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An exploratory study to analyse the prospective increase of trilingual identity in engineering students from the Basque Country is carried out in this article. The differences of two groups of students were analysed by taking into account the answers provided in two similar questionnaires, one in 2004 and the other in 2012. The results obtained confirm that the incipient trilingual identity detected in 2004 has increased significantly though its current level is not very high yet. Due to the institutional efforts made so far, the fruits of a long-term linguistic policy are reaching the University of the Basque Country. A more overall successful performance in the three languages (Basque/Spanish/English) and a more favourable attitude towards English have led to a higher trilingual identity. However, English is not clearly associated with a cultural reference (integrative motivation) but with a necessary language (instrumental motivation). The Basque language seems to be fighting well for its survival in the presence of co-official Spanish and all-powerful English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic Research 30(1), 33-49. The purpose of this paper is to answer the question of whether bilingual speakers learn a third language more easily than monolinguals. For this, we narrowed down our research interest to Arabic-English bilingual speakers' perception of the phonetic contrasts in Korean. We have conducted the perception experiment in which native Arabic speakers are grouped into monolinguals and late-bilinguals of English, and are asked to discriminate a different speech sound among three Korean syllables. We cross-classified the subjects' responses in a multi-way frequency table defined by five categorical variables; i.e. group (monolingual vs. bilingual), syllable structure (V vs. hV), target stimulus position (initial vs. final), contrast pairs of Korean vowels (/a-Λ/, /a-e/, /Λ-İ/, /o-Λ/, /u-o/, /u-İ/, /i-e/, /i-İ/), and response (correct vs. incorrect). The log-linear regression analysis indicates robust L1 transfer effects on L3, but we found no significant difference between monolingual and bilingual speakers. Considering the general interest in multi-lingualism among the public and people's vague belief that bilingualism may help trilingualism, the findings of this paper have significance not only for the field of second language acquisition, but for pedagogical purposes as w [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In two experiments, we examined inhibitory control processes in three groups of bilinguals and trilinguals that differed in nonnative language proficiency and language learning background. German 5- to 8-year-old second-language learners of English, German–English bilinguals, German–English–Language X trilinguals, and 6- to 8-year-old German monolinguals performed the Simon task and the Attentional Networks Task (ANT). Language proficiencies and socioeconomic status were controlled. We found that the Simon effect advantage, reported in earlier research for bilingual children and adults over monolinguals, differed across groups, with bilinguals and trilinguals showing enhanced conflict resolution over monolinguals and marginally so over second-language learners. In the ANT, bilinguals and trilinguals displayed enhanced conflict resolution over second-language learners. This extends earlier research to child second-language learners and trilinguals, who were in the process of becoming proficient in an additional language, while corroborating earlier findings demonstrating enhanced executive control in bilinguals assumed to be caused by continuous inhibitory control processes necessary in competition resolution between two (or possibly more) languages. The results are interpreted against the backdrop of the developing language systems of the children, both for early second-language learners and for early bilinguals and trilinguals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This research examined phonological awareness (PA) of elementary-level bilingual and trilingual students. A total of 80 elementary ESL children, aged 9-11 and 13-16, were selected out of 96 participants. Half of them were bilinguals of Farsi (Persian) and English, and the other half, trilinguals of Farsi, Turkmeni and English. The researcher chose the subjects from both males and females, and children and teenagers. The participants were tested on PA of unfamiliar words before and after instruction to see if there was any difference which could be attributed to the training the researcher had provided, and also how bilinguals and trilinguals of different ages and sexes developed their knowledge of PA, especially the elision task. The results of the research showed that there was a significant difference between bilinguals' and trilinguals' PA both before and after instruction. In other words, trilinguals were inherently more phonologically aware. Moreover, trilinguals maintained their superiority after instruction. Although instruction made a significant difference in PA of all the subjects, the differences between children and teenagers, and males and females were not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Synergies Pays Germanophones is the property of GERFLINT (Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches pour le Francais Langue Internationale) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigated the role of domain-general inhibitory control in trilingual speech production. Taking an individual differences approach, we examined the relationship between performance on a non-linguistic measure of inhibitory control (the Simon