A quantitative synthesis of data on the structure of L1 and L2 language ability

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To gather comprehensive empirical evidence on the structure of L2 language abilities, we used confirmatory factor analysis to reanalyze 17 multitrait multimethod correlation or covariance matrices taken from 14 studies. We investigated the four structures of language ability--unitary, correlated, uncorrelated, and higher-order--to discover the one that is most often supported in L2 studies. The results showed that the most probable candidates for L2 ability structure were the unitary and higher-order structures. The support for the unitary model was surprising but consistent with the findings of Davidson (1988). The moderator variable analyses failed to identify clear relationships between best-fitting structures and moderator variables.