Ulrike Jessner

Metalinguistic Awareness in Multilinguals: Cognitive Aspects of Third Language Learning.

The development of competence in two or more languages can result in higher levels of metalinguistic awareness. These facilitate the acquisition of language by exploiting the cognitive mechanisms underlying these processes of transfer and enhancement. In this paper, the role of metalinguistic awareness in multilinguals is discussed within the framework of a systems-theoretic approach to multilingual proficiency as taken in the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism. Selective data from trilingual adults (bilingual Italian/German learners of English) on their use of certain problem-solving behaviour in think-aloud protocols during the process of academic writing are shown to provide evidence of certain processes taking place while performing in a third language. At the same time, this study of metalinguistic thinking isused to point to applied perspectives of research on third language acquisition, going beyond second language research. It is argued that prior language knowledge should be reactivated in the lang...

Teaching third languages: Findings, trends and challenges

The last decade has witnessed a rapid increase in interest in multilingualism. Whereas a number of scholars in language acquisition research still base their work on the monolingual native speaker norm, others have developed more realistic viewpoints. This article provides an overview of international research on third language learning and teaching, including examples mainly from a European background. It describes sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and educational aspects of multilingual teaching and emphasizes current research trends in this fairly young area of language teaching. The challenging ways which have been suggested to achieve multilingualism for all necessarily have to address learners, teachers, educators and policy makers. It will be argued that multilingual education can only be successful if language teaching in general is restructured and oriented towards multilingual norms.

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.

The Nature of Cross-Linguistic Interaction in the Multilingual System

This chapter is intended to offer new perspectives on the characteristic features of transfer phenomena occurring when three languages are in contact. Cross-linguistic influence in multilinguals — in contrast to second language learners — has turned out to be characterised by certain features as recent research on speech production in third language acquisition (henceforth TLA) and trilingualism has shown. This chapter suggests that there are other aspects, which are linked to research on individual variability in multilingual proficiency due to changes in language use, involved in the contact between the language systems that should be taken into consideration.

On Multilingual Awareness or Why the Multilingual Learner is a Specific Language Learner

Since interest in research on multilingualism has steadily increased over the last 15 years metalinguistic awareness has been identified as one of the key factors of language learning, in particular in third language learning. Metalinguistic awareness has been studied in disciplines such as language pedagogy, developmental psychology and linguistics. In applied linguistics in the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (Herdina and Jessner 2002) it has been identified as the most crucial component of the M(ultilingualism)-Factor which is an emergent property of the multilingual system. Hence multilingual awareness can change in dependence on the changing system. Two school context studies at Innsbruck University have focused on the development of multilingual awareness and it was shown that multilingual awareness plays a crucial role in multilingual learning both in primary school children and in older pupils.

Multilingual Metalanguage, or the Way Multilinguals Talk about Their Languages.

The increase of multilingualism in both natural and formal contexts has provoked a number of studies which have concentrated on providing evidence of multilingual processing and finding out about the differences and similarities between second and third language learning. This paper deals with the use of metalanguage in multilingual students in an introspective study of their problem-solving behaviour in lexical search. The study shows that the multilingual students make use of metalanguage in languages other than the target language during the production process. Furthermore metalanguage was found to have several functions when preceding switches and thus a control function in multilingual processing was identified. A qualitative analysis of the individual use of metalanguage turned out to support the tentative results. From the tendencies found in this study it can be concluded that investigations of metalanguage might form a valuable methodological tool for further research on the roles of, and relationship between, a multilingual’s languages.

Teaching English as a Third Language

In many countries in the world, English is identified as a foreign language with no official status but is increasingly used as the language of wider communication. In a number of these countries it is common that English is learned as a third language. Recent psycholinguistic research on third language acquisition and trilingualism has made clear that the acquisition of an L3 shares many characteristics with the acquisition of an L2 but it also presents differences. Accordingly, the educational aspects of teaching English as an L3 differ from those of teaching English as an L2 and have more implications concerning the optimal age for the introduction of the different languages and the desired level of proficiency in each. In the Basque Country there are two official languages, Basque and Spanish, and English is taught as a third language. Several projects have been carried out in order to improve proficiency in English: the early introduction of English in kindergarten, the use of content based approaches, and the use of English as one of the languages of instruction. This chapter describes the characteristics of these projects and discusses their outcomes as they relate to specific research conducted on third language acquisition.

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.

Multilingualism at the primary level in South Tyrol: how does multilingual education affect young learners’ metalinguistic awareness and proficiency in L1, L2 and L3?

ABSTRACT The present study looks into the effects of early multilingual education by investigating linguistic knowledge and metalinguistic awareness in young learners at the primary level. The study aims to establish whether children in multilingual education programmes perform higher on a measure of metalinguistic awareness and with regards to their L1 Italian, L2 German and L3 English than children who receive traditional second and foreign language instruction. Two groups of elementary school pupils recruited from 2 Italian institutions in South Tyrol (Italy), each with multilingual and traditional instructional streams, participated in the study. All the participants completed a metalinguistic awareness test (in their L1 Italian), a German and an English test. The results of the study show the significant positive effects of early multilingual learning and a clear overall superiority for the subjects in the multilingual programmes as compared to those in the regular programmes. The results provide support not only for the effectiveness of multilingual education but also for cognitive advantages in multilingual children.

Spacetimes of Multilingualism

Multilingual speakers, bilingual and more often multilingual, are diverse in many ways. They undergo different kinds of experiences in a variety of social spaces, in particular when undergoing changes in their linguistic environments. This article suggests a conceptual tool to examine the various contexts in which multilingual speakers emerge and re-establish their identity: the concept of spacetime. The concept of spacetime allows analytical vision of the circumstances and actors. It can be instrumental in teasing out the mechanisms by which new linguistic practices appear both in local settings and globally. From the complexity perspective, each spacetime of multilingualism is an emergent, dynamic and self-organizing system that cannot be understood simply by understanding its separate parts, but by exploring their interaction in complex and non-linear ways. It is the interaction between the many elements of each spacetime that makes it unique. The spacetime approach takes into consideration both space and time. Thus the understanding of multilingualism becomes more realistic and more attuned to the diversity and unpredictability of each particular sociolinguistic situation.