LINGUIST List 33.1916
Wed Jun 01 2022
Review: Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition: Pinto, Alexandre (2021)
Editor for this issue: Amalia Robinson <amalialinguistlist.org>
Date: 21-Oct-2021
From: Jeanne McGill <jeagilbe
indiana.edu>
Subject: Multilingualism and third language acquisition
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EDITOR: Jorge Pinto
EDITOR: Nélia Alexandre
TITLE: Multilingualism and third language acquisition
SUBTITLE: Learning and teaching trends
SERIES TITLE: Contact and Multilingualism
PUBLISHER: Language Science Press
YEAR: 2021
REVIEWER: Jeanne M McGill, Indiana University Bloomington
SUMMARY
Part I: Language Acquisition
Chapter 1: Cognitive processes and interpreting expertise: Autonomous exercise of master’s students (Serena Ghiselli)
This paper is part of a larger PhD project about students training to be translators and interpreters enrolled in a program at the University of Bologna in Italy, in which students are required to study two foreign languages as well as know Italian. Data was collected for two years from one group who began in 2015 and only one year for the 2016 group. The overall project focused on working memory and selective attention, measured through psychological testing, but also examined self-study habits. Participants were sent a monthly survey and asked to estimate how much time they spent on practicing interpreting on that day and the type of activities they did. Only 40% of the time did the participants report doing any exercises at all. When they did additional study, they spent about an hour and half per day on it. The activities most often reported, reading/listening in a foreign language and terminology research, were not specifically asked about in the survey because the project was designed to capture activities that aid cognitive aspects of interpreting, but students mentioned them in their responses to the “other” option. Unexpectedly, students continued to practice shadowing exercises (in which students repeat what a speaker just said during a speech in the foreign language) even when more advanced in the program, although this is considered a beginning level activity. The hypothesis suggests that time spent and types of activities performed would contribute to greater working memory and better selective attention, but those results are not reported in this article, only the self-study data. However, the numbers reported are so low, with participants reporting engaging in the cognitive exercises that the researcher is looking at under 7%, it is unclear if what conclusions could be drawn about working memory and selective attention.
Chapter 2: On the acquisition of European Portuguese liquid consonants by L1-Mandarin learners (Chao Zhou, Maria João Freitas, and Adelina Castelo)
This study looks at the acquisition of four European Portuguese (EP) liquid consonants to explore possible developmental patterns and effects of various contexts and to contribute to the literature about what makes the acquisition of certain L2 sounds harder than others. Fourteen L1 Mandarin participants, who had been studying EP for two years and were enrolled in a B1 level course in Portugal, did a picture-naming task with 52 real EP multi-syllabic words. There was a familiarization phase one week before in which participants were given the stimuli, the Mandarin equivalent, and the picture that would be used. While the text says the stimuli list is given in Appendix A, there is no Appendix A anywhere in the book. Results show that some liquids are easier than others, and that syllable position seems to be more important than word-level position, at least for two of the liquids, perhaps because of L1 phonotactic restrictions. While this chapter gives a clear picture of the current abilities of a fairly uniform group of L1 Mandarin, L2 English, L3 EP learners, in order to establish developmental patterns, further cross-sectional or longitudinal research will need to be done, as noted in the conclusion.
Part II: Language Teaching
Chapter 3: A close look at how context of acquisition of previous language influences third language pedagogy: Does one model fit all? (Ana Carvalho)
This chapter compares two groups of L3 learners of Portuguese: heritage speakers of Spanish and classroom learners of L2 Spanish. Universities have increasingly focused on creating multilinguals by designing courses specifically for Spanish speakers to learn other Romance languages, as their previous knowledge helps them learn faster. However, research has shown that the experience of these specially designed courses is not the same for the different types of learners, as classroom learners tend to have more metalinguistic knowledge than heritage learners. The textbooks that are currently available for L3 Portuguese focus strongly on contrastive analysis and focus on form to point out grammatical differences between Spanish and Portuguese, an approach meant to reduce negative transfer, but which disadvantages heritage speakers who learned their two previous languages naturalistically. Emphasizing implicit knowledge, such as pragmatic rules, led to heritage learners outperforming L2 Spanish classroom learners, as in Koike & Flanner (2004). In conclusion, Carvalho calls for more research “aimed at identifying how L3 students with various language acquisition experiences may benefit from different pedagogical treatments” (p. 61) and curriculum that is more intuitive and content-based.
