Abstract
The present study aimed to explore the effects of previous knowledge of multiple languages on learning a target language. In particular, it compared bilingual students with multilinguals with respect to the rate of progress in learning Turkish and analyzed whether or not knowing a language linguistically similar to Turkish would facilitate the learning of Turkish among multilinguals. Data were collected from 68 beginner level international students (20 females, 48 males) enrolled in the Turkish Teaching Application and Research Center of a government university in Turkey. The students took a pre-test in Turkish at the beginning of the Fall semester and a post-test at the end of the semester. The results of the quantitative analyses showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the bilinguals and the multilinguals, with multilinguals performing at a higher rate than the bilinguals in the post-test. In addition, multilinguals that had knowledge of a Turkic language achieved higher scores in the post-test than those that did not have any knowledge of a Turkic language. However, the results were not significant. The implications of these results are discussed with regard to the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (Herdina & Jessner, 2002) which emhazised the importance of multilingual awareness and its positive effects on linguistic, cognitive, metacognitive and information processing abilities.
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