The Effect of English as a Second Foreign Language On Learning Italian as a Third Foreign Language
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In certain educational contexts, the study of learner corpora yields intriguing and valuable insights. This paper aims to examine and analyze the interference of English, learned as a foreign language, on the acquisition of Italian. To this end, we investigated a corpus of written productions by Greek students learning Italian as their first foreign language and a corpus of written productions by Greek students learning Italian as their second foreign language. Research on corpora has demonstrated its ability to provide both qualitative and quantitative insights into the interference effects of second language acquisition on third language learning. Our findings indicate notable patterns in the use of functional words; specifically, there is an underuse of articles and an overuse of personal pronouns, attributable to the structural differences between English and Italian. Conversely, students learning Italian as a third language displayed greater accuracy in their use of content words.
Author: KATERINA FLOROU
Institution: National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4402255413