task) and a multilingual language switching task for a group of fifty-six native English (L1) speakers learning French (L2) and Spanish (L3). Better inhibitory control was related to reduced switch costs, but only when switching into or out of the more dominant L1, where inhibitory control has been theorized to be most important (Green, 1998). The results provide evidence of a direct link between inhibitory control abilities and language switching capabilities, and suggest constraints on the conditions under which a domain-general inhibitory control mechanism supports language switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with recent calls for a historicising of discourse analysis, this paper provides an account of language-in-education policies in Luxembourg since the creation of the Luxembourgish state in the early nineteenth century. We briefly expound the Luxembourgish language situation and educational system, and critically discuss the contemporary discourse of impossibility of change, which is associated with it. We argue that the Luxembourgish/German/French trilingualism of Luxembourgish education and society needs to be clearly differentiated from the specific trilingual language regime currently applied within the educational system – indeed, the latter has changed and has been adapted over time, as we will show. Hence, there is no reason why it should not change again in an ongoing effort to meet the linguistic needs of a constantly shifting school population in the best possible way. We conclude that the multilingual nature of an educational system does not guarantee the absence of linguistic exclusion, and that only systems with a high degree of flexibility can adequately meet the needs of today's increasingly heterogeneous school populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In five experiments, we examined cross-language activation during speech production in various groups of bilinguals and trilinguals who differed in nonnative language proficiency, language learning background, and age. In Experiments 1, 2, 3, and 5, German 5- to 8-year-old second language learners of English, German–English bilinguals, German–English–Language X trilinguals, and adult German–English bilinguals, respectively, named pictures in German and in English; in Experiment 4, 6- to 8-year-old German monolinguals named pictures in German. In both language conditions, cognate status was manipulated. We found that the bidirectional cognate facilitation effect was significant in all groups except the German monolinguals (Experiment 4) and, critically, the child second language learners (Experiment 1) in whom only native language (L1) German had an effect on second language (L2) English. The findings demonstrate how the integration of languages into a child’s system follows a developmental path that, at lower levels of proficiency, allows only limited cross-language activation. The results are interpreted against the backdrop of the developing language systems of the children both for early second language learners and for early bi- and trilinguals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Language is the most immediate tool of inclusion into a social group and as such is central in creating, understanding and participating in the group. Language policy can serve, establish and organise such groups, and to assure that they are maintained and implemented for posterity. Language policy in education is imperative for a group to build and maintain its past, present and future. This paper discusses the formulation of a language policy in the Jewish Educational Network of Mexico City, following its daily management. More specifically, this paper will address: (1) the discrepancies between the minority's language policy and ideologies and its reality; (2) the status of Hebrew as a burden or a benefit in pacesetting language education in this community; and (3) the outcomes of implementation of a language policy ‘by proxy’ (i.e. a policy created elsewhere to be carried out locally). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is strong evidence that bilinguals have a deficit in speech perception for their second language compared with monolingual speakers under unfavourable listening conditions (e.g., noise or reverberation), despite performing similarly to monolingual speakers under quiet conditions. This deficit persists for speakers highly proficient in their second language and is greater in those who learned the language later in life. These findings have important educational implications because the number of multilingual children is increasing worldwide, and many of these children are being taught in their non-native language under poor classroom acoustic conditions. Aims: The performance of monolingual, bilingual and trilingual speakers on an English speech perception task was examined in both quiet and noisy conditions. Trilingual performance was compared with that of monolingual and bilingual speakers. Methods & Procedures: Monolingual speakers of English and early bilingual and trilingual speakers (i.e., acquired English as a second/third language before the age of 6 years) were recruited. Their fluency in English was tested by interview and by a questionnaire assessing their knowledge and use of the language. Audiological evaluation confirmed normal hearing in all participants. English speech perception was tested in quiet and in different levels of noise (50, 55, 60, 65 and 70 dB SPL) using the Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) Test. Outcomes & Results: Bilingual and trilingual listeners performed similarly to monolingual listeners in quiet conditions, but their performance declined