Third Language Acquisition: Investigating the Roles of L2 Proficiency, The Typological Primacy Model, and the L2 Status Factor Model on German Vowel Perception in L1 English, L2 French Individuals

The present study examines the predictions made by the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (DMM) (Jessner, 2008), which states that increased metalinguistic awareness aids in language learning, the Typological Primacy Model (TPM) (Rothman, 2011), which posits that whichever language is more typologically similar to the target language will provide the most influence, and the L2 Status Factor model (L2SF) (Williams & Hammarberg, 1998; Falk & Bardel, 2007) which claims that one’s L2 is the greatest source of influence on learning an L3. Fourteen L1 English, L2 French undergraduates were recruited from Carleton College; vowels of interest were /y:/, /œ/, /ø:/, /ɪ/, and /ʊ/, which were compared to /i/, /ε/, /e/, and /u/. It was hypothesized that if participants perform with greater accuracy on English-German and not French vowels, the TPM would be supported, as English and German are more related. If better performance was achieved on French-German and not English vowels, the L2 Status Factor would be supported, because French as the L2 would be affecting L3 perception. If the high-proficiency L2 group performed better, the metalinguistic awareness hypothesis would be supported. The descriptive results provide preliminary support for the DMM and the L2 Status Factor Model, as the high proficiency group outperformed the low proficiency group and were more accurate on vowels which exist in German and French over German and English. Taking into account its small sample size, this study is framed as a pilot designed to provide information that may be valuable for constructing a larger-scale follow up