44 learner. Only some studies looked at younger learners and included bilingual heritage speakers, which are an increasing group of people in our societies (see the introductory chapter). In the current study, it is aimed to address some of the aforementioned deficiencies; however, new deficiencies are the consequence (see Chapter 8). The sample size will be larger, we will not focus on 10 speakers exclusively, but the entire sample consists of 249 speakers. This increases the likelihood for proposing adequate generalizations. In addition, the groups that will be looked at comprise multiple subgroups, intermediate and advanced learners of English for both monolingual and bilingual children. This allows for a wider picture since various language combinations are included. However, this means that the individual subgroups are also comparably small. Concerning the grammatical area that will be analyzed, we are also limited to one specific area as we can hardly make a general statement about language acquisition regarding all fields of grammar within one study. It is not possible to cover every grammatical area, from phonetics and phonology, to the lexicon or syntax. Yet, we chose a complex area, tense and aspect, that allows for manifold investigations.
Before we get into more details concerning the methodology and the background of the current study, we need to clarify a number of terminological issues. The first domain that will be addressed is the labeling of the individual languages of a speaker.
45 Here, however, research stopped, and there are almost no studies that go beyond L2 acquisition in that limited sense and de Angelis (2007: 4) states that this only allows for an incomplete picture of how non-native language acquisition works. The reason for this was that even though there was agreement that L1 acquisition and L2 acquisition differ, the assumption that L2 acquisition is different from L3 or L4 or L5 acquisition was not too popular (de Angelis 2007:
4). De Angelis claims that some researchers had the opinion that “a distinction between an L2 learner and an L3 or an L6 learner is in fact redundant, as the process underlying the acquisition of all non-native languages is essentially the same” (2007: 4). Therefore, the labels L1 or first language and L2 or second language were clearly sufficient.
This understanding has recently changed, as the previous chapter demonstrated. There is now a vast majority of research that includes the acquisition of languages other than the L1 and the L2. Scholars now support the belief that all previously acquired languages and acquisition experience influence further language acquisition (de Angelis 2007: 4) and Chapter 3.1 demonstrated that L2 and L3 acquisition show contrasts. Therefore, we need to distinguish not just between the L1 and the L2, but we drive for finding a way to refer to additional languages as well. De Angelis (2007: 11) proposes “third or additional language acquisition”, because it sets it apart from second language acquisition but also includes further languages, i.e. the L4 or L5 and so on. Hence, she argues for a label that is distinct from the two previously acquired languages but that does not differentiate any further.
Hammarberg (2010, 2014) approaches this terminological issue from a slightly different angle. Hammarberg (2014: 3) remarks that the label second language, or L2, is used differently in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research than in Third Language Acquisition (TLA) research. In the former, it is usually any non-native language that is acquired, and in the latter, it is typically the language that was acquired as the chronologically second language (Hammarberg 2014: 3). Following the latter research area, the L3 or third language could have several meanings:
(a) the chronologically third language […], or (b) the next language encountered after the simultaneous acquisition of two languages in early infancy […], or (c) any non-native language currently being acquired by a speaker who is already familiar with one or more other non-native languages. (Hammarberg 2014: 3)
We clearly see that these three distinctions demonstrate a rather inconsistent use of the term third language. Therefore, it is necessary to have a closer look at how this could be more uniform.
First, Hammarberg presents “the linear model” which he argues to be common practice among many scholars (2010: 93). The languages of a speaker are labeled accordingly to the
46 order of acquisition, hence, the first language is the L1, the second language is the L2, and so on and so forth (Hammarberg 2010: 93). This is covered by notion (a) from above (Hammarberg 2014: 3). Yet, such a neat labeling may not always be possible, especially when we consider our modern, western societies that are shaped by individual mobility, going abroad for some time to study or to work, and by in general diverse language biographies.
I provide a small example for how diverse language biographies can be in temporary societies. Now, in the beginning of the 21st century, when you ask a number of young university students in Germany about their language repertoires and about what their native language is and how many languages they speak, their answers will be extremely multifarious. Some grew up with German and another language, for instance Spanish or Turkish, studied English and French at school, and have recently started to learn Japanese, for example. They may not remember a lot from their French classes and are now much more confident in German than in Spanish, even though Spanish was the language they came into contact first. Some of the students may find it easy to classify their languages according to the labels L1, L2, L3, Ln following the linear model, others, however, may be unsure about which of their languages should be regarded their L1. It may even have changed over the course of their lives: some reported that their other language used to be their L1, their native language, but that they are not, after years of living in Germany, very proficient and fluent in this language anymore. How can we compare such a L1 to a L1 of a person that grew up in Germany with only German as their L1?
