Mother tongue-based education has been central to the promotion of early literacy skills in many multilingual contexts of the Global South. However, learners in such environments may face significant linguistic challenges when changing language of instruction during schooling. In particular, the linguistic distance between mother tongue and…

Recent research suggests that psychotypology may be one of the main factors determining L3 acquisition and use, especially so in the early stages. However, the existence and nature of multilingual learners' perception of language proximity have often only been assumed rather than measured, and rarely addressed with respect to the increasingly…

This study investigates the role of previously acquired linguistic systems, Mazandarani and Persian, in the acquisition of third language (L3) English at the initial stages. The data have been obtained from 31 students (age 13-14 years), testing the placement of attributive possessives in a grammaticality judgment task, an element rearrangement…

This study reports on the impact of 11 West European first languages on the acquisition of Dutch. Using data from nearly 6,000 second-language learners, it was found that the mother tongue had a rather large impact on two language skills--namely, oral and written proficiency--as measured by the scores received by these learners on the State…