Indicators of an “Immigrant Advantage” in the Writing of L3 French Learners

Abstract

Grounded in the cross-linguistic influence(s) (CLI) literature, this study used objective measures to compare the use of English, lexical richness and syntactic complexity, and grammatical accuracy and fluency in the texts of three groups of Grade 6 French immersion students: Canadian-born anglophones (C-A), Canadian-born multilinguals (C-M), and immigrant multilinguals (I-M). Findings identified use of English, vocabulary richness, and grammatical accuracy as the discriminating variables that had the most effect on the quality of writing of the three groups. The differences in performance on these specific writing aspects were most salient between the C-A and I-M groups. We propose that, in our data, the social status of immigrants might have a more profound influence on a student’s approach to language learning and investment than that of being multilingual, and that this can translate directly in certain areas of language performance.