LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Learning English as Third Language -
A Comparative Study between Iranian and Indian Bilinguals

Mojtaba Maghsudi, Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract

The acquisition of more than two language systems leads to the development of new skills such as learning how to learn. It also facilitates subsequent additional language acquisition as learners use meta-linguistic awareness to explore the cognitive and linguistic mechanisms underlying language.

In the present study, by employing the Two-way ANOVA, results indicated that Indian bilingual students performed significantly better than Iranian bilingual students in General English Proficiency and Grammatical Judgment Test. It further indicated that the correlation effect between the countries and gender was significant in General English Proficiency Test, while it was non-significant in Grammatical Judgment Test.

Key words: Bilingualism-third language learning-second language, and foreign language

1. The Role of Bilingualism in Third Language Acquisition

The main goal of the present study is to investigate the role of bilingualism in third language production, on the one hand, and on the development of pragmatic competence by foreign language learners of English, on the other. A great number of researches to date have been devoted to investigate the pragmatic competence of third language learners.

Third language acquisition may be considered as a relatively young discipline in the field of Applied Linguistics. However, growing research on the topic signals out relevant differences between second and third language acquisition and it also posits peculiar features to third language learning processes.

Clyne (2003) states that learning a third language may share some characteristics with second language learning but in the former case processes are far more complex. In fact, as argued by Cezon (2000), second language acquisition needs to be distinguished from third language acquisition, as the latter relates to extending the linguistic system of an individual not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively. Following this view, Herdina and Jessner (2002) argue for a dynamic perspective in studying multilingualism phenomena. According to these authors, learning a third language promotes the arousal of new skills and techniques deriving from the learners' previous language-learning experiences.

Current research on third language acquisition has pointed out the advantage of bilinguals in ESL (English as a second language) situation over bilinguals in EFL (English as a foreign language) situation. In ESL, English is considered as the language of instruction for all lessons, while students learning EFL may have one lesson of English per day, but the rest of their lessons are in their native language.

In an ESL situation such as one prevailing in India, it is vital that all teachers regard themselves not only as teachers of their subject but also as teachers of language. An ESL student's language development is influenced considerably by the language learning experiences that he or she has in the mainstream classroom.

2. Hypotheses

In the present study of ESL among Indian learners and EFL among Iranian students are studied to understand whether they differ in learning English as third language.

Therefore, the following null hypotheses are formulated:

H1: Iranian and Indian bilingual students do not differ significantly in their proficiency scores.

H2: Male and female students do not differ significantly in their proficiency scores.

H3: Country and gender will not correlate in proficiency scores.

H4: Iranian and Indian bilingual students do not differ significantly in their GJT scores.

H5: Male and female students do not differ significantly in their GJT scores.

H6: There is no correlation between country and gender for GJT scores.

3. Method

3.1. Participants

The subjects of the present study were 152 bilingual students who were randomly selected from several Pre-Universities. They belonged in two subgroups:

1. 70 Indian bilinguals with the Kannada as medium of instruction from the Karnataka State in India (32 male and 38 female students), and
2. 82 Iranian bilinguals with Farsi as medium of instruction from Markazi Province in Iran (39 male and 41 female students).

All who learn English as third language took the Grammatical Judgment Test (GJT) based on their respective textbooks and also General English Proficiency Test (GEPT).

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