Innovation in Language Learning

Kazakhstan is a multilingual society with cultural and historical heritage. There are many traditions, historical books, manuscripts, monuments and historical collections presenting the history and culture of the nation. “Enlightened people are proud of their outstanding people who contributed to development of the history…” and Kazakh language plays a vitally important role in delivering this history and culture. Every year a large number of international tourists, students, scholars and experts in different fields are visiting this country because of their interests. Knowing multiple languages is playing a significant role in communicative success between the speakers of the different languages.

This article investigates the rarely researched issue of how English grammar in multilingual settings interferes with mixed proficiency learners of Kazakh/Russian students. This paper highlights language interference of multilingual students at Nazarbayev University.The paper will discuss how mother tongue of Kazakh, functional Russian taught in school and used at work and the increasing use of English at the English-medium University is creating observed L3 interference on the students’ L1 production. This is the pilot study utilizing classroom observation and document analysis of students’ written work. The findings highlight a new area for classrooms in which students transition between multiple languages. The research will be useful to develop the theory of teaching second language acquisition in multilingual educational settings.