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.

Keywords:

• learner strategies
• bilingualism
• trilingualism
• modern languages

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the considerable expertise and support of the two teachers involved in the main study: Jennie Prescott and Kate Scappaticci. We are also very grateful to Mike Griffiths, Goldsmiths University of London, for all his help with the statistical analyses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this commonly used categorization system in the UK, stage 1 represents the competence of a student who is largely silent in the classroom and needs considerable support, whereas a stage 5 student has the same level of competence as a student for whom English is an L1. A stage 4 student’s oral English is developing well, allowing successful engagement in activities across the curriculum. Written English may lack complexity and contain occasional evidence of errors in structure. They may need support to access subtle nuances of meaning, to refine English usage and to develop abstract vocabulary.

2. These tests are the most widely used tests of reasoning ability in the UK, allowing teachers to compare their pupils’ results with the national average. The tests measure three principal areas of reasoning—verbal, non-verbal and numerical—as well as an element of spatial ability. Students’ verbal

test scores are considered the most reliable predictor of MFL performance in the national exams at 16.

3. 3. An unusual complication that occurs in some studies is that the semi-partial correlation can be higher than the zero-order correlation, or even pull in opposite directions, if other variables in the analysis are acting as ‘suppressor’ variables, that is, if they remove variance from that predictor which is unrelated to the outcome (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). Such effects suggest a complex interaction that is difficult to interpret without further detailed data and analysis.

4. ‘Convergence’ and ‘divergence’ are common terms in social psychology and refer to the affective responses of speakers of one language with regard to another; either as positively or negatively disposed (see, e.g. Hamers & Blanc, 2000).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Grenfell

Michael Grenfell, The Southampton School of Education, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK; e-mail: [email protected]. He is a visiting professor at University of Southampton, England and Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland where he was the 1904 chair of Education and head of School. His background is in French Studies and he has a long research association in areas including education, language, and linguistics and cultural studies. He has some 16 authored books to his names as well as numerous journal articles dealing with second language acquisition, education, and the work of the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu.

Vee Harris

Vee Harris, Department of Education, Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW, UK. She was a senior lecturer in Modern Languages in Education at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published books and articles, mainly on language learner strategies, based on projects carried out in the classroom in collaboration with the teachers. Although she is now semi-retired, she continues to take an active interest in the acquisition of languages.