L3 Acquisition of Simple and Present Progressive Tenses by Iranian EFL Learners

Ali Akbar Jabbari,Hemrah Salimi

doi:10.1177/2158244015615163

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the role of transfer at the initial states of the third language (L3) acquisition. The following hypotheses were investigated in this study: (a) the second language transfer hypothesis (“L2 Status Factor”) proposing that L2 impedes transfer from L1 into L3; (b) the Cumulative Enhancement Model (“CEM”), proposing selective transfer from the previously learned languages, here L1 and L2; and (c) the Full Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis (FT/FA), suggesting that the Universal Grammar (UG) is available in acquiring the succeeding languages. The data were elicited via two experimental groups: one, Persian learners of English as a second language, and the other, Turkmen learners of English as a third language who had already acquired Persian as a second one. The structures tested in this study were simple present and present progressive tenses across the languages mentioned above. The L2 and L3 learners were tested at the initial state of their English acquisition. Data were gathered through grammaticality judgment and translation tasks. The results demonstrated that there is a significant advantage of L1 transfer in L3 acquisition.

Highlights

Multilingual people are known and determined through their habitat and the region where they are in, nowadays due to increased mobility and globalization, the use of more than two languages has become a normal part of daily life for most human beings, and there are lots of researchers and linguists interested in multilingualism to check and find some evidence to test both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and linguistic theories.In recent times, both the awareness of multilingualism and research in this area has become increasingly conspicuous
Persians ranked higher than Turkmens in this task. One reason for this might be the presence of Universal Grammar (UG) for the Persian learners of English at the initial state of learning a new language
They have no strict distinction in using the tenses under study in their own language, they can differentiate them in English due to the effect of UG

Summary

Introduction

Multilingual people are known and determined through their habitat and the region where they are in, nowadays due to increased mobility and globalization, the use of more than two languages has become a normal part of daily life for most human beings, and there are lots of researchers and linguists interested in multilingualism to check and find some evidence to test both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and linguistic theories. In recent times, both the awareness of multilingualism and research in this area has become increasingly conspicuous. The cognitive advantages of bi- and multilinguals over monolinguals are often related to an increased level of metalinguistic awareness, which is assigned a crucial role in holistic approaches to multilingualism (e.g., Cook, 1991; Grosjean, 1985; Herdina & Jessner, 2002)

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