instructional process itself:
the teaching method, the role of the teacher and the merits of form-
focused versus more naturalistic pedagogy (Norris & Ortega, 2000). In
this study, however, we focused on the learner and how s/he interacts
with opportunities for learning. Influences on the learner that have
been studied include: the optimal starting age for second language
learning (Birdsong, 2006); the role of motivation in achieving proficien-
cy (Dörnyei, 1990; Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2009); the effects of various in-
dividual differences such as beliefs, affective factors, cognitive styles
and learning strategies on outcomes (Dewaele & Furnham, 2000;
Dörnyei, 2005; Verhoeven & Vermeer, 2002); and whether prior bilin-
gualism assists the learning of a third or subsequent language (Cenoz,
2013). Our design allowed us to examine most of these. As mentioned
above, we analysed the possible influences of previous bilingualism,
starting age of L2 acquisition, language anxiety, and learner motivation.
These factors were selected due to, on the one hand, their relevance in
SLA research and, on the other, the feasibility of extracting reliable
data from the sample under study. Although this list of possible
influencing factors is not exhaustive, it is worth noting that we present
here all the factors we did measure, therefore following the scientifically
prudent course of reporting all associations measured even if they are
not significant.
45
Below, we briefly review the literature pertaining to each of the four
key issues in ISLA research that this paper focuses on: the effect of age
on rate of learning, the effect of prior bilingualism, the effect of anxiety
and the effect of attitude.
1.1. Age
Age is perhaps one of the most widely-researched aspects of Second
Language Acquisition. Since Johnson and Newport's (1989) seminal
paper extending the hypothesis of a critical period of language acquisi-
tion (Lenneberg, 1967) to the learning of a second language, much work
has been done investigating the existence or otherwise of a critical or a
sensitive period. This refers to the notion that there is a maturational
threshold over which learners are markedly less likely to fully acquire
certain aspects of a new language, most notably pronunciation, but
also morphology and syntax when there are substantial differences be-
tween the learner's first and second languages. After a certain age, thus,
learning another language is believed to be, if nothing else, much more
effortful as well as more likely to result in limited success (DeKeyser,
2000; DeKeyser & Larson-Hall, 2005; Paradis, 2004; Ullman, 2001).
However, the existence of gradual declines in ultimate attainment
across the life span rather than a sharp drop after a certain age has led
some authors to question the Critical Period Hypothesis, explaining
differences between early and late learners instead as a function of op-
portunities to use the L2 (Birdsong, 2006; Birdsong & Molis, 2001;
Singleton, 2005). Additionally, the existence of adult learners who
achieve native-like proficiency (Ioup, Boustagui, El Tigi, & Moselle,
1994) and evidence of equivalent neurological markers underlying
processing of linguistic aspects for first and second language speakers
(Friederici, Steinhauer, & Pfeifer, 2002) also undermines the whole con-
cept of a critical period. The lack of consensus extends beyond accepting
whether there is a specific critical age to also query what that age may
be, if there is one. In fact, there is evidence that different linguistic as-
pects may be associated with different critical ages (Flege, Munro, &
MacKay, 1995; Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003; Kuhl, Tsao, & Liu,
2003; Sebastián-Gallés, Echevarría, & Bosch, 2005). For example, Kuhl
et al. (2003) found very early effects, around the age of 1 year old, in
the case of phonological acquisition. However, puberty is taken by
many to be a useful cut-off point for most linguistic aspects, including
syntax and morphology. This is because puberty is a time when the
brain undergoes dramatic changes which are likely to have cognitive con-
sequences, such as a decrease in the ability to adapt to specific features of
a new language (Pulvermüller & Schumann, 1994; Ullman, 2004). In this
(our) contribution to the issue, we followed this general trend in choos-
ing puberty as marking the end of the critical period and adopted the
age of 12, as a conservative estimate of puberty onset, to separate early
starters from late starters (ages between 12 and 14 are common “late-
starter” cut-offs in the literature, e.g., Antón-Méndez, 2010, 2012;
Foucart & Frenck-Mestre, 2012; McDonald, 2006).
1.2. Bilingualism
Since 40 children in the database came from families where there
were indications of family bilingualism, we were able to investigate
whether prior bilingualism had any effect on success in ISLA. While
some scholars take the position that the underlying processes are the
same for learning second or subsequent languages (Mitchell & Myles,
2004; Sharwood-Smith, 1994), in recent years it has been widely recog-
nized that third and subsequent language acquisition (TLA) is qualita-
tively different from SLA since the learner has two language systems
to use as a basis for acquisition and, furthermore, prior learning experi-
ence is likely to play a role in the new learning task (De Angelis, 2007).
The Dynamic Model of Multilingualism proposed by Herdina and
Jessner (2002) suggests that not only does L1 influence L2, as is well-
accepted in SLA, but that L2 influences L1, and the combined metacog-
nition and increased language awareness accruing from knowledge of
46 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52
two languages are brought to bear on the acquisition of a third, resulting
in a recombinant and dynamic series of interactions. We were therefore
interested to know whether prior bilingualism had an effect on success
in learning an additional language in the school context.