Hence, this seems to correspond to what Hammarberg refers to when he remarks that
“it will often be neither meaningful nor even possible to order a multilingual’s languages along a linear time scale” (2010: 93). He also offers some typical situations that complicate such linear ordering: (i) simultaneous acquisition of two or several languages may make the labeling impossible; (ii) little knowledge of a language poses the question of whether such languages should be included in the language repertoire or not; (iii) different types of knowledge, i.e. only reading or oral skills but no writing skills, may also complicate the labeling; (iv) interrupted learning, i.e. taking up a language again after years of not using it, could cause problems for the linear model; and (v) bonus languages, i.e. languages that are very similar to already known languages, such as Norwegian if you speak Swedish, could also play a role in multilingual minds but are not covered by this linear model (Hammarberg 2010: 94).
These examples should have exemplified that the linear model may very often fail to represent the linguistic background in an adequate way. Jessner et al. (2016) also remark that in a multilingual setting, such chronological labeling may be complicated because “dominance
47 (in terms of proficiency or frequency of use) and/or the ‘emotional weight’ given to a certain language do/does not necessarily correspond to the chronological order of acquisition” (2016:
194).
Yet, there may be other situations, where this model could be useful. Let us take a child who grows up with one language, German, in Germany, studies English in school as the first foreign language and takes up Spanish as the second foreign language later. Here, the labels L1, L2, and L3 would be useful and easily applicable.
A second problem with this linear model is that this chronological order also has certain connotations with regard to language proficiency. Usually, a speaker is most proficient or fluent in the L1 (de Angelis 2007: 9); yet, as Hopp (2019) has shown, this may not be the case for heritage speakers. In such situations, the L2 may take over the role of the most proficient language (Hopp 2019: 579). This means that such labels can also be misleading and may result in a different interpretation as some of the former studies have demonstrated.
This distinction may also not be adequate for people that grow up with two languages simultaneously. For such bilingual speakers, a more useful distinction would be one that differentiates between native languages (NL) and non-native languages (NNL) (Hammarberg 2014: 6). A native language or native languages are those that were acquired from birth onwards and a non-native language or non-native languages were added later, during adolescence or adulthood (Hammarberg 2014: 6). This distinction is based on cognitive differences between NL and NNL (Hammarberg 2014: 6). There may be different cut off points in terms of age of acquisition: this will be addressed in Chapters 3.4 and 3.5.
Another point worth mentioning still applies to bilinguals. De Angelis (2007: 11) remarks that the two languages of a bilingual may either have a balanced relationship or one language may be dominant compared to the other language. Balance and dominance relate to the proficiency level: to be balanced means that a person is equally proficient in both languages;
and if a person has a higher proficiency in one language, then we find a dominant relationship (de Angelis 2007: 9-10). The latter seems to be more common, this will be examined in Chapter 3.5 in more detail.
Hammarberg deviates from the formerly mentioned traditional chronological labeling but defines L1 as the native language or languages of a speaker, and L2 as one or more non-native languages of a speaker (2014: 6). Hence, a person can have various L1s and L2s. This seems to be a more suitable representation of highly complex language biographies. The L3 is then simply a special case of an L2: “[i]n dealing with the linguistic situation of a multilingual, the term third language (L3) refers to a non-native language which is currently being used or
48 acquired in a situation where the person already has knowledge of one or more L2s in addition to one or more L1s” (Hammarberg 2010: 97). In sum, Hammarberg (2010, 2014) also proposes a language model that differentiates, similar to de Angelis (2007), between three levels.
Figure 4: The language acquisition hierarchy (taken from Hammarberg 2010: 101)
Finally, Hammarberg (2010: 98-99) considers a new alternative: a hierarchical ordering of the language repertoire of a speaker into primary language, secondary language, and tertiary language (Hammarberg 2010: 99). With this “three-order hierarchy” he hopes to add the multilingual perspective to this complex situation and he hopes to replace formerly confusing terms (Hammarberg 2010: 101) (see Figure 4).
The labels L1, L2, L3 and so on, somehow imply a chronological ordering and also a level of (decreasing) proficiency. Hence, the L1 would then be the language in which a speaker is most proficient and the language with the highest numbering the least proficient. Yet, this may, for reasons that have just been addressed, not always be the case. Especially for heritage speakers, and those are in focus in the present study, these labels may not be adequate. This is the reason why in the current discussion, we will not use the labels L1, L2, or L3, but we make use of the less controversial terms majority language for the dominant language in the respective country (in this study this will be German), heritage language (HL) for the family language of the bilingual children (i.e. Russian, Turkish, or Vietnamese) and foreign language or additional language for the non-native language English. We hereby concentrate on Meisel’s
49 definition of a heritage language: “HL […] is typically the language of origin of immigrants, and its use is frequently confined to family-related sociolinguistic domains” (2014: 437). He also explains that the HL exists “in addition to the majority language of the country of residence” (Meisel 2014: 437). This accords to what has previously been described for the heritage speaker: growing up in a country where the dominant language is another than the language of the family (more will be discussed in Chapter 3.5; see also Montrul 2016).
