Teresa Kieseier

University of Mannheim · Department of English Linguistics

In a mixed-methods approach, this paper explores student views of plurilingual foreign-language (FL) teaching of English among primary-school students in grade 4. We investigate whether students who were raised in the majority language only and those who grew up speaking an additional minority language differ in their appreciation of plurilingual F...

In this chapter, we assess the extent to which profile effects, that is domain-particular patterns of cognitive and linguistic predictors in early natural L2 acquisition, extend to classroom learners . Specifically, we test the relative impacts of cognitive and linguistic factors on achievement in the early foreign language acquisition of English v...

Metalinguistic awareness (MLA) is a predictor of adult foreign language (FL) learning in instructed settings. Following Bialystok and Ryan (1985 Bialystok, E., & Ryan, E. (1985). Toward a definition of metalinguistic skill. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 31(3), 13–32. [Google Scholar]) two-component model of MLA, we distinguish ML analysis as the abilit...

In a pre