Part of
Transfer Effects in Multilingual Language DevelopmentEdited by Hagen Peukert
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 4] 2015
► pp. 147–160
Edited by Hagen Peukert
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 4] 2015
► pp. 147–160
Transfer effects in the acquisition of English as an additional language by bilingual children in Germany
In this paper, we investigate the language development of children with migration backgrounds who live in Hamburg and are currently learning English as a foreign language in school. With data collected from bilingual Russian-German, Turkish-German, and Vietnamese-German children, we evaluate both the quality and the quantity of transfer effects. The investigated linguistic features are subject-verb-agreement and the use of articles. We interviewed 160 12- and 16-year old test subjects, distributed equally according to language cluster and age, comparing the results to test subjects’ developmental levels in their heritage language and German, which were investigated independently. In addition to the main cohorts, additional cohorts of L1 speakers of Turkish, Russian, and Vietnamese with English as an L2 as well as adult bilinguals in Germany were interviewed. After factoring out language external phenomena, we can observe that both L1 and L2 have an influence on the acquisition of English, but that these effects depend on the phenomenon investigated and the language pairs involved. Our findings suggest a model of language transfer in which the grammatical status of a phenomenon interacts with the learner’s developmental level yielding qualitatively different transfer effects.
References
Auernheimer, G
(ed.) 2013 Schieflagen im Bildungssystem: Die Benachteiligung der Migrantenkinder, 5th edn. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. 
De Angelis, G
2007 Third or Additional Language Acquisition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Bardel, C. and Falk, Y
2007 The role of the second language in third language acquisition: the case of Germanic syntax. Second Language Research 23 (4): 459-484.
DESI-Konsortium
(ed.) 2006 Unterricht und Kompetenzerwerb in Deutsch und Englisch. Zentrale Befunde der Studie Deutsch-Englisch Schülerleistungen International (DESI). Frankfurt am Main: Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung.
Falk, Y. & Bardel, C
2011.Object pronouns in German L3 syntax. Evidence for the L2 status factor. Second Language Research 27(1): 59-82.
Flynn, S., Foley, C. & Vinnitskaya, I
2004.The cumulative-enhancement model for language acquisition. Comparing adults’ and children’s patterns of development in first, second and third language acquisition. International Journal of Multilingualism 1(1): 3-17.
García-Mayo, M.-P
2012 Cognitive approaches to L3 acquisition. International Journal of English Studies 12(1): 129-146.
Hammarberg, B
2001 Roles of L1 and L2 in L3 production and acquisition. In Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition: Psycholinguistic Perspectives, J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen & U. Jessner (eds), 21-41. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Håkansson, G., Pienemann, M. & Sayheli, S
2002.Transfer and typological proximity in the context of second language processing. Second Language Research 18(3): 250–73.
Jarvis, S. & Pavlenko, A
2010 Crosslinguistic Influence in Language and Cognition. New York NY: Routledge.
LiMA - Linguistic Diversity Management in Urban Areas
: LiMA Panel Study (LIPS); 2009-2013; Projektkoordination LiPS: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Ingrid Gogolin; ©LiMA-LiPS 2013.
Maluch, J., Neumann, M. & Kempert, S
2013 Differential growth patterns in English as a foreign language of bilingual and monolingual children in at tracked school system. Paper Presentation at
LiMA Final Conference: Multilingual Individuals Multilingual Societies 2 (MIMS 2)
, October 11th 2013.
Ngô, B.N
2001 The Vietnamese language learning framework. Part One: Linguistics. Journal of Southeast Language Teaching 10: 1-23.
Odlin, T
1989 Language Transfer. Crosslinguistic Influence in Language Learning. Cambridge: CUP.
Pienemann, M
1998 Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory [Studies in Bilingualism 15]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
2005 An introduction to Processability Theory. In Cross-linguistic Aspects of Processability Theory [Studies in Bilingualism 30], M. Pienemann (ed.), 1-160. Amsterdam: John-Benjamins.
