The purpose of this dissertation has been to get a deeper understanding of how, when and why the English teachers of year 6-9 at a particular multilingual school use Swedish when they teach English in a multilingual classroom. Data were collected through notes taken during observations of two teachers during one lesson each. After observing the teachers I conducted one interview with them each. Swedish was used mostly when grammar was explained and when work was done with vocabulary. If Swedish dominated during a lesson or not, depended on what was being done during the lesson. The main reason given why the teachers used Swedish in teaching English was that they were not trained to teach English in a multilingual classroom where Swedish is not the first language of all the pupils. The teachers felt it was difficult to speak English during a whole lesson when they were teaching a group of pupils who had a low level of English.

This dissertation examines the possible influence of language learners' second language (L2) on their perception of phonological contrasts in their third language (L3). Previous studies on Third Language Acquisition (TLA) suggest various factors as possible sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of an L3. This dissertation specifically investigates whether learners' levels of perceptual performance in the L2 is related to their phonological perception of L3 contrasts. In order to examine the perception of Japanese contrasts by non-native learners, I conducted a forced-choice identification experiment (Experiment 1) and AXB discrimination experiment (Experiment 2) with native speakers of English and native speakers of Korean who were learning Japanese at an introductory level. In addition, the Korean participants also participated in a forced-choice English minimal pair identification experiment (Experiment 3). In order to answer the main research question, I examined whether there was any correlation between the Korean participants' perceptual performance in English (L2) and Japanese (L3).There was a positive correlation between the identification of the Japanese word-initial stop voicing contrast and the identification of English minimal pairs. Distinguishing Japanese voiced stops and voiceless stops is widely known to be difficult for native speakers of Korean especially in word-initial position. Therefore, this positive correlation is considered as an indication of a positive influence of learners' L2 on speech perception in their L3. The L2, however, did not influence the perception in the L3 negatively. This result indicates that the participants experienced positive influence from both of their background languages, which supports the idea expressed in the Cumulative-Enhancement Model. Positive correlations were also observed for the discrimination of several other Japanese contrasts and the identification of English minimal pairs. These correlations are considered to indicate an increase in the learners' sensitivity to the speech sounds in general. Different types of correlation results obtained for the identification and the discrimination tasks are considered to reflect the difference in the nature of these perception tasks. All in all, the results suggest that L3 perception is qualitatively different from L2 perception and that the perceptual level in the L2 is related to perception in the L3 at least to some extent.

