[pumblechook]

Came here to say this, and also add that this entire effort rests on the assumption that "natural" ability or "talent", in this case predisposition to language learning, actually exists. While certain people are no doubt born with enhanced cognitive abilities and all of us have genetic predispositions, the validity of this idea that people are naturally predisposed to acquire certain concrete skills is tenuous at best.

At least to me, a much better approach would be to test changes in your SYSTEM for teaching languages, rather than trying to select the inputs most predisposed to your system. Selecting "better" inputs might improve your success rate, but is it the most effective method of achieving the outcome you're looking for? Probably not. Most likely, the main failure is in the method of teaching languages, not the people being taught.

[wtmcc]

Well said. To take things one step further, I’d suggest the main failure may be the claim that we desire to learn languages in the first place, when we’re not willing to integrate a language into the things in our lives that motivate us.

With the exception of Japanese (with Anime‎ etc.) I can’t think of a single door that a foreign language opens, which we can truly expect the representative American high school student to be interested in.

[Larrikin]

Your last statement assumes that no high school student has ever left the country. Actually going abroad, using what little of the language I knew and having an amazing time were huge motivators. But the biggest was the frustration I felt when I realized how little I knew. In my case I studied Japanese, but by the time I got to high school my interest in anime was already fading and most of it was way too hard for a high schooler to get much if anything out of it. My high school held trips And home stays to most of the languages that taught and nearly everyone I knew that went came back with a huge desire to learn more.

[visakanv]

What is the "representative American high school student"?