InstructedL3Acquisition ofEnglish

Abstract

The status of third languages (L3) has been an object of misconception, as some languages, such as those which are minority languages in the countries of origin, tend to be hidden. Although the relatively new field of (instructed) L3 acquisition has developed within recent years as a field on its own covering different lines of research and theories explaining the acquisition of languages beyond the first foreign or second language, it has not yet had much impact on mainstream pedagogical approaches. This is taken as a starting point to fill in the existing gap of how theory can inform teaching and vice versa. Starting from the existing results and non‐results, this entry includes accounts of current state of the art theory and practice on predicting possible transfer phenomena and offers guidelines for methods and interventions that take into consideration the role of transfer in instructed third language acquisition (L3A).