1.3. Language anxiety
We were also interested in examining the effects of some of the in-
dividual differences regarding affective factors that have been exten-
sively discussed in the SLA literature. These factors are, of course,
internal to the individual, but at the same time they can be explained
by variability that is either genetic or environmental.
One affective factor is foreign language anxiety – a well-recognized
phenomenon in SLA where “…some individuals report experiencing
intense feelings of apprehension, tension, and even fear, when they
think of foreign languages” (Ortega, 2009, p. 200). Anxiety has been
extensively investigated as part of the overall construct of ‘affect’ in
SLA, both in instructed situations (Horwitz, 2001; Horwitz, Horwitz, &
Cope, 1986) and in naturalistic settings (MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei,
& Noels, 1998). It is recognized as “…a measurable, L2-specific affective
variable that is associated with….lower grades [and] lower proficiency
performances” (Ortega, 2009, p. 213). Since we were dealing with
instructed second language acquisition in classroom contexts, we
estimated that anxiety was more likely to feature in relation to speaking
in class rather than to interacting with members of the target communi-
ty, and our questions therefore targeted this aspect.
1.4. Attitude
The other affective factor we examined was attitude. Attitude to
languages in general and to the learning of a specific language has
long been known to correlate with success (Dörnyei, 2007; Masgoret
& Gardner, 2003), with much of the investigation of this topic taking
place in the form of various conceptions of motivation. In much of the
literature attitudes and motivation are conflated, but here we regard
attitude to language learning as a subset of the larger construct of
motivation for language learning, as do Mitchell and Myles (1998).
A dominant model in motivational research over many decades has
been the socio-education model of Gardner and Lambert's (1972),
based on their work in Francophone Canada which introduced the
distinction between instrumental and integrative motivation in second
language learning, i.e., motivation associated with learning the language
for practical reasons and motivation associated with the desire to
understand the community in which the language is spoken. This led
to the development of the widely used Attitude/Motivation Test Battery
(AMTB) (Gardner, 1985).
This model is not, however, the most useful in understanding moti-
vation in children and young adolescents learning an L2 in a classroom
context: the desire to integrate is less relevant in a foreign language
environment (Dörnyei, 1990), and it is thought that instrumental moti-
vations do not develop in children until around the age of puberty
(Clément, Dörnyei, & Noels, 1994). Suggestions are that the ability to
identify with the target language culture in such a way as to affect mo-
tivation does not appear until late adolescence (Kormos & Csizér, 2008).
Nikolov's (1999) study of Hungarian children aged 6 – 14 found that
children's motivations were more related to the classroom experience
itself and to interaction with the teacher than with instrumental reasons
such as potential for travel or employment-related benefits. Further
work has instead focussed on intrinsic motivation, a concept inherent
in self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and which is sustained
by ‘inherent enjoyment in the activity’ (Ortega, 2009, p. 176). Our
respondents ranged in age from 10 to 17, and hence the older ones
could potentially demonstrate instrumental, intrinsic or (less likely)
integrative motivation, while the younger ones may be more likely to
be motivated, if at all, intrinsically, at least as suggested by Clément
et al. (1994). We therefore asked questions which aimed to assess
Table 1
Maximum sample sizes, average ages (and S.D.), and percentages of females (F) and
monozygotic (MZ) twins for each of the proficiency measures.
Proficiency measure N Age (years.) %F % MZ
Twin self-ratings 564 12.74 (1.68) 59 32
Teacher NC ratings 363 12.87 (1.79) 62 33
Teacher class rankings 253 13.10 (1.84) 63 36
a) general attitude to language learning and b) attitude to their particu-
lar language class and teacher.
2. Materials and method
Since this article complements a behaviour-genetic study of twins
already published (Coventry et al., 2012), some of the details regarding
the participants and materials have already been reported in that article
but will be repeated here for the reader's convenience.
2.1. Participants
Participants were 615 individual twins who were learning a
second language at school. They had been recruited out of a pool of
4031 families of high school-aged twins registered with the Australian
Twin Registry (ATR). Of these, 388 families had initially agreed to
participate but only 308 families returned material, a response rate
of 79%. Of the 469 teachers contacted, 258 (59%) returned the
questionnaire.
The twins' ages ranged from 10 to 17 (Grades 4 to 12). The total
numbers of data points included for each of three proficiency rating
measures (see Section 2.2 below), the twins' mean age, and sex and
zygosity ratios are reported in Table 1.
2.2. Materials
We collected questionnaires from language teachers, one of the
parents of each twin pair, and all of the individual twins.