Chapter 4: Multilingual teachers, plurilingual approach and L3 acquisition: Interviews with multilingual teachers and their L3/L3+ students (Emel Kucukali)
This study examines the experiences of multilingual teachers and students in foreign language classrooms with plurilingual approaches at the Turkish university. A small number of participants were interviewed, some orally and some in writing. Some students also drew graphic responses. In addition, the teachers were interviewed. Overall, students who were multilingual appreciated when their teachers’ languages overlapped with theirs and when the teachers drew on the previously known languages to teach the new one. Students felt that they gained a lot from a multilingual approach and had doubts that they would learn much with a monolingual teacher, presumably meaning a teacher who only spoke the target language in the classroom. One caveat is that students who do not also know the other languages used in class may not benefit from this approach. This chapter is suitably placed after Chapter 3 because it explores similar issues, such as how students and teachers became or are becoming multilingual, how comfortable they are with code-switching, and how much metalinguistic awareness they have.
Chapter 5: Debunking student teachers’ beliefs regarding the target-language-only rule (Pierre-Luc Paquet and Nina Woll)
Two researchers tell how their own career trajectories inspired a vignette-based study that asked 40 participants in teacher-training programs in both Quebec (N=20) and Mexico City (N=20) to reflect on the role of languages other than the target language in the classroom. Use of other languages in the classroom conflicts with the emphasis on only using the target language, which is conflated with proper language instruction in which using the common L1 is seen as failure. This study aims to flesh out the student teachers’ beliefs about language use through asking them to respond to vignettes, or incomplete short stories that reflect real situations. Responses were analyzed thematically by what situations were deemed acceptable to use other languages in and then regrouped into learner factors, pedagogical strategies, and practical constraints. Participants were classified as hard-line-TL-only, open-to-other-languages, or multivoiced. Results show a geographical difference, as the Mexican respondents were more open to other languages, and none were classified as hard-line. However, in Quebec, student teachers were more likely to mainly see L1 use as only acceptable for discipline, while Mexican student teachers mentioned things like using the L1 to ensure understanding of grammatical concepts and metalinguistic information. Overall, the responses show a common belief that L1 should be used for “real” communication. The authors promote treating students as multilingual learners and introducing more crosslinguistic pedagogies and multilingual tasks.
Chapter 6: Training teachers for the challenges of multilingual education (Julia Barnes and Margareta Almgren)
This study integrates multilingual families in a multilingual region (the Basque Autonomous Community, or BAC) with multilingual student teachers who present their findings in their third language, English. Many families in the BAC choose Basque immersion schooling for their children even when Basque is not a home language. Because the sociolinguistic context is quite complex, there has been a focus on making sure that new teachers have the tools to succeed there. The project being reported was designed to assist with that goal by requiring early education students to use English within certain study modules and in reporting on a team project. Students use various instruments, such as the Peabody vocabulary test, to develop a linguistic picture of one child, which they reported on in their L3 English. They also wrote reflections of their experiences in working with the children and their families. Students realized that the amount of input in each language was important, and they got valuable experience working with actual children. This project requires the students to be trilingual and to use their L3 in a professional capacity, thus developing their own multilingual skills, and they got experience in giving assessments and in working within families’ constraints. They now understand in a more detailed way what multilingualism in early childhood looks like, which supports the importance of bilingual teacher training.
Part III: Language Learning
Chapter 7: Exploring learner attitudes in multilingual contexts: An empirical investigation at the primary school level (Barbara Hofer)
This paper explores children’s attitudes towards languages and language learning and how those attitudes vary in different educational and sociolinguistic settings within South Tyrol, a trilingual province in northern Italy that is majority German-speaking, and where historically there is a negative view of Italian. Grounded in the theoretical framework of the dynamic model of multilingualism (Herdina & Jessner, 2002), it argues that social factors also can affect the multilingual system, and that learner attitudes in turn affect language learning. Approximately two hundred children in their last year of primary school were surveyed, grouped into different types of schools and sociolinguistic contexts, on a continuum from least to most multilingual. Follow-up interviews were conducted with almost a quarter of participants. Most children had positive attitudes towards language learning and L2 Italian; however, those who live “in more linguistically diverse settings with more exposure to L2 Italian hold more positive attitudes and are more motivated” (p. 159). Sociolinguistic context is not everything, though. The group that had the most positive attitudes were students from monolingual backgrounds enrolled in a multilingual program within a monolingual German social context.
Chapter 8: Building bridges between languages: How students develop crosslinguistic awareness in multilingual learning settings (Gisela Mayr)
This chapter is also based in the South Tyrol context, in a German-speaking secondary school, where five ten-hour multilingual task-based modules were integrated into the language curriculum to promote cross-linguistic awareness. Through observations, stimulated recalls, and a final interview, four students were followed throughout the year, during which they participated in these modules using German, Italian, English, French, and Latin, which they have all studied in varying amounts. One student also speaks Ladin. The article devotes about two pages to each student, split into sections about background and learning processes for each. Overall, the findings were that plurilingual tasks increase crosslinguistic awareness, but how much depends on each student’s particular background. Students developed their abilities to use lexical transfer to foster communication and all “claimed that multilingual learning accelerated their language-learning process, as they experienced new ways of language acquisition” (p. 180). They began to see that meanings are culturally specific, and that codeswitching can be used in different ways, such as to assist with difficulty in communicating or to express identity. They were able to examine their own proficiency and emotions about each language in context and make a plan to improve.