[pt] Do Inglês L1 ao Português L3 passando pelo Espanhol L2: transferências em regência/transitividade verbal, com foco nas preposições transita por temas pouco explorados - não só pela combinação de línguas adotada, como também pela especificidade do fenômeno analisado e pelo tópico gramatical escolhido -, contribuindo para o desenvolvimento de uma área de pesquisa extremamente recente e promissora: a aquisição de terceira língua. Os estudos em AL3 ainda estão muito tímidos na América Latina, mas prementes no Brasil, por conta da crescente vinda de norte-americanos (IL1) já falantes do espanhol (EL2), querendo aprender o português (PL3). É nesse contexto que se faz relevante estudar como as línguas anteriormente aprendidas influenciam a aquisição de uma terceira língua. Esta tese perpassa os estudos contrastivos entre as três línguas em foco, mormente as transferências entre elas; o relativismo linguístico moderado; a corrente funcionalista; conceitos modernos de transitividade, sobretudo a GV; a Análise de Erros (Análise de Transferências); definições de bilinguismo e multilinguismo; e os fatores de influência em AL3. Tudo isso levando-se em conta que o processo de aquisição de terceira língua é mais complexo do que o de segunda. Utilizando-se alguns instrumentos metodológicos - questionários, redações e atividades elucidativas -, foram selecionados os informantes da pesquisa, diagnosticados os problemas mais comuns causados pelas transferências do inglês (L1) e do espanhol (L2) no português (L3) e confrontados os resultados com a hipótese formulada. Verificou-se que quanto maior o domínio na língua espanhola, maior também a sua influência no português, ao mesmo tempo em que diminuem as influências do inglês e aumentam as neutralizações das suas interferências. Contudo, não se pode dizer que a competência no espanhol é determinante para que a L2 seja mais utilizada que a L1 como base de transferências, vez que os índices de incidência do inglês continuam altos mesmo nos alunos com maior domínio daquela língua. Apesar de o espanhol ter alguns fatores a seu favor: maior proximidade tipológica com a L3, o status de LE e o efeito de última língua aprendida; vale destacar essa prevalência da LM, que talvez seja decorrente da escolha da sintaxe como objeto de estudo. Outro objetivo alcançado com a pesquisa foi a formulação de matrizes de transferências que podem auxiliar o professor em sala de aula de PLE. Ciente das diferenças entre as regências, ele é capaz de propor atividades específicas para ajudar esse grupo de alunos a empregar as preposições adequadamente no português, sem incentivá-los a fazer traduções literais - vício bastante encontrado nas gramáticas de português voltadas para o estrangeiro. O presente estudo ainda sugere temas para pesquisas futuras, como, por exemplo, a utilização de outra constelação de línguas ou a mudança do foco da análise mantendo o mesmo perfil de alunos. Pelo ineditismo do tema e dos resultados obtidos, esta tese pretende, em última instância, enriquecer o meio acadêmico colaborando com a descrição do português, não somente como língua estrangeira, mas principalmente como terceira língua. / [en] From English as L1 to Portuguese as L3 through Spanish as L2: transfers in verb regency/transitivity, with special emphasis on prepositions handles topics that have not yet been deeply explored. In addition to a unique combination of languages, this thesis focus on a specific phenomenon and grammar item, thus providing an important contribution for the development of an extremely recent (and promising) research area - Third Language Acquisition. Although TLA studies are incipient in Latin America, in Brazil one may see the urge to adapt a new linguistic reality as more and more Spanishspeaking North Americans who have come to the country want to learn Portuguese. That would call for some investigation on the influences between previous learned languages and the target one. Theory includes contrastive studies, particularly transferences among the three tongues selected; moderate linguistic relativism; the functionalist school; modern transitivity concepts, especially Valence Grammar; Error Analysis (Transference Analysis); bilingualism / multilingualism definitions; and TLA influence factors. An underlying consideration is the fact that the acquisition of a third language is more complex than the process to acquire a second language. By means of some tools (questionnaires, compositions and elucidative activities), research reporters were selected; the most common errors caused by English (L1) / Spanish (L2) transferences into Portuguese (L3) were diagnosed; and the results were then compared against the proposed hypothesis. Data analysis indicated that the better expertise one has in Spanish, the higher is their Portuguese influence as the amount of L2 transference in L3 rises along Subgroups (C - low; B - average; A - high). Meanwhile, English influence in Portuguese performance decreases and interference neutralizing rises. It would not be possible to affirm, however, that Spanish command is essential for L2 to be more frequently employed than L1 as a basis for transference, given that English indices are still high in the best command subgroup. Despite Spanish pros - higher typology proximity to TL; FL status; and the last language effect -, ones MT prevalence may result from verb transitivity choice as an object of study. Another target that has been achieved by this thesis is the formulation of transference matrices that may help Portuguese as Foreign Language teachers in their classrooms. Once they are aware of agreement differences, they will be able to come up with specific activities to help these students use Portuguese prepositions correctly, instead of encouraging them to transfer directly from one language into another - unfortunately, most PFL grammars does so. For the future, it would be interesting, for example, to develop a similar study with other constellations of languages or to choose another object while keeping the profile selected in here. By and large, this work intends to enrich the academia by collaborating to describe Portuguese as a third language (rather than just a foreign language), as pioneer handling of topics and the results that have been achieved should qualify this research for future reference.