Students' proficiency in the second language was represented by
three different measures. First, self-ratings were derived from twins'
separately rating their own ability in each of the four key learning
areas of speaking, listening, reading and writing on a 5-point scale rang-
ing from 0, “very poor”, through “poor”, “ok”, and “good”, to 4, “very
good”. Second, NC ratings were based on teachers' ratings of the skill
level each twin had attained in the four key learning areas following
the standardized UK National Curriculum assessment guidelines2
which provide detailed descriptions of each of nine levels (for full de-
tails, see http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/subjects/
modern-foreign-languages/attainmenttargets/index).3 These descrip-
tions are meant to ensure consistency in the evaluation process. Higher
scores indicate higher proficiency. Lastly, teacher rankings were derived
from the class ranking of each twin's second language ability (e.g., third
out of 15 pupils), which was converted to a percentage (e.g., if they
were third out of 15 pupils, their score was 20%) and the scale was
then inverted (i.e., 20% becomes 80%) to align the proficiency direction
with that of the other two measures for which higher scores indicate
greater proficiency.
It is worth noting that learners' self-ratings and teachers' ratings of
students have been found to be fairly accurate (Brantmeier,
2
Since Australia has no standardized assessment system for second language learning, we
used the UK National Curriculum standards. The UK National Curriculum attainment targets
can be found at:
http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/uploads/MFL%201999%20programme%20of%20study_
tcm8-12069.pdf?return=/key-stages-3-and-4/subjects/modern-foreign-languages/
index.aspx.
3
At the time the data were gathered, the Common European Framework of Reference
for Languages was still in development.
 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52
Vanderplank, & Strube, 2012; Ross, 1998). As a result, self-ratings are
commonly used in research on bilinguals and language learners
(e.g., Costa & Santesteban, 2004; Rossi, Gugler, Friederici, & Hahne,
2006; Segalowitz & Frenkiel-Fishman, 2005).
The internal reliabilities were high for all three measures (Cronbach's
alphas were .89, .95, and .93 for twin ratings, teacher ratings and teacher
rankings respectively).
The parents' and twins' questionnaires contained standard demo-
graphic questions, questions assessing zygosity, and questions regarding
the following variables4: bilingualism – whether there were any
languages that the twins either spoke or were regularly exposed to at
home (if the school language was the same as the home language, the
student's data were excluded from the analyses; see Section 2.3 below
for more specific information on this measure); starting age of SLA –
age at which student had started learning the second language; SLA
anxiety – student's level of anxiety with respect to practicing the second
language (see Section 2.3 and Table 2 below for more specific informa-
tion on this measure); and SLA attitude – student's attitude towards
second language learning in general, and towards the student's particu-
lar language class (see Section 2.3 and Table 2 below for more specific
information on this measure).
2.3. Data preparation
Some of the variables of interest could not be derived from responses
to single questionnaire items and thus required preparation before they
could be entered in statistical analyses. In this section, we detail which
data underwent further processing and how they were prepared for
the analyses that follow.
2.3.1. Proficiency
As reported in our previous paper (Coventry et al., 2012), we looked at
whether the ratings for the four key learning areas of speaking, listening,
reading and writing represented a single factor and could therefore be
combined into one single measure. For this, we carried out a principal
components factor analysis of the speaking, listening, reading and
writing items for the teacher NC ratings, teacher rankings and twin self-
ratings. If a single factor is found with this procedure to provide a parsi-
monious account of the data, the use of a single proficiency measure in-
stead of four is warranted. We found that a single factor accounted for
74%, 88% and 90% of the variance for twin self-ratings, teacher NC ratings
and teacher rankings respectively, suggesting that, for each of these pro-
ficiency measures, we could average across the speaking, listening, read-
ing and writing items to form a single composite measure for each.
In the case of students for whom we had proficiency data about
more than one second language, we chose to carry out the analyses on
the language for which they had the highest (i.e. best) ratings (either
self-ratings or NC ratings), provided this was not a language already
spoken at home. We opted for this “best language” because the learners
would have had the most experience with those languages, which
enhances the reliability of the assessments (Ross, 1998).
For these analyses we conducted a square-root transformation on
the teacher ranking variable in order to approximate a normal distribu-
tion. The three proficiency variables were then standardized. We also
covaried out the effects of (1) school year, (2) years spent studying an
additional language, (3) age and (4) sex, since such effects could have
introduced systematic biases on the proficiency estimates. For example,
the number of years studying a language should affect the NC ratings
(which should be higher the more years students spent studying a
language), while it would be less likely to affect twins' own estimate
(which should be more dependent on comparisons with classmates
than on attainment of specific milestones, as the NC ratings are). The
covariation procedure recalculates the different proficiency measures
4
Questionnaires also contained other items not relevant to the present paper. Full ques-
tionnaires are available from the authors on request.
47
Table 2
Results of the Principal components analysis for questionnaire items related to attitude
and language learning anxiety.
Questionnaire item Component
1 2
a Likes learning languages .873 −.101
b Likes class .807 −.187
c Finds language learning important .797 .047
d Works hard in class .759 −.105
e Likes teacher .681 −.057
f Practices as often as possible .635 .055
g Admires speakers of second languages .592 .182
h Associates language learning with good .584 .143
job
i Tries to speak in new language .407 .231
j Nervous about speaking −.119 .874
k Worries about mistakes .180 .773
as the residuals after using regression to adjust for the covariates
mentioned.
