Studies with U.S. secondary second language (L2) learners have revealed individual differences (IDs) in first language (L1) skills and L2 aptitude and shown that these IDs are related to L2 achievement and proficiency. In this study, U.S. students were administered measures of L1 achievement, L1 cognitive processing, and L2 aptitude; followed through 2 to 3 years of Spanish courses; and administered standardized measures of Spanish achievement at the end of each year. Students were divided into high‐, average‐, and low‐achieving groups according to their scores on the Spanish measures and compared on the L1 measures and L2 aptitude test. Findings showed significant overall group differences on most L1 measures and significant between‐group differences on most L1 measures and the L2 aptitude test. IDs in L1 literacy, L1 working memory, and L2 aptitude best discriminated among students who completed 2 versus 3 years of Spanish. Results support claims that IDs in L2 achievement mirror IDs in L1 skills and provide evidence for the crosslinguistic transfer of L1 to L2 skills.

Foreign language educators have developed measures to assess the proficiency of U.S. high school learners. Most have compared language learners to clearly defined criteria for proficiency in the language (criterion‐referenced assessment) or to the performance of other monolingual English speakers (norm‐referenced assessment). In this study, the performance of monolingual English students enrolled in first‐ (n = 293), second‐ (n = 268), and third‐year (n = 51) high school Spanish courses on the Batería III Woodcock‐Muñoz Pruebas de aprovechamiento was compared to that of native Spanish speakers, which was normed with native Spanish speakers. Findings showed that after two years of high school Spanish, U.S. students’ achievement in Spanish word decoding and spelling was similar to that of native Spanish speakers in the fifth to sixth grades, and their performance in Spanish reading comprehension, vocabulary, listening comprehension, and writing was below that of the average native Spanish speaker in first grade. Third‐year students’ achievement was somewhat stronger, although more similar to than different from that of the second‐year students despite the added instructional time. The results are discussed in light of the U.S. social context in which monolingual English students learn to speak and comprehend a language at the same time as they are learning to read and write the language.

Conventional wisdom suggests that students classified as learning disabled will exhibit difficulties with foreign language (FL) learning, but evidence has not supported a relationship between FL learning problems and learning disabilities. The simple view of reading model posits that reading comprehension is the product of word decoding and language comprehension and that there are good readers and 3 types of poor readers-dyslexic, hyperlexic, and garden variety-who exhibit different profiles of strengths and/or deficits in word decoding and language comprehension. In this study, a random sample of U.S. high school students completing first-, second-, and third-year Spanish courses were administered standardized measures of Spanish word decoding and reading comprehension, compared with monolingual Spanish readers from first to eleventh grades, and classified into reader types according to the simple view of reading. The majority of students fit the hyperlexic profile, and no participants fit the good reader profile until they were compared with first- and second-grade monolingual Spanish readers. Findings call into question the practice of diagnosing an FL "disability" before a student engages in FL study.

A unique anxiety for foreign language (L2) learning has been hypothesized to explain students’ problems with language learning. However, L2 anxiety instruments have been challenged on the grounds that they reflect students’ language learning ability and/or perceptions of their language learning skills. In this study, 266 U.S. high school students were administered measures of first language (L1) skills, L2 aptitude, and L2 achievement and followed through 2–3 years of Spanish courses. In 1st‐year Spanish, they were administered the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale (FLRAS), divided into 3 anxiety groups, and compared on the L1 and L2 measures. Findings showed that the Low Anxiety group scored significantly higher than the High Anxiety group on all L1 and L2 measures, and significantly higher than the Average Anxiety group on most L1 and L2 measures at the end of 1st‐ and 2nd‐year Spanish. Students who completed 3rd‐year Spanish displayed either low or average anxiety on the FLRAS. Results revealed negative correlations between the FLRAS and all L1 and L2 measures. Correlations between the FLRAS and the L2 achievement measures increased over time. Findings show that the FLRAS is unlikely to be measuring anxiety for language learning but more likely to be a proxy for students’ levels of L1 skill, L2 aptitude, and L2 achievement.

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