more rapidly in noise and was significantly poorer at 65 and 70 dB SPL. Trilingual listeners performed less well than bilinguals at these noise levels, but not significantly so. A subgroup of five bilingual speakers who learned Arabic and English simultaneously since birth were poorer at higher levels of noise than monolinguals, but not significantly so. Conclusions & Implications: The results replicate previous findings of poorer speech perception in noise with bilingual speakers compared with monolinguals and extend the findings to trilingual speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luxembourg is designated as a trilingual country, officially recognizing three languages in its language law of 1984: Luxembourgish as the national language, and French and/or German as legal, judicial and administrative languages. While Luxembourgish is mostly used for spoken communication, written functions are carried out primarily in standard French and German, which as a result also dominate within the educational system. Luxembourgish thus presents the somewhat paradoxical case of being a small and mostly spoken language that is officially recognized as the national language of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. At the same time, in relation to fluctuating demographics, a discourse of endangerment has developed around the Luxembourgish language. The focus has been on the limited role of Luxembourgish within the educational system, as well as its potential role as the 'language of integration'. A major contradiction is reflected in these current debates and developments: though the emphasis in language-in-education policy continues to revolve mostly around the teaching of standard German and French and though Luxembourgish is not widely used for functions linked to standardized written languages, the 2008 citizenship law has introduced formalized language testing in Luxembourgish. It thus signals and enacts a shift away from the 'trilingual ideal' towards the national language as the sole icon of 'Luxembourgishness'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language in education debates in Hong Kong focus on the role and status of English (as the former colonial language and an important means for international communication); Cantonese, the mother tongue of the majority of the population; and Putonghua, the national language of China. This paper examines the language policy formulated in 1997-1998, and finds that it radically departed from previous policies by mandating the use of Cantonese as the medium of instruction in secondary schools. The paper then analyses two subsequent policy revisions and concludes that, while the tonal emphasis on mother-tongue education has remained, the policy revisions have reversed the language policy to previous practices that emphasised the importance of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the work of a Language Commission set by the Faroese Government in 2005 to formulate a proposal for an official Faroese language policy and findings from my own study on language use among young Faroe Islanders, this paper questions whether the present language policy in the Faroes is an effective strategy to maintain and protect a demographically small language - like Faroese - as a viable language. The findings of this study indicate a conflict between a purist movement that wants to police the Faroese language and actual language use. The findings also suggest that even if one lives in a linguistically fairly homogenous situation, in remote areas, multilingualism is a necessity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article rend compte des resultats d'une etude visant a explorer le lien entre les attitudes/les motivations et la conscience metalinguistique. Trente etudiants francophones universitaires (17 bilingues et 13 trilingues) ont rempli un questionnaire sociolinguistique, un questionnaire d'attitudes et de motivations envers l'apprentissage de l'anglais (L2) et de l'espagnol (L3), et ont subi un test de conscience metalinguistique. Les donnees des questionnaires et du test ont ete analysees, d'abord, afin de comparer les attitudes, les motivations et la conscience metalinguistique des bilingues a celles des trilingues; et ensuite, afin de verifier si les attitudes et les motivations predisent le niveau de developpement de la conscience metalinguistique. Les attitudes et les motivations n'ont pas d'effet significatif sur la conscience metalinguistique autant chez les bilingues que chez les trilingues. Il n'y a pas de difference significative entre les deux groupes au niveau de leur conscience metalinguistique. Cette derniere est stable malgre differents niveaux de maitrise de la L2 et de la L3 chez les trilingues. La stabilite de la conscience metalinguistique, peu importe le nombre de langues connues et le niveau de maitrise des langues additionnelles, suggere, d'une part, une competence bilingue similaire chez nos participants bilingues et trilingues et, d'autre part, l'existence d'une conscience metalinguistique inter-langues qui se transfererait d'une langue a une autre sans etre influencee par des variables attitudinales et motivationnelles. This paper reports results of a study that aimed at exploring the relationship between attitudes/motivations and metalinguistic awareness. Thirty French-speaking undergraduates (17 bilingual and 13 trilingual) filled out a sociolinguistic questionnaire and an attitudes and motivations questionnaire towards learning English (L2) and Spanish (L3), and were administered a metalinguistic awareness test. Data from the questionnaires and the test were analysed, first, to compare attitudes, motivations