2.3.2. Bilingualism
To examine whether early home bilingualism confers any advan-
tages at ISLA, we first had to determine which students could be consid-
ered bilingual on the basis of their responses to several items in the
questionnaires. We did not include a straight question about whether
the students were bilinguals as this term has different meanings for
different people. As indicative of bilingualism, we selected a number
of items expected to correlate with degree of family (or individual) bi-
lingualism: student reports that their home language was not English,
student reports of other language(s) spoken at home, student reports
of being able to speak and understand other languages (apart from
the one being taught at school), parent reports of speaking another lan-
guage at (near) native level, parent reports of other language(s) spoken
early and regularly to the twins, and student reports of having spent a
substantial amount of time (three months or longer) in a country
where English was not the official language.
Responses to all of these items except the last one were on a 4 point
Likert scale (“always”, “often”, “sometimes”, “rarely”). Students who
had answered “rarely” to all of these and had not lived in another
country were considered monolingual (N = 524). There were 40
twins who had responded positively to different subsets of these
items. These were inspected individually and assigned to one of three
categories according to the probability that the student was an early bi-
lingual based on the combined responses to all these items. Students
were considered bilingual (N = 36) if: a) they reported that their
home language was not English, b) they reported that another language,
in which they were proficient, was spoken at home a substantial
amount of time, and this was supported by parent reports of their
own bilingualism and use of other languages at home, c) parents report-
ed a history of other languages spoken at home at an earlier age and
students themselves reported being somewhat proficient in that
language even if they were no longer using it regularly. There were
also some students (N = 4) who had merely been exposed to another
language early on but appeared to have acquired no active knowledge
of it. This last group was excluded from analyses of possible effects of
bilingualism.
2.3.3. Anxiety and attitude
Students' views and feelings about language learning and affinity for
their language classes were probed by means of a number of question-
naire items asking them: if they thought language learning was impor-
tant, if they liked it, if they admired people who could speak several
languages, if they wanted to learn another language in order to get a
good job, if they took every opportunity to practise outside of class, if
they tried to say what they wanted even when they didn't know the
exact words, if speaking another language outside of class made them
48 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52
nervous, if they worried about making mistakes, if they liked their
language class, if they liked their teacher, and if they worked hard for
this subject. All these measures ranged from 0, not at all true, to 3,
very much true – therefore, higher scores signified students had higher
levels of anxiety or a better attitude towards language learning. To
assess how many psychological traits actually underlay the responses
to the different questions, responses to these 11 items were submitted
to a principal components factor analysis with Oblimin rotation. Kaiser's
rule suggested three factors, which explained 63.46% of the variance,
but the scree plot suggested one factor. Accordingly, we ran a one, two
and three factor solution and, of these, chose the two factors solution
as this gave the simplest structure (i.e. the fewest cross loadings). This
solution exhibited a very clean structure with pattern-matrix loadings
greater than .50 and no cross-loadings above .18 for all items except
whether students tried to say what they wanted in the second language
even when they did not know all the words (see Table 2). This item,
item i in Table 2, was removed. The loadings indicated that the first
component was what could be broadly considered attitude towards lan-
guage learning and the language class (with high loadings, N .58, for
questions about whether students liked learning languages, liked their
language class, thought language learning was important, worked
hard for this subject, liked their teacher, took every opportunity to prac-
tise outside of class, admired people who could speak several languages,
and thought knowing a second language could lead to a good job), and
the second was related to anxiety (with high loadings (N .77) for items
on whether students felt nervous about speaking another language out-
side of class, and whether they worried about making mistakes). The
two factors proved reliable with Cronbach's alphas of .86 and .65 for
the attitude and anxiety factors respectively. We therefore constructed
two simple measures –attitude and anxiety – by averaging the items
found to relate to each of the two components of the principal compo-
nents analysis (PCA). The correlation between these two new constructs
of anxiety and attitude was .264 (p b .001).
2.4. Analyses
Data were subject to two different sets of analyses. In the first set, the
non-twin analyses, all the students were included, and each twin was
treated as an individual subject (so each family contributes two scores,
one for each twin). In the second set, the MZ twin analyses, only the MZ
twin pairs were included, and each pair contributed just a single differ-
ence score between the two twins in a pair (so each family contributes a
single score).
For the non-twin analyses, we ran standard multiple regression
(MR) analyses to assess the contribution on each of the three different
proficiency measures as criteria (twin self-ratings, teacher NC ratings,
and teacher rankings; see Section 2.3.1 for descriptions) of the four
factors of interest as predictors: 1) bilingualism, 2) starting age of SLA,
3) language anxiety (ranging from 0, low anxiety, to 3, high anxiety),
and 4) attitude towards language learning (ranging from 0, very poor
attitude, to 3, very good attitude). MR analyses were chosen since
they assess the unique contribution of each predictor on each proficien-
cy measure after having accounted for the effects of the other
predictors.
Additionally, because starting SLA instruction before or after the crit-
ical period could be considered a discrete variable, independent sample
t-tests were also conducted on the possible effect of age of starting SLA
on proficiency.