This qualitative case study examines teachers’ perspectives on receiving and teaching newly arrived immigrant pupils. Previous research and the Swedish National Agency for Education have shown that immigrant pupils have a tendency to fail their education, and some researchers also implied that these children fail their English education. The aim of this essay has been to investigate how English teachers at a secondary school in southern Sweden deal with the growing number of newly arrived immigrants in their classes. The collected data is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with three teachers at a secondary school in Sweden. The results indicate that the teachers considered that it was challenging to receive and teach newly arrived immigrant pupils. They do not have enough information on how they should incorporate these children into subject planning and ongoing pedagogical initiatives. Moreover, the data also show that the participants expressed the fact that the pupils often had a low level of English proficiency, and that they occasionally did not obtain a grade in English. The pupils’ low English level connected with their ongoing Swedish acquisition made it difficult for the teachers to adapt their teaching. The Results also implied that many newly arrived pupils used English as a communication language, which may have a positive impact on their learning.

The English language has a great influence on Swedish culture. Swedish students learn English in school, listen to music in English and watch movies where English is spoken. As the importance of English increases the number of students who already speak a second language also increases. Therefore, the objective of this essay is to compare bilingual and trilingual students in their English acquisition and establish which differences that can be found between these two groups of students. The results showed that even if the students media consumption did not differ, the bilingual students were exposed to English in a greater degree. Even though the bilingual students were exposed to English to a greater degree, the bilingual and trilingual students showed similar results in the English subject. The results also showed that the trilingual students who were exposed to English in the same extent as the bilingual students showed better results in the English subject.

In an ever-changing modern world people migrate, to a greater extent than ever before. Sweden has faced a huge influx of new immigrants in the past 10 years, many of which have had to study for many years before being able to work, including learning English as a third language.This study looked at foreign-born adult learners (Swedish L2) of English and compared them to Swedish-born (Swedish L1) learners of English in terms of English vocabulary. This study also compared factors of age, gender, length of stay in Sweden and Swedish language level completed in Swedish L2 learners learning English; the study found that there is a small positive correlation between length of stay, younger age and completed Swedish studies with the results in the English Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT). As expected, the female students within both Swedish L1 and L2 learners outperformed the male counterparts. The study found a significant correlation between attainment on a Swedish vocabulary test and the English vocabulary test. A learner with a higher score on the Swedish test generally performed better on the English vocabulary test, to a statistically significant degree. This, most likely, is because Swedish is typologically close to English with a high number of cognates between the languages. Surprisingly enough, the results produced pointed to very limited vocabulary learning by moving through the Swedish adult education system as the increase in both Swedish and English vocabulary was negligible.

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This dissertation explores the potential differences in the acquisition of the sound system of a second language (L2) versus a third language (L3), building on recent research on adult L2 speech learning and testing the hypothesis that new category acquisition is available across the lifespan. On the one hand, recent influential theories of L2 speech learning predict that new sound categories will be difficult to acquire due to complex interactions among the phonetic categories residing in one same perceptual space. On the other, there exists the common assumption that the more sound categories one’s native language contains, the less difficult it will be to acquire new ones in a native-like fashion. My work provides additional evidence to this discussion, while providing speech data from the following five different speaker groups: (1) native speakers of American English; (2) native speakers of Mexican Spanish; (3) native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese; (4) native speakers of English learning Portuguese as their L2, and (5) native speakers of English learning Portuguese as their L3, who speak Spanish as their L2.The dissertation consists of three content chapters. The first of the content chapters describes the vowel systems of Mexican Spanish, American English and Brazilian Portuguese as informed by production data of the three native speaker groups above (1, 2 and 3). The second and third chapters describe and contrast the vowel system(s) of the two learner groups (4 and 5) as informed by their production and perception of Portuguese vowels respectively. The results from the analysis of the data from the various production and perception experiments performed as part of this dissertation provide evidence for (a) phonetic category assimilation and dissimilation processes in post-L1 speech learning and phonetic category interactions in general; (b) the relevance of quality and quantity of input in language learning; (c) the discussion on the relation between perception and production in post-L1 speech learning; and (d) the need for an extension of current models of L2 speech learning and cross-linguistic speech perception in order for these to address post-L2 speech learning processes, among other topics.

