Cognitive, Affective, Personality, and Demographic Predictors of Foreign-Language Achievement

The ability of cognitive, affective, personality, and demographic variables to predict second-language acquisition among college students was investigated. An all possible subsets regression analysis was used to compare the proportion of variance in foreign-language achievement explained by each variable. The analysis revealed that variables from each of the 4 domains were important predictors of foreign-language achievement. Overall, academic achievement, as measured by GPA average, was the best predictor, explaining 11.5% of the variance in foreign-language achievement. Foreign-language anxiety, the next best predictor, explained 10.5% of the variance. The educational implications of these findings for understanding foreign-language achievement are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.