and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals and trilinguals and, second, to find out whether attitudes and motivations predict the level of development of metalinguistic awareness. Attitudes and motivations did not prove to have a significant effect on metalinguistic awareness, whether in bilinguals or in trilinguals. There was no significant difference between the two groups on the level of their metalinguistic awareness. Finally, metalinguistic awareness was stable despite the different L2 and L3 competence levels in trilinguals. The stability of metalinguistic awareness, regardless of the number of languages known and of the competence level attained in additional languages suggests, on the one hand, a similar bilingual competence in our bilingual and trilingual participants and, on the other hand, an inter-language metalinguistic awareness which transfers from one language to another without being influenced by attitudinal and motivational factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This monograph provides an overview of the language situation in Hong Kong from a historical perspective. Hong Kong has evolved in the past 167 years from a small fishing port to an international financial centre which forms part of a financial network hailed by Time Magazine as Ny.Lon.Kong (i.e. New York-London-Hong Kong). Hong Kong has gone through changes of sovereignty twice, once in 1842 as a Chinese territory ceded to Britain after the first Opium War, and a second time in 1997 as a British colony returned to China. It is a micro polity with no natural resources except its deep harbour. Economically, Hong Kong has gradually developed from a fishing port when British settlement began in 1841, to an entrepot during 1945-1950s, to a manufacturing hub during 1960-1970s, to an international financial centre since the 1980s. The historical, political and economic development has had a great impact on the language situation in Hong Kong. Its language community started with two separate monolingual groups: one consisting of local Chinese speaking Cantonese and other Chinese dialects, and the other composed of British colonists speaking English. Because of language spread and language shift as a result of political, economic and social changes, the monolingual group of Chinese speakers has become trilingual, speaking Cantonese, English and Putonghua, whereas the monolingual group of English speakers has expanded to include native speakers of such other English varieties as American English, Australian English, Canadian English, Indian English and Singaporean English. In addition, there is a large group of minorities composed of bilingual speakers of English and a south Asian language. Although the development of language use is a natural process, it can be influenced by the government's language policy and planning. In 1997 there was a major political change, and Hong Kong, a capitalist city that practised a free economy for 155 years, was handed back to a socialist regime in China and now functions as a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC) under the 'One Country Two Systems' policy. Hong Kong's prospects for a changing language situation depend on its political and economic development as well as PRC's policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines lexical differentiation in early trilingual development through an analysis of the translation equivalents (TEs) produced by a Tagalog-Spanish-English trilingual child. The child's cumulative vocabulary between 1;4 and 2;0 was reconstructed through diary records and audio-recordings, and the extent to which phonetically distinct equivalent doublets and triplets were represented in her cumulative lexicon was examined. The results indicate that TEs were produced from early on, similarly to bilingual children. However, the amount of input heard in each language determined the number and types of equivalents acquired. Also, learning a second TE took less time than learning a first, suggesting that the initial differentiation of the lexicon as evidenced by doublets might facilitate the emergence of multiple lexical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Katalanistik is the property of Zeitschrift fur Katalanistik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent decades, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has instigated language policies in education ostensibly designed to foster trilingualism in ethnic minority groups. The policies, which, as this paper shows, vary from region to region, encompass the minority group's home language, Chinese, and English. Based on data arising from interviews, documentary analysis and secondary sources, this paper examines the tensions behind these trilingual education policies by comparing the implementation of policies for three minority groups: the Zhuang, the Uyghur and the Yi people. It identifies some of the facilitators and barriers that affect the achievement of trilingualism, and finds that ethnic minority languages are at a disadvantage compared with Chinese and English. The paper concludes by making some suggestions for enhancing the effectiveness of the trilingualism policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research presented here aims to show the results obtained in Spanish, Basque and English languages for a bilingual community - the Basque Country (in which two official languages coexist) - and in which a bilingual school education system has been established with three linguistic Models and classified as A, B and D (as the letter C is not normally used in Basque). These Models depend on the greater or lesser presence of Basque and Spanish, both as languages through