Chapter 9: Students’ perceptions of plurilingual nonnative teachers in higher education: An added or a mudded value? (Patchareerat Yanaprasart and Silvia Melo-Pfeifer)
This study asks students at both the University of Geneva in multilingual Switzerland and the University of Hamburg in Germany, a more monolingual environment, to reflect on their teachers’ language abilities and how they affect the classroom. Although not directly stated, the study appears to be about teachers who teach in a foreign language, no matter the subject, and not about language classes specifically. Questionnaires and interviews were utilized. Both groups were positive about the resources nonnative teachers bring to the classroom. Perhaps not surprisingly, overall, the Geneva group is more positive about multilingualism, while the Hamburg group relies more on native speaker notions of cultural norms and grammatical correctness. The authors suggest that universities need to focus on changing from a “language-as-problem” mindset to a “language-as-resource” orientation, and that the advantages of multilingualism “should be more thematized, developed and discussed, particularly in language learning classrooms and in teaching education practices and supervision” (p. 202).
EVALUATION
The evaluation must begin with a closer look at the book’s overall structure. It has three sections, with two chapters in “Language Acquisition, four in Language Teaching”, and three in “Language Learning”. However, no motivation or justification is given for the divide between learning and acquisition, a distinction commonly associated with Krashen (1976), where acquisition is meant as implicit learning. However, Chapter 1, about deliberate language practice, does not seem to fit with that sense of acquisition. Chapter 2, while pertaining to the acquisition of liquid consonants and so perhaps fitting in that section, is extremely out of place with the rest of the book, as a highly technical phonetics study that has no discussion of pedagogical implications, despite the subtitle of this volume being “Trends in Teaching and Learning”. This paper also only briefly mentions multilingualism when it uses L2 English as a possible explanation for a surprising finding, although multilingualism is the focus of the book. It would have been better to leave this chapter out and move Chapter 1 to the section about Language Learning, making two sections with four papers each, all about multilingual contexts. While Chapter 2 is an interesting paper about important phonetic research, it is out of place in this book as written. At the very least, the abstract for Chapter 2 should make it clear that these are L3 learners.
This rearranging of chapters would allow the collection to begin with a stronger paper. Chapter 1, a fascinating look into simultaneous interpreting training, just feels incomplete because it lacks results for the main research question of what cognitive activities might be correlated with greater working memory and selective attention. The question is posed but not answered, and disappointed readers must look for the results they would have liked to have seen here in future publications. Reframing the article as being solely about what activities high-level multilinguals choose to do to improve their skills would have improved this chapter and connected it more with the rest of the papers.
Structural comments aside, this valuable volume brings up serious questions that are being grappled with in the field of multilingual research. How should third languages be taught? Should metalinguistic knowledge be emphasized in instruction? What role should the previous languages play in the target language classroom? How should new teachers be trained in multilingual contexts? What do multilingual learners need to be successful in their new languages? We see various studies in this volume that are beginning to address these questions, but more specifics in several chapters would be helpful.
For example, in Chapter 8 we read about task-based modules and their benefits to learners, but we are given no explanation of what the modules entailed nor examples of what they did. Additionally, in Chapter 5, we read about the researchers’ career trajectories which inspired them to research the beliefs of teacher trainees and when they would use other languages in the classroom. However, when teachers give reasons to use other languages, these responses are gently critiqued while, in the conclusion, readers are exhorted to introduce crosslinguistic pedagogies and tasks, without having clear examples of what they would be or when to use them. Chapter 9 would also benefit from some guidelines on how universities could implement a more positive multilingual mindset.
REFERENCES
Herdina, P., & Jessner, U. (2002). A dynamic model of multilingualism: Perspectives of change in psycholinguistics (Vol. 121). Multilingual Matters.
Koike, D. & Flanzer, V. Pragmatic transfer from Spanish to Portuguese as an L3: Requests and apologies. In L. Wiedmann & M. Scaramucci (Eds.), Português para falantes de Espanhol: Aquisição e ensino (pp. 47-67). Campinas: Pontes.
Krashen, S. D. (1976). Formal and informal linguistic environments in language acquisition and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 157-168.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Jeanne McGill is a doctoral candidate in Second Language Studies at Indiana University Bloomington, where she is completing her dissertation entitled Do Words Matter? How Lexical Input Influences German/English Bilinguals’ Syntax in Beginning Swedish, in which Swedish words similar to L1 or L2 are used to prime L3 syntax. Since 2020, she has also been an IU FLAS fellow in Finnish. Besides L3 acquisition, she has published and presented on language revitalization and classroom language teaching and learning. With an MA in German, she has taught German, Spanish, and academic English, and is currently teaching a interdisciplinary course on words.
Page Updated: 01-Jun-2022