Reich, H., Roth, H.-J. & Döll, M
2009 Fast Catch Bumerang. Deutsche Sprachversion. Auswertungsbögen und Auswertungshinweise. In Von der Sprachdiagnose zur Sprachförderung. FÖRMIG Edition Band 5, D. Lengyel, H. Reich, H.-J. Roth & M. Döll (eds), 209-241. Münster: Waxmann.
Rothman, J
2011 L3 syntactic transfer selectivity and typological determinacy. The typological primacy model. Second Language Research 27(2): 107-127.
Seidlhofer, B
2011 Conceptualizing �English� for a multilingual Europe. In English in Europe Today: Sociocultural and educational perspectives (AILA Applied Linguistics Series 8), A. De Houwer & A. Wilton (eds), 133-146. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Statistisches Amt für Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein
2011 Statistik informiert...Spezial. VII/2011. City of Hamburg.
Wade, T
2011 A Comprehensive Russian Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cited by
Cited by 12 other publications
Agustín-Llach, María-del-Pilar
2024. Some good news for the school: the levelling effect of the EFL class in FL vocabulary production and FL categorization of autochthonous learners and heritage speaker learners. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 0:0 
Fallah, Nader, Ali Akbar Jabbari & Ali Mohammad Fazilatfar
2016. Source(s) of syntactic cross-linguistic influence (CLI): The case of L3 acquisition of English possessives by Mazandarani–Persian bilinguals. Second Language Research 32:2 ► pp. 225 ff.
Gabriel, Christoph, Thorsten Klinger & Irina Usanova
2021. VOT production, writing skills, and general proficiency in multilingual learners of French: approaching the intertwinement of different linguistic levels. Multilingua 40:6 ► pp. 745 ff.
Gabriel, Christoph, Tanja Kupisch, Jeanette Seoudy, F. Neveu, G. Bergounioux, M.-H. Côté, J.-M. Fournier, L. Hriba & S. Prévost
2016. VOT in French as a foreign language: A production and perception study with mono- and multilingual learners (German/Mandarin-Chinese). SHS Web of Conferences 27 ► pp. 09002 ff.
Lloyd-Smith, Anika, Henrik Gyllstad, Tanja Kupisch & Stefano Quaglia
2021. Heritage language proficiency does not predict syntactic CLI into L3 English. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 24:3 ► pp. 435 ff.
Lorenz, Eliane, Richard J Bonnie, Kathrin Feindt, Sharareh Rahbari & Peter Siemund
2019. Cross-linguistic influence in unbalanced bilingual heritage speakers on subsequent language acquisition: Evidence from pronominal object placement in ditransitive clauses. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:6 ► pp. 1410 ff.
Lorenz, Eliane, Yevheniia Hasai & Peter Siemund
2021. Multilingual lexical transfer challenges monolingual educational norms: not quite!. Multilingua 40:6 ► pp. 791 ff.
Lorenz, Eliane & Peter Siemund
2019. Differences in the Acquisition and Production of English as a Foreign Language: A Study of Bilingual and Monolingual Students in Germany. In International Research on Multilingualism: Breaking with the Monolingual Perspective [Multilingual Education, 35], ► pp. 81 ff.
Namyalo, Saudah, Bebwa Isingoma & Christiane Meierkord
2016. Towards assessing the space of English in Uganda’s linguistic ecology. In Ugandan English [Varieties of English Around the World, G59], ► pp. 19 ff.
Siemund, Peter & Eliane Lorenz
2024. Chapter 5. Multilingual advantages. In Multifaceted Multilingualism [Studies in Bilingualism, 66], ► pp. 123 ff.
Son, Thanh Vi
2022. Procedural and Declarative Knowledge: The Swedish and Vietnamese learners' acquisition of knowledge in English grammar, and Pedagogical Implications. International Journal of TESOL & Education 2:1 ► pp. 238 ff.
Walla, Dianna
2023. Assessing knowledge of English verb placement and subject-verb agreement among multilingual students in grades 5–7 in Norway. Pedagogical Linguistics
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.