which studies are learnt as well as vehicular languages. Although what is involved here is not a longitudinal study, data has been gathered over a four-year period (2000-2003) in order to verify that the results are stable on a yearly basis. Also requiring to be verified was whether the possible differences arising amongst pupils between the distinct linguistic Models were the same for three different age groups (12, 14 and 16 corresponding to three different school grades). Given the nested structure of the data, hierarchical linear models (HLM) have been employed for the statistical analysis of the same. The results obtained confirm that the greatest differences are in Basque between pupils in the different Models, while with Spanish and English the differences are less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study investigates the bilingual and trilingual codeswitching patterns of two multilinguals who grew up in a Hungarian-Romanian two-language family in Transylvania, and whose bilingual codeswitching changed into trilingual codeswitching after they moved to North America. An analysis of the speakers' discourse reveals the amounts of bilingual and trilingual codeswitching as well as the dynamics and interaction of the three languages used. Using Myers-Scotton's Matrix Language Frame model as the theoretical framework for codeswitching, the different levels of activation of the three languages were analysed. Furthermore, patterns of convergence, divergence and transference were explored. The findings of the study show that a significant amount of the codeswitching of both speakers is trilingual. Differences in patterns between bilingual versus trilingual codeswitching and the different language combinations were found due to the language structure and social and cultural background of the speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This monograph describes the overall language situation in Luxembourg, a highly multilingual country in Western Europe, from a language policy and planning perspective. The first part discusses the social and historical contexts, including major societal changes and uncertainties about the future, which are bound up with Europeanisation and the accelerated processes of globalisation. It also deconstructs the notions of Luxembourgish as a 'minority language' and French as the 'language of prestige', and describes a two-pronged language ideology that allows for either monolingual identification with Luxembourgish or trilingual identification with the languages recognised by the language law of 1984 (Luxembourgish/ German/ French). The second part discusses the trilingual school-system, a system in which large numbers of romanophone students are forced to go through a German-language literacy programme. The third part provides an overview of language spread in the areas of the media and literary writing. The fourth part examines language purism and tensions concerning the standardisation of Luxembourgish, as well as the debates about language requirements for citizenship. The discussion shows how language policy scholarship needs to be approached from a multidimensional perspective, that is, by taking into account dynamics on the global, regional and local levels in addition to those at the state level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family dinner conversations can serve as a medium for the mutual involvement of children and parents in language socialization. In this study, early pragmatic development in a trilingual child is addressed from the perspective of the language dynamics of a multilingual family. How young children learn to adjust their speech to their interlocutors can be seen clearly in the language choices and the mixing patterns of the trilingual two-year-old. The child selected language(s) not only from the language(s) spoken to her but also with attention to her interlocutor's linguistic proficiencies and the language context in which she found herself along a monolingual to trilingual continuum. She shifted languages in family dinner conversations according to the norms established in the home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several researchers have suggested that definitional skill explains academic success/failure (Gagne, 2004; Snow, 1987). The words used to investigate definitional skill have all been concrete words given in the first language (L1) and/or the second language (L2) of the participants. This paper reports a study investigating the quality of the definitions of concrete nouns and of abstract nouns in three languages: Arabic (L1), French (L2) and English (L3). Two hundred and thirty students (mean age: 17.1) wrote definitions for five concrete nouns and five abstract nouns in each of their three languages. We examined the concreteness and language effects in the length and quality of definitions. Results showed that while in L1 there was no difference between the length of definitions of concrete nouns and those of abstract nouns, there was a difference in L2 and in L3. As for the definitional quality there were significant differences between the definitional quality of concrete nouns and of abstract nouns in the three languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurrent theme in the literature on trilingual language use is the question of whether there is a specific ‘trilingual competence.’ In this paper we consider this question in the light of codeswitching patterns in two dyadic trilingual conversations between a mother and daughter conducted in (Lebanese) Arabic, French, and English. