The Pros And Cons Of Third Language Acquisition

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Since TLA is a rather new area of research, the apportionment of nomenclatures and areas of study surrounding it happen to be indistinct and not accurately defined. It is often the case that scholars implement preceding inquiry of related fields that are adaptable to the new one, but sometimes this leads to overlapping and unclear concepts. Therefore, one of the first problems one has to deal with when doing research on Third Language Acquisition is that there is no clear definition of the term TLA. Furthermore, there has been some controversy in using TLA as a separate field of study (García-Mayo 2012: 129). In other words, Third Language Acquisition was not even considered a field of research until a few years ago, but it was included in…show more content…
The acquisition of the first two languages can be simultaneous (as in early bilingualism) or consecutive” (Cenoz, 2003: 71). According to this definition, a language learner might have acquired two languages, meaning the mother tongue first and then a second and third non-native language, or two languages simultaneously (e.g. child from a bilingual background) and a third language later. De Angelis completes and facilitates this definition: “Third or additional language acquisition […] refers to all languages beyond the L2 without giving preference to any particular language” (De Angelis 2007: 11). Hence, TLA refers to the languages that were acquired after an L2, therefore, it can define the acquisition of a third, fourth or fifth language as well (Safont Jorda 2005: 185). According to this definition, Third Language Acquisition and multilingual acquisition do not only have a lot in common but they stand for the same process. TLA or multilingual acquisition used to be regarded as a form of L2 acquisition (Safont Jorda 2005: 185). Also the cognitive and linguistic processes involved in TLA are comparable to the ones in SLA, but the additional language makes the operations of these processes more complex. TLA comprises intricate and particular characteristics and aftermaths due to the different potential interactions between the previously acquired languages and the additional language being learned (Safont Jorda 2005: 186). According to Cenoz (2000) the context of acquisition, variation in the order the languages are learned, the distance observed between the involved languages, and the sociocultural status of the languages connected with the learning process, distinguishes the acquisition of an L3 to the acquisition of an L2. When learning an L3, language learners also come up with new skills, which are defined
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