The non-twin analyses have a drawback: including both twins of a
pair in the regression violates the assumption of independence. This
inflates the p-values but not the test statistic. Therefore, to control for
the interdependence within twin pairs, we calculated the p values
using mixed linear model analyses (MLM) (which, unlike general linear
models, model not only the means but the variances and covariances
as well), specifying the method of estimation as restricted maximum
likelihood (REML), and entering two variables into the model as
uncorrelated random effects (Visscher, Benyamin, & White, 2004): the
first specified the twins as pairs (i.e., each pair of twins had their own
id number), and the second specified the effect shared by MZ twins
but not by DZ twins (i.e., each MZ pair had their own id number and
all DZs were treated as individuals who were unpaired, each having
their own id number).
For the MZ twin analyses, we selected all MZ twin pairs where both
twins were studying the same language (provided they did not speak
the same language at home as they were learning at school), and creat-
ed difference scores for the three proficiency measures by subtracting
the adjusted and standardized scores of the two twins (i.e. twin 1
minus twin 2). We also created difference scores for: age at which the
two twins had started to learn a second language; performance anxiety;
and attitude towards language learning. The fourth factor, bilingualism,
could not be considered since there were no twin pairs for which one
twin was monolingual while the other was bilingual. We also found
that, in most of the twin pairs, both twins had started to learn the lan-
guage at the same age (80%, 78%, and 82% of the pairs for self-ratings,
NC ratings, and teacher rankings respectively), so the distribution of dif-
ference scores for starting age did not deliver enough variance to pursue
the analyses. As a consequence, for the MZ twin analyses, the multiple
regression analyses contained only two predictors: difference scores
for attitude and anxiety.
By choosing only MZ twins, sample sizes are reduced with respect to
those included in the non-twin analyses. However, the resulting
samples (see Section 3.2 below) are not considered small for this kind
of analysis since discordant MZ analyses have substantially more
power than regular analyses (Christian & Kang, 1972).
3. Results
3.1. Non-twin analyses
Descriptive statistics regarding the variables included in the MRs are
presented in Table 3. Note that the sample, though mostly overlapping
for the three dependent variables of proficiency, was different for each
since data for one or the other proficiency measure could be missing
for some individuals. In particular, many teachers chose not to include
the student's ranking within the language class.
A summary of the results for the three multiple regression analyses
is presented in Table 4. Altogether the predictors explained between
17 and 43% of the variance, explaining the most amount of variance
for the twins' self-ratings of proficiency. The coefficients revealed a
very consistent pattern across all three criterion variables, with only
attitude towards the language class explaining significant amounts of
variance in proficiency: the better the attitude, the higher the proficien-
cy. The effect size for this predictor is medium to large in the case of
teacher rankings and twins' self-ratings (sr = .27 & .43 respectively),
while its effect on NC ratings was relatively small (sr = .11).
To further explore whether starting to learn a second language
earlier resulted in better outcomes, we decided to conduct more
targeted analyses on monolingual students only. Because the relation
Table 3
Means and standard deviations of the variables of interest for the subset of the sample
used in tests of each proficiency measure.
Proficiency Starting Starting age Starting age SLA SLA
measure age (years) early startersa late startersa anxietyb attitudec
Self-ratings 8.86 (2.86) 7.64 (2.40) 12.13 (0.34) 1.29 (0.92) 1.83 (0.67)
NC ratings 9.04 (2.86) 7.69 (2.38) 12.13 (0.33) 1.33 (0.90) 1.88 (0.67)
Teacher 9.40 (2.81) 7.09 (2.41) 12.14 (0.34) 1.35 (0.91) 2.13 (0.72)
rankings
a
Early starters are children who had started learning the second language before 12 years
of age, late starters had started after that age.
b
Anxiety scores range from 0, low anxiety, to 3, high anxiety.
c
Attitude scores range from 0, very poor attitude, to 3, very good attitude.
 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52 49

Table 4
Multiple regression analyses on all twins. The three proficiency measures were the criteria. The predictors were bilingualism, starting age of ISLA, attitude and anxiety. The p-values have
been corrected for the interdependence between twins⁎.

DVs N R AdjR2 IVs b SE for b b p r sr

Self-ratings 461 .43 .18 Bilingualism −.23 .19 −.05 .585 −.01 −.05
Starting age .00 .02 .01 .792 .05 .01
Attitude .58 .06 .45 .001 .42 .43
Anxiety −.09 .05 −.09 .359 .04 −.08
NC ratings 256 .17 .01 Bilingualism .51 .29 .11 .321 .13 .11
Starting age .01 .02 .02 .874 .04 .02
Attitude .14 .08 .11 .043 .13 .11
Anxiety −.00 .07 −.00 .256 .04 −.00
Teacher rankings 188 .29 .06 Bilingualism .24 .35 .05 .493 .07 .05
Starting age −.02 .03 −.05 .576 −.03 −.05
Attitude .38 .10 .29 .016 .27 .27
Anxiety −.09 .08 −.08 .403 .00 −.08

Notes. b = unstandardized beta, SE = standard error, b = standardized beta, r = zero-order correlation, sr = semi-partial correlation.
