33.1916, Review: Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition: Pinto, Alexandre (2021)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1916. Wed Jun 01 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1916, Review: Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition: Pinto, Alexandre (2021)

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Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2022 09:10:30
From: Jeanne McGill [jeagilbe at indiana.edu]
Subject: Multilingualism and third language acquisition

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36740877


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-629.html

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.





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