Learning a third language: what learner strategies do bilingual students bring?

Abstract

This article seeks to develop the research agenda of multilingualism and multicompetence by bringing together three research fields and their related methodologies: bilingualism, third language acquisition and language learner strategies. After a brief introduction to each area, it describes a study to explore whether bilingual adolescent students learning French in two London schools outperform their monolingual peers in reading and listening comprehension. The significant difference in bilinguals students' listening comprehension test scores leads to in-depth analysis of qualitative data of three case study students in order to identify the differential features involved in the interaction of the languages. It appears that their greater use of oral/aural strategies is developed through the home environment; code-switching in the parental input fostering the development of the strategies. The article concludes with implications for pedagogy and for research.

The role of individual differences in the development and transfer of writing strategies between foreign and first language classrooms

“…This provides some evidence in support of the hypothesis that bilinguals are 'capable of transferring skills from the two languages they know to a third language' (Cenoz 2003, 77). It is also in line with findings from recent studies into the learning strategies of bilingual adolescents learning an additional foreign language by Grenfell and Harris (2015) and Mitits and Gavriilidou (2016).…”

Learning an L2 and L3 at the same time: help or hinder?

“…Therefore, the learner-based advantages among bilingual learners for L3 learning, such as learning strategies (e.g. Afsharrad & Sadeghi Benis, 2017;Grenfell & Harris, 2015), meta-linguistic awareness (e.g. Hofer & Jessner, 2016), and language aptitude (e.g.…”

“…Hofer & Jessner, 2016), more effective learning strategies (e.g. Afsharrad & Sadeghi Benis, 2017;Grenfell & Harris, 2015), and higher language aptitude (e.g. Eisenstein, 1980).…”

Translanguaging Practices of Multilingual Learners of German

“…The current approach of focusing on monolingual learners of German leads to the problem that bilingual student populations are underrepresented in the available research in the United States. As Grenfell and Harris (2015) point out there is research in the field of third language acquisition, but little research on German as a third language particularly outside of Europe (Grenfell & Harris, 2015). While it has been established that a second language influences the learning process of a third language as much as a first language, and that there is a growing number of bilingual students in the United States, German as a third language has not been studied widely (Falk & Bardel, 2010).…”

“…The available research on multilingualism points out that the students' languages are only useful resources for learning a new language if they are allowed in the classroom and if they are part of how the teacher teaches the new language. Furthermore, a teacher must be able to facilitate the relationships between previous languages and a new language (Jessner, 2008;Grenfell & Harris, 2015).…”