⁎ Confidence intervals are not provided because they would not be adjusted for interdependence and would be at odds with the adjusted p values.

between starting age and ease of acquisition of a second language is
thought to be discontinuous, i.e., dependent on the student having
had their first contact with the second language before a certain critical
age (see Section 1 for discussion of the critical period hypothesis and
justification of cut-off age), we divided monolingual students into two
groups: one composed of students who had started learning the second
language before the age of 12 y.o. (M = 7.64, SD = 2.40); and one com-
posed of students who had started learning the second language after
the age of 12 y.o. (M = 12.13, SD = 0.34). We performed independent
samples t-tests to compare the proficiency of the two groups. The
results of these t-tests showed no significant effects of this variable on
any of the proficiency measures: self-ratings, NC ratings, or teachers'
rankings (see Table 5).
It is possible, however, that a linear relationship between starting
age and proficiency exists for one of the two groups, either the early
or the late starters, but not the other. Given the different critical periods
postulated for different linguistic dimensions, it may be, for example,
that starting to learn a new language at age 7 instead of at age 10 does
matter, but an equivalent age difference after the final critical age
around puberty, say between age 13 and age 16 does not. Or, on the
contrary, it could be that all learners starting before puberty are equally
able to acquire a new language, but this ability starts gradually decreas-
ing after puberty (Birdsong, 2006; Singleton, 2005). Therefore, we also
carried out separate MRs for each group, i.e., early and late starters,
with each of the three proficiency measures as the dependent variables
and with the age at which they had started to learn the second language
as a continuous fixed effect. Again, we found no statistically significant
effect of age for any of the three proficiency measures in either late or
early starters (all p's N .05).
3.2. MZ twin analyses
The means of the absolute difference-scores between twins in a pair
were: 0.76 (S.D. = 0.64, N = 76) for self-ratings; 0.29 (S.D. = 0.46, N =
Table 5
T-tests of the difference between early and late SLA beginners on second language
proficiency with, specifically, early and late SLA beginners' sample sizes, average reported
proficiency (standard deviations), and effect size estimates (Cohen's d) of early SLA start
on standardized scores of the three proficiency measures (self-ratings, NC ratings, and
teacher ratings) with p-values adjusted for non-independence.
Proficiency measure Early starters Late starters t p d that all these potential motivational dimensions were, in this particular
N M (SD) N M (SD)
Self-ratings 383 2.69 (0.75) 143 2.76 (0.72) 0.44 .974 0.04
NC ratings 202 3.32 (1.37) 88 3.98 (1.55) 0.98 .500 0.12
Teacher rankings 130 60.77 (25.04) 71 60.57 (26.45) 0.13 .447 0.02
Note. Proficiency means and standard deviations refer to the original scores, not to the
covaried and standardized scores.
42) for NC ratings; 0.45 (S.D. = 0.50, N = 27) for teacher rankings. Re-
garding the predictors, the mean of difference scores was 0.87 (S.D. =
0.78) for performance anxiety, and 0.55 (S.D. = 0.48) for attitude to-
wards language learning. Table 6 presents a summary of the MR results.
The two predictors explain between 39% of the variance for differences
in self-ratings, and 54% of the variance for differences in NC ratings and
teacher rankings. Once more, the coefficients for the attitude difference
scores were significant, explaining between 39 and 50% of the variance
of the three criterion variables. Surprisingly, differences in anxiety levels
also appear to significantly account for the variance in difference scores
for NC ratings such that the bigger the differences in anxiety levels, the
bigger the differences in proficiency according to the NC ratings. Addi-
tionally, although the coefficient for anxiety difference scores did not
explain a significant amount of the variance in teacher rankings, it was
associated with a medium effect similar in size to that of the same pre-
dictor in NC ratings. Since the sample for the teacher rankings was the
smallest (N = 27), the lack of a significant effect here may be due to
lack of power.
4. Discussion
Of the factors that we considered as possible influences on the devel-
opment of proficiency in ISLA, attitude towards language learning
provided the most robust findings, in line with prevailing findings in
the literature (Dörnyei, 2007; Masgoret & Gardner, 2003). Additionally,
anxiety appeared significant when examining differences between
monozygotic twins which, to remind the reader, targets the effects of
the environment by looking for differences in a population, MZ twins,
that is genetically identical. Bilingualism and starting age of ISLA, on
the other hand, showed no effect in the analyses.
