Britta Hufeisen

Towards Trilingual Education

This article highlights the fact that learning a third language in school contexts is a common phenomenon all over the world and poses several questions specifically related to the characteristics of third language acquisition. It also considers the relationship between third language acquisition and the research traditions of bilingualism and second language acquisition. Third language acquisition in school contexts and trilingual education are regarded as multidisciplinary phenomena associated with the sociolinguistic context in which they take place, the psycholinguistic processes involved in acquiring more than two languages, the linguistic characteristics of the languages involved and the pedagogical aspects of teaching and learning several languages.

Investigating the Role of Prior Foreign Language Knowledge: Translating from an Unknown into a Known Foreign Language

The motivation for our study is the assumption that foreign language learners browse through the lexicon/s of their different languages when reading, listening to, writing or speaking a specific target language, not only searching the mental lexicon/s of their L1(s) but also — to an even higher degree — their other foreign and second languages (see Jessner and Wei, this volume). As part of a larger project, the present study aims to highlight different stages and aspects of the foreign and second language production process. While some researchers believe (and find support for in their respective theoretical and methodological frameworks) that there is no salient or noticable difference between bilingual and multilingual learners with regard to the production of target language lexical elements (see for instance Dijkstra, this volume) others have found evidence that the L2 learner differs substantially from the L3 or Lx (x > 3) learner when perceiving and producing a second/foreign language (see for instance articles in Cenoz & Genesee, 1998a, Cenoz & Jessner, 2000, Cenoz, Hufeisen & Jessner, 2001a and 2001b).

Why Investigate the Multilingual Lexicon

Multilingualism both as an individual and social phenomenon is very common in the world considering that there are approximately 5,000 languages and speakers of different languages which have contact with each other in everyday life. Some specific historical, social, economic and political factors have contributed to the development of multilingualism in recent years. Among these factors we can consider the economic difficulties of some countries that result in immigration or the economic and political power of some English speaking countries that have had important implications for the spread of English. Nowadays, it is extremely common to find individuals who can speak more than two languages.

Metalinguistic processing control mechanisms in multilingual learners of English

This empirical investigation compares the ability of adult multilingual learners of English to perform a metalinguistic task involving paying close attention to meaning and/or form in target utterances/sentences varying in semantic appropriateness and grammatical correctness. In a listening task, adult multilingual learners of English heard these utterances in a constructed short story and then judged their grammatical correctness and semantic appropriateness under time pressure. They then performed a written post hoc grammatical judgement and correction task on the same sentences at their own pace. Our first hypothesis was that these multilingual learners would a priori be highly metalinguistically aware, and thus adept at sifting formal grammatical information from semantic information both online as they heard the items, as well as post hoc in the written task. We also expected that lesser as well as more experienced multilingual participants would be equally proficient at analysing the grammatical constructions in the post hoc written task. Both of these assumptions were borne out by results. The results are relevant to the debate about metalinguistic advantages for adult foreign language learners who are not merely bilingual, but are at least trilingual, and how these advantages are employed during meaning and form processing in a foreign language.

Multilingual language acquisition in Canada and Germany

Abstract This paper will briefly examine multilingual settings in Canada and Germany (German, guest worker languages). The differentiation between L2 and L3 acquisition, and the differentiation between acquisition and learning will be explored, as well as problems in second and third language acquisition, and cultural and status implications. It is a remarkable fact that almost all foreign language materials and methods appear to be exclusively designed for monoglot learners. As a result, very little has been done to study the implications of bilingualism and multilingualism in language learning and acquisition. The paper outlines priority areas for further research and presents the prospects for a greater recognition of multilingualism as a precious resource in language education.

Individuelle und subjektive Lernerbeurteilungen von Mehrsprachigkeit. Kurzbericht einer Studie

This article provides a short report of a study that investigated the L3 from the subjective perspective of language learners where L3 is considered to be a third, fourth or xth (x being 3 and 3+n) language. The aim was to find out how learners evaluate their own multilingualism, how they view the interaction of their different languages, and whether they think their different languages help or hinder them when speaking, listening, understanding, or writing their different foreign languages. The second question is: How can these perceptions be employed in order to optimize foreign language instruction