Innovation in Language Learning

Current research of foreign language (FL) acquisition proves that bilingual learners (people speaking two native languages) demonstrate significant differences in acquiring a foreign language (their L3) as compared to monolingual learners acquiring the same language as their L2. It is assumed that these differences concern various levels of language processing and include particular learning strategies, speed of processing, error rates etc. However, these assumptions are mainly based on the FL teachers’ experience, as experimental research in this area has been scarce.

The present research considers FL acquisition from the point of view of the learner’s mental lexicon understood as a multifaceted phenomenon which includes the whole total of linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge of an individual. A bilingual/multilingual mental lexicon incorporates knowledge of two or more linguistic systems and, thus, consists of several interconnected components. In case a language is acquired in academic/classroom settings, the academic FL component of the mental lexicon is being formed.

Subject, material and methods of the research

The aim of the research is to study how FL lexis is processed and represented in the mental lexicon (namely in its FL academic component) of bilingual and monolingual learners in terms of their similarities and differences. Particularly, the three following factors are under analysis: 1) mean reaction times of FL words processing; 2) language-specific FL words’ relatedness; 3) the structure of the FL academic component. The method of chained associative test was applied; two groups of university students learning English as an FL took part in the experiment: bilingual native speakers of the Komi-Permyak and Russian languages and monolingual native Russian speakers.

Results and conclusion

1) Bilingual and monolingual participants showed considerable differences in mean reaction times of FL words processing: Komi-Permyak students fulfilled the experimental task by half faster than Russian students. We claim that bilingual background can serve as an accelerating factor for some processes connected with FL acquisition; nevertheless, more studies in this regard are needed. 2) Both bilingual and monolingual participants predominantly relate FL words to words of their native language/languages (to Russian in case of monolingual learners; to both Komi-Permyak and Russian in case of bilingual learners). As a result, bilingual learners’ mental lexicon represents a tri-lingual formation with closely interconnected units which should necessarily lead to extensive interference and transfer from both native languages on the foreign one. 3) As compared to monolingual learners mental lexicon, the FL component of bilingual learners is to a far greater degree structured according to the proper linguistic principle: FL words’ connections actualize their certain linguistic properties (orthographic, morphological, derivational, syntactic, categorical etc.); moreover, a significant share of these words refers to the lexis of the academic/learning situation (teacher, student, study, learn, lesson, education, knowledge, skills, profession etc.).

 The research shows that bilingual FL learners differ from monolingual learners in all the three aspects under consideration. These data can be of importance for working out more effective methods of teaching FL to native speakers of the two languages.