Attitude is a relatively difficult trait to define and measure. The
literature on the related concept of motivation has identified at least
three distinct constructs related to it (i.e., instrumental, integrative
and intrinsic motivation), which we tried to measure independently
with separate questions targeting aspects of each separately – i.e., our
questionnaire included items to assess the extent to which students con-
sidered learning another language useful (items c and h in Table 2); items
to gauge the student's desire to belong to the community of the L2
speakers (item g); and their general enthusiasm for learning a language
(items a, d, and f) as well as their more specific affinity for the language
class (items b and e). Nevertheless, our PCA analysis result indicated
case, best treated as only one factor which we labelled attitude (as the
reader may remember, attitude is here considered a subset of the larger
construct of motivation; see Section 1). As discussed in Section 1, our
learners may have been too young to show integrative or instrumental
motivation and it is likely that what we have thus measured is more
related to students intrinsic motivation (see highest loading item in
50 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52
Table 6
Multiple regression analyses on monozygotic twin pairs where all variables entered consist of difference scores associated with each twin in a pair. The three proficiency measures were
the criteria. The predictors were attitude and anxiety.
DVs N R AdjR2 p IVs
Self-ratings 83 .39 .13 .001 Att
Anx
NC ratings 38 .54 .25 .002 Att
Anx
Teacher rankings 38 .54 .23 .017 Att
Anx
Notes. b = unstandardized beta, SE = standard error, b = standardized beta, ci = confidence interval, r = zero-order correlation, sr = semi-partial correlation; Att = attitude, Anx =
anxiety.
Table 2), and the influence that their classroom experiences may have on
it (see high loading items b, d, e, and f in Table 2). As such our results
would be in agreement with those of Nikolov (1999) who found that
the motivations of similarly-aged children (6–14) were more related to
the classroom experience and the teacher than to other factors. This
raises the question of whether our finding that attitude predicts profi-
ciency means that positive attitudes lead to increases in proficiency or
the reverse, since how well students do in their language learning could
very well be driving their attitude rather than their attitude towards
language learning ensuring they study and learn better.
While we may not be able to answer that question with total certain-
ty, the fact that the same results were obtained in our analyses of the MZ
twins should help eliminate some of the factors often cited as confound-
ing the interpretation of this kind of correlational data. One of these
possible confounding factors is natural or innate ability, which is likely
to be highly associated with attitude and directly affects achievement.
In this case, given the genetic identity of these twins, MZ discordancy
must be driven by environmental differences, not natural abilities.
This extends our non-twin findings in an important way since, with
significant non-twin results alone, there is no way to rule out the
claim that our association between attitude and proficiency is simply a
consequence of the same genes influencing both. Our finding at both
the non-twin and MZ discordant level shows the effect has to be envi-
ronmental rather than genetic in nature. That is, whatever the direction
of causation, at least some of the motivational differences associated
with proficiency gains must be driven by the environment. It could be
that the language class itself is influencing students' attitudes, whether
or not that influence is mediated by achievement.
The other potential confounding factors we can eliminate are envi-
ronmental in nature: L1–L2 differences (i.e., linguistic distance between
the native language and the language being learned) and differences in
teacher skills. Different teachers could clearly influence either achieve-
ment, attitude, or both. Similarly, it seems safe to assume differences
between the first language and the language being learned, if uncon-
trolled, could impact either achievement or attitude. In the present
study, L1–L2 differences can be eliminated because the same language
was being studied by each member of a twin pair in the MZ twin anal-
yses, and differences in teacher skill can be (almost) eliminated because
in all but 6 pairs the twins had the same teacher as their co-twin. If atti-
tude is in fact driving achievement differences, it may result from such
things as friendship groups not shared by members of a twin pair, or
personal affinities for particular languages. If, on the other hand,
achievement is driving attitude differences, that may come about, for
example, by preferential treatment by a teacher for one twin over the
other.
Apart from attitude towards language learning, the other factor that
also appears to correlate positively with attainment is anxiety. Although
this result only appeared significant when proficiency was estimated by
the teacher according to the NC rating scale, the fact that this is the most
standardized and possibly the most nuanced of the three proficiency
measures included, together with the substantial size of the effect
(sr = .34) and a similar effect size for the teacher rankings (sr = .29),
gives some credence to the result.
b Ci for b SE for b b p r sr
.47 .23 to .72 .13 .39 b.001 .39 .39
.00 −.17 to .18 .09 .00 .988 .01 .00
.36 −.58 to −.14 .11 .49 .002 .42 .48
.23 −.42 to −.04 .10 .35 .022 .25 .34
.46 .13 to .78 .16 .51 .008 .45 .50
.24 −.05 to .53 .14 .30 .102 .19 .29
Instead of looking for a correlation between anxiety and proficiency,
the analysis on MZ twins looks specifically at how differences between
the twins in a pair on anxiety are related to differences in their profi-
ciency. As already explained (Section 1), by limiting the data to geneti-
cally identical twins, the focus is on differences brought about by the
environment. This more targeted test tends to be more sensitive,
which could explain why a relationship between anxiety and proficien-
cy was only found in the MZ twins' analyses but not in those done on the
whole population. This also means that any anxiety effects found should
be the result of an interaction of the student with his or her environ-
ment which could explain why we did not find anxiety to be significant-
ly related to twins' self-ratings as well as to teachers' ratings. The
construct of L2 anxiety is believed to stem from students' low self-
esteem (Onwuegbuzie, Bailey, & Daley, 1999) and from students' unre-
alistic expectations about language learning leading to disappointment
with their own progress (Gregersen & Horwitz, 2002), both of which
would be expected to result in low self-estimations of proficiency. How-
ever, if anxiety due to low self-esteem is an innate personality trait, the
MZ twin analyses would not allow us to detect its effects. Alternatively,
if the anxiety effect detected in the MZ twin analysis is related to the
classroom environment, it may have more to do with how students per-
form in class than how they assess their own knowledge. Furthermore,
since the positive correlation means the higher the anxiety levels the
higher the proficiency, it is possible that students' anxiety in this case
was only high enough to make them work more for the subject, rather
than so high as to impair their performance in class (MacIntyre &
Gardner, 1994). This could then influence the teachers' evaluations pos-
itively, while the students themselves may be rating their L2 knowledge
at a more general level unrelated to how much they work for the
subject.