AbstractThe aim of this essay is to identify English out-of-school activities among students with an immigrant background to find out to what extent English out-of-school activities have an impact on the students’ results at the National Test of English.An additional aim is to find out if English out-of-school activities are a way of integration outwards or vice versa if the lack of English out-of-school activities is a sign of integration inwards. The present study is based upon a questionnaire with closed questions, which was filled in by 54 third graders enrolled in the Child and Recreation Programme. The informants are divided into two groups, one of which is a control group of native Swedish students. The study showed a tendency that students with an immigrant background who are not involved in English out-of-school activities obtain lower grades in English and that they integrate inwards by using their native language on the Internet, listening to music and watching films from their home country. Furthermore, the study showed that there is a slight difference between native Swedish students and students with an immigrant background as regards computer habits.Keywords: English out-of-school activities, integration, third language acquisition, informal learning, computer habits, National Test of English, the third culture

Interest in Portuguese has steadily increased over the last decade in universities across both North and South America (Carvalho 2002, 2011), principally among Spanish speakers. Generally speaking, Portuguese for Spanish-speakers courses have been designed around the theory that Spanish-speaking students will benefit from cross-linguistic influence (CLI, or transfer) due to the typological similarity that exists between Portuguese and Spanish (see Júdice, 2000). Related to this, the Typological Primacy Model, or TPM (Rothman, 2011), states that CLI in L3 acquisition principally comes from the language that is perceived to be typologically similar to the target language (psycho-typology, see Kellerman, 1983), resulting in both positive and negative transfer. Although there is a high degree of typological similarity between Spanish and Portuguese, it is unknown whether or not this linguistic proximity is equally salient to all learners and whether or not learners view this linguistic proximity as an advantage or a disadvantage when learning Portuguese. Furthermore, some studies have suggested that the context in which one's Spanish is acquired may play a role in the different types of CLI evident among different Spanish-speaking learners of Portuguese (e.g., Carvalho & da Silva, 2006; Johnson, 2004; Koike & Gualda, 2008). Consequently, Carvalho (2002, 2011) has called for more empirical evidence to shed light on the nature of CLI between Spanish and Portuguese. This dissertation, consisting of three main studies, seeks to answer this call by examining the effects of language background on L3 Portuguese acquisition among three groups of Spanish-speaking bilinguals: L1 Spanish (L1S) bilinguals, L2 Spanish (L2S) bilinguals, and heritage speakers of Spanish (HS bilinguals). Results from both quantitative and qualitative analyses of questionnaire data from the first study suggest that although all participants view Spanish as the principal source of CLI in L3 Portuguese acquisition, L2S bilinguals and HS bilinguals perceive the role of Spanish as significantly more facilitative when learning Portuguese than do L1S bilinguals. The second and third studies used a sentence completion task and a preference/grammaticality judgment task (see Ayoun, 2000) to measure bilingual students' knowledge of mood distinctions in Spanish in obligatory and non-obligatory contexts, respectively, and how they transfer that knowledge to Portuguese. Results indicate that the L2S group scored significantly lower on both measures of mood distinctions in obligatory contexts in Spanish, but transferred over more of their knowledge to Portuguese than either the L1S or HS groups. Similarly, results suggest that L2S bilinguals do not understand the variable nature of mood distinctions in non-obligatory environments, but show almost identical strategies of mood selection in both Spanish and Portuguese. In contrast, L1S and HS bilinguals display knowledge of the variable nature of mood distinctions in Spanish in these contexts but show marked differences in mood selection between the Spanish and Portuguese tasks. The results of these studies contribute to L3 acquisition literature by emphasizing the complexity involved in determining the role of the background languages in CLI and by highlighting the importance of the context of acquisition in CLI. In addition, the results provide more empirical evidence regarding the differences between how different groups of Spanish-speaking bilinguals transfer their knowledge when acquiring L3 Portuguese.