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of codeswitching in both conversants shows that, despite the fact that both subjects are fluent in all three languages, uses of switching are significantly different for mother and daughter across a number of features, including relative frequency of different switch types, and the incidence of hybrid constructions involving items from two or more languages. The subjects appear to display qualitatively distinct profiles of competence in the trilingual mode. This in turn leads to the conclusion that the facts of trilingual language use are best characterized in terms of ‘multicompetence’ (Cook, 1991). The paper concludes with some further reflections on the uniqueness of trilingual language use (an ‘old chestnut’ in trilingualism research, cf. Klein, 1995). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study of the codeswitches produced by two children who acquired their three languages in early childhood. We compared formal and functional aspects of their switches recorded at two different stages of their development. Of particular interest was the consideration of sociolinguistic variables that have intervened in the children's environment. We undertook a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the children's codeswitches to ascertain the frequency of switching, the use of each of the three languages employed for switching and the linguistic complexity of the switches. We assumed that the sociolinguistic conditions that changed the linguistic landscape in which these children operated would be reflected not only in the development of each of their languages, but also in the kind of switches that they produced. We tried to establish whether it is the case that certain forms and functions of codeswitches constitute a ‘core’ of trilingual language behavior while others are prone to change. Ultimately, our aim was to gain an insight into the specific trilingual language production processes over a given period of time that can shed light on the development and nature of trilingual competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study discusses and describes codeswitches produced by two trilingual children acquiring English, Spanish and Hebrew simultaneously from birth. Data were collected regularly over a period of 20 months (from age 2;6 to 4;2 for M and from age 5;5 to 7;1 for E), in naturalistic tape-recorded sessions. Codeswitches drawn from transcriptions of 32 h of spontaneous conversation were analysed. We describe and explain trilingual switches involving morphosyntactic boundary violations, some of which have not yet been reported in the literature. We claim that these switches provide incipient evidence for a developing trilingual competence that stands at the base of trilingual performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This empirical investigation compares the ability of adult multilingual learners of English to perform a metalinguistic task involving paying close attention to meaning and/or form in target utterances/sentences varying in semantic appropriateness and grammatical correctness. In a listening task, adult multilingual learners of English heard these utterances in a constructed short story and then judged their grammatical correctness and semantic appropriateness under time pressure. They then performed a written post hoc grammatical judgement and correction task on the same sentences at their own pace. Our first hypothesis was that these multilingual learners would a priori be highly metalinguistically aware, and thus adept at sifting formal grammatical information from semantic information both online as they heard the items, as well as post hoc in the written task. We also expected that lesser as well as more experienced multilingual participants would be equally proficient at analysing the grammatical constructions in the post hoc written task. Both of these assumptions were borne out by results. The results are relevant to the debate about metalinguistic advantages for adult foreign language learners who are not merely bilingual, but are at least trilingual, and how these advantages are employed during meaning and form processing in a foreign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study we investigate sentence production in the German interlanguage of Turkish students who have learned German as a first and English as a second foreign language. The students know both languages at an (advanced) intermediate level. Nevertheless, we observed some properties of the German interlanguage that seem to indicate an influence of the second foreign language English on the first foreign language German. We focused our investigation on the processing of the V2 mechanism in German and the fact that it is in certain cases replaced by a SVO ordering, which seems to be a transfer from English. However, an analysis of the SVO ordering in the German interlanguage showed that this syntactic processing is not the result of a transfer from English. By analysing sentence processing as a derivational process in terms of a minimalist grammar, we concluded that the SVO ordering is a derivational strategy of separating adjuncts from the process of morphological checking to derive the syntactic relations inside the checking domain as a local process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is part of a larger action research project on the role of secondary school language programmes in the maintenance and spread of community languages in Melbourne. The study focuses on bilinguals learning another community language (Greek or Spanish) as a third language, some of them having a home language with a connection to the target language and some with completely unrelated home languages. Qualitative and qualitative data show that the