Meisel (2014) outlines a common situation that can also be found here in Germany among the participants of the study: the Russian-German, Turkish-German, and Vietnamese-German students grow up in Vietnamese-Germany, go to Vietnamese-German schools, but share another language with their family (and friends). For the participants this means the following: in case of the monolingual participants, English is the first non-native language, i.e. it is a foreign language.
For the other students, the Russian-German, Turkish-German, and Vietnamese-German children, English will also be a foreign language. The only difference is that the latter speakers have already knowledge of two previously acquired languages. Hence, this foreign language English is for all participants an additional language that is added to their linguistic repertoire.
One note of caution: for some of the participants, both languages can be seen as native languages (according to the former definition); for others, however, only the heritage language Russian, Turkish, or Vietnamese is the native language and German in principle a non-native language.9 Yet, as will be shown in Chapter 3.5, both belong to the group of bilingual speakers, as they acquired German, the language of the environment, rather early in childhood. Therefore, we will refer to all speakers with previous knowledge of two languages (be it two native languages or one native language and one non-native language) as bilingual heritage speakers that learn English as an additional language. The German, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese monolingual students will be referred to as monolingual learners of English as an additional language.
The next chapter touches upon another terminological issue, namely that between language acquisition and language learning.
9 Some children were born in Germany and they acquired both German and another language (either Russian, Turkish, or Vietnamese) from birth onwards. Others were born outside of Germany, where they grew up with one language. Then, after moving to Germany, they started to learn German as their chronologically second language.
A more detailed typology of the participants of this study can be found in Chapter 5.3.
50 3.3 Terminology: acquisition versus learning
There is a discussion about whether we should distinguish between acquisition and learning as two distinct concepts or whether these terms can be used synonymously. Krashen (1981) clearly differentiates between acquisition on the one hand, and learning on the other hand. He particularly refers to adults and children separately, which is nicely in line with what was discussed in Chapter 3.1.1., namely that we have to keep in mind to differentiate between particular groups of learners, and particularly between children and adults as rather distinct groups of learners. In Krashen’s understanding, acquisition refers to the ‘natural’ process of language acquisition as can be found in children that start using their first or second languages (1981: 1). The term natural was used to stress that it relies on communication in a natural setting, without explicit teaching of grammatical rules or forms; it is all about meaning (Krashen 1981: 1). This describes the normal process of children acquiring their first language, or languages. Adults, of course, can also acquire a language other than the first language, if it happens in such a naturalistic setting. Krashen argues that proficiency or “fluency in production is based on what [learners] have ‘picked up’ through active communication” (Krashen 1981:
2). Hence, the normal process of acquiring a language happens in childhood, but if adults pick up a language similarly, meaning also without formal and rule-based instruction, we can still speak of language acquisition.
Language learning, however, happens via giving explicit rules and via error correction (Krashen 1981: 1). This, as should become clear now, relates to formal language instruction that happens in a classroom situation. Both children and adults can learn a language.
Yet, there are other scholars, that do not differentiate between these two terms, but use them interchangeably (see for example Ellis 1994; Odlin 1989). Ellis’ argument is that there is not yet a convincing definition of the term acquisition available, but mentions Krashen (1981) as one who proposed a separation into acquisition and learning, as has just been explained (Ellis 1994: 14). He agrees to its validity but remarks that it is problematic to clearly classify learners into either of the two categories (Ellis 1994: 14). Regarding the biographies of people in our globalized world today, it seems unlikely that the process of learning or acquiring a language follows a uniform path. It is more likely that the concepts, defined by Krashen (1981), merge, in a sense, and that there are phases in which learning and phases in which acquisition is predominant.
51 For the current study, therefore, it makes sense to follow Ellis (1994) rather than Krashen (1981), because the learners that are being investigated are more or less from one particular group. We have monolingual children, on the one hand, that learn a second language (English) in a formal school context, and we have bilingual learners, on the other hand, that acquired their first two languages at first and are additionally learning the language of the environment in school and are also learning the third language. At the same time, of course, it applies that learning and acquisition alternate throughout their development (i.e. in case of German, the language of the environment, they get formal training at school but might also acquire German when conversing with their (German) peers). With respect to the participants of this study, we expect their language biographies to follow a more or less similar development overall. Therefore, whenever we use these two terms, we will not differentiate between the distinctions made by Krashen (1981), but we will use them interchangeably, following Ellis (1994). As Chapter 3.1.1 showed, there are assumed differences because of this particular difference between acquisition and learning but this is not in focus here, because we are not concentrating on this difference. In the current study, it will therefore not be addressed any further.
The following section addresses an issue that is also highly debated and whose dissent among scholars was mentioned several times before. We will clarify if and why it makes a difference when we consider child or adult language acquisition.