Third Language Acquisition Essay

780 Words4 Pages

The topic about third language acquisition has been researched in many ways through-out the years. It has mostly involved bilinguals and monolinguals put into the same situation of learning the language none of them knew and were then analysed on how quickly, effi-ciently, and correctly they can learn components of that language. The big drawback in these methods is that it usually involved groups of less than forty people, so there was never a clear proof that one group of people learn better than the other (Escudero, P., Broersma, M., & Si-mon, E. (2012). Learning words in a third language: Effects of vowel inventory and language proficiency. Language and Cognitive Processes).
The learning of language cannot be sorted into only one category, as it depends on when …show more content…

While mono-linguals, may have a harder time, because that basis is not yet established with them. Moreover, bilinguals have an advantage when it comes to, so called, meta-linguistic awareness. It is “the ability to analyse language more intensely by focusing on the different level of linguistic struc-tures such as words, phonemes and syntax, word awareness, phonological awareness, sentence awareness, semantic awareness”. (Ang, A., (2011). The Effect of Bilingualism on the Acquisi-tion of a Third Language).
The study dealing with the effect of vowel inventory whilst learning words in a third language also distinguishes the difference between L1, L2 and L3 speakers. It has been con-firmed that it is easier when the L2 language has a large vowel inventory than L2, to acquire a L3 language (Escudero, P., Broersma, M., & Simon, E. (2012). Learning words in a third lan-guage: Effects of vowel inventory and language proficiency. Language and Cognitive

Open Document