Multilingualism and third language acquisition : Learning and teaching trends (Volume 2) (original) (raw)

In the last three decades, there have been several approaches, models and theories that have developed around the acquisition of a second language. Theories based on years of research in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology and psycholinguistics (Freeman & Freeman 2001). However, none can cover all the needs inherent to the teaching/learning process (Cook 2001), nor has it been possible to arrive at a unified or comprehensive view of how second languages are learned (Mitchel & Myles 2004; Nunan 2001). This complexity is, among others, due to the fact that there are variations in the context where the acquisition processes occur that influence the nature of the input as well as the learning strategies used by the student, and due to biological variations of students, such as age, aptitude and intelligence, motivation, personality, and cognitive styles (Ellis 1989). The acquisition of (several) second languages has become a subject even more complex with globalization, the growing learning of foreign languages and the increasing number of multilingual speakers. For that reason, since the beginning of this century, there has been a growth in interest in multilingualism and, consequently, a proliferation of studies on the acquisition of a third language or additional language (L3/Ln), highlighting the differences with respect to the acquisition of an L2 and setting themselves a new area of research (Jessner 1999; Herdina & Jessner 2000; Cook 2001; Cenoz 2003). These researches emphasize the benefits of multilingual education and show how multilingual acquisition is processed. Studies in the area of L3/Ln have largely contributed to a better understanding of the phenomenon.