The finding that bilingualism had no effect on proficiency was
surprising since much of the literature on third and subsequent
language acquisition supports the claim that prior bilingualism gives
learners advantages in learning a third language (Cenoz, 2001;
Lasagabaster, 2000, 2001). However, it is possible that it is not being
bilingual but more specifically being biliterate that provides the advan-
tages to further language learning. As well as the studies indicating that
it is the biliterate learners that show advances in proficiency in the third
language (Keshavarz & Astaneh, 2004; Sanz, 2000), Thomas (1988)
found that bilinguals who had received formal instruction in their sec-
ond language outperformed – in learning of the third language – those
who had only learned the second language in the home environment.
While it is not clear why this should be so, we can speculate that the bi-
lingual advantages seen in SLA may stem from the increased metalin-
guistic awareness which, although found to be stronger in bilinguals
in general (e.g., Jessner, 1999), is likely to be greatly enhanced by having
had explicit instruction about more than one language.
In any case, our lack of significant findings relating to bilingual-
ism could stem from the fact that the bilingual twins in the study
had all acquired bilingualism in the home and were not likely to
have had any formal instruction in the home language. In fact, only
11 of 62 bilingual twins claimed to be somewhat literate in the
home language.
 I. Antón-Méndez et al. / Learning and Individual Differences 42 (2015) 44–52
Additionally, the definition of bilingualism used was relatively broad
and the classification into the bilingual group was based on the com-
bined response to several questions, which carries some risk of misclas-
sification. This would have been particularly problematic given we only
had a very small number (N = 36) of bilingual students who were not
studying at school the same language they spoke at home. Therefore,
this null result should be treated with some caution.
Perhaps the most unexpected of the present results is the lack of
an effect of age on progress in the L2 since an earlier start in SLA is
associated in the literature with better L2 outcomes in the sense of
more target-like final attainment (Aoyama, Guion, Flege, Yamada, &
Akahane-Yamada, 2008; Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003; Johnson &
Newport, 1991) even if notable exceptions have also been reported
(Bongaerts, 1999; Ioup et al., 1994). Two critical points pertaining to
this well-known effect of age of acquisition on L2 proficiency should
be made, however. First, most critical period effects pertain to popula-
tions of speakers who acquire the L2 in the country where it is spoken,
not in the classroom. This is important because learning the language in
an immersion context and for the purposes of daily communication in-
volves a partially different set of skills than learning it in a classroom
context and it is the more naturalistic type of language acquisition
that tends to favor younger learners. In fact, some studies have found
that, in a classroom setting, it is precisely the older students who tend
to advance more quickly (García Mayo & García Lecumberri, 2003;
Muñoz, 2006) possibly because older students are more experienced
in, and more attuned to, the ways of the educational system. Second,
age effects are more evident when looking at ultimate attainment rath-
er than progress rates (Krashen, Long, & Scarcella, 1979), but these
twins are not likely to be close to reaching their full potential proficien-
cy in the L2.
In short, this particular sample of learners may not be the most likely
to show clear age effects because the potential long term advantage of
starting to learn another language early may be obscured by short
term advantages found for older learners, particularly in an instruction-
al context.
5. Conclusion
Although a great deal of research has been conducted on the effects
of various factors on ISLA, this is one of few using such a large sample of
students (524) and using a twin design to enquire further into the
influence of environmental effects. Furthermore our respondents
were drawn from all around Australia and represented eight different
educational jurisdictions, with children learning a variety of foreign
languages. All of these factors contribute to the potential generalizabil-
ity of the findings.
Our results show that the use of MZ discordancy in the search for
factors affecting SLA is a valuable technique to include in re-
searchers' “tool kits” even though this design is not definitive in
sorting causal direction in correlational data. Thanks to this tool,
which helps us identify environmental factors influencing achieve-
ment by holding innate influences constant (since MZ twins are ge-
netically identical), we can confidently conclude that having a
positive attitude towards language learning and the language class
is related to how well students do in ISLA independent of natural
language abilities, teacher skill, and L1–L2 relations. The good news
about this finding is that this is a factor over which teachers, and
maybe parents, have some control.
Acknowledgements
This research was facilitated by the Australian Twin Registry which
is supported by an Enabling Grant from the National Health & Medical
Research Council administered by The University of Melbourne.
51
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