bilinguals tend to be more effective and persistent learners of the target language than monolinguals, that they are able to benefit from theft metalinguistic awareness, though there are differences between the schools in the degree of perception of this. Through L3, the pupils' home language maintenance is strengthened, they develop a more general interest in languages, and they engage in 'crossing'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an investigation into the interconnections among three languages, Arabic, Hebrew and English, each of which has a different orthography. Hebrew and Arabic have more in common with each other than with English; they are considered ``shallow'' orthographies if vowelized and ``deep'' orthographies if unvowelized. The reading, language, and working memory skills of 70 trilingual Israeli-Arab students, aged 14–15, were assessed. Arabic was their main instructional language in school, and Hebrew and English were studied as required subjects. All these adolescents studied Hebrew from the third grade and English from the fourth grade. They were administered word and pseudoword reading, language, orthographic, and working memory tests in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. In spite of differences among these three languages, the majority of the children showed adequate proficiency in three languages. A significant relationship was found between the acquisition of word and pseudoword reading skills, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills within and across the three languages. Trilingualism of this nature seems not to have negative consequences (and may even have positive consequences) for the development of oral language and reading skills in the three languages in spite of their different orthographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• L2 acquisition of Icelandic is affected by trilingualism exposure resulting from incidental English exposure. • Typical L2 outcomes in Iceland are not unproblematic and require language policy changes. • Studies of bi/multilingualism must focus on a greater variety of language environments. This study examined the long-term language outcomes of adolescents in the complex multilingual context of Iceland, where children learn Icelandic as a first (L1) or second language (L2), in a background of incidental English from internet and media sources. 50 adolescents enrolled in grades 8, 9 and 10 in Reykjavik (Iceland) public schools (27 L1 speakers and 23 L2 speakers) participated. Standardized language tests and language samples were collected in Icelandic and English. Self-ratings and parent ratings of language proficiency were obtained in Icelandic, English and, for L2 speakers, in the home language as well. As in previous studies, L2 speakers scored far below L1 speakers on formal tests of Icelandic, and also in conversation. The groups were similar in their English skills, with both groups scoring far below L1 English norms. Self-rated performance agreed well with measured performance. For the L2 speakers, self-rated performance in the home language was similar to performance in Icelandic and English. L1 speakers demonstrated much higher performance in Icelandic than English; L2 speakers' performance was more evenly distributed over their three languages. The considerable English exposure available in Iceland leads to similar English skills for both L1 and L2 groups, but affects their overall language development in different ways. L1 adolescents maintain a clear dominance in Icelandic, whereas the proficiency of the L2 group is more equally distributed across their three languages, leading to unpredictable patterns of language dominance and at the group level, low performance compared to native speaker expectations in all three languages. These language outcomes in adolescence are of great concern as they do not equip the L2 speakers with the functional communication skills they require for further schooling and jobs. The study calls for a reconsideration of typical multilingual outcomes as necessarily implying unproblematic language skills and suggest that language policy changes are required in Iceland to ensure that children graduate compulsory education with solid language skills that allow them to pursue their goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study of primary and secondary school teachers in Basque schools where Basque, Spanish and English are included in the curriculum. Traditionally, the three languages have been taught separately and the possible benefits of using the whole linguistic repertoire to establish links between the languages had not been acknowledged. New trends in multilingual education focusing on the whole linguistic repertoire and translanguaging have provided opportunities to change traditional approaches to teaching and to explore the potential advantages of translanguaging. In this study, a group of teachers from different trilingual schools were provided with theoretical and practical information about translanguaging and were asked to implement pedagogical translanguaging in their own class. Teachers were given a guideline for the implementation and were asked to prepare a lesson plan including activities that involved the use of two or more languages for pedagogical purposes. Then, the teachers taking part in this study used translanguaging for at least one lesson, received feedback from their students and reflected on the implementation. The results of this study show that pedagogical translanguaging can provide new opportunities for language learning and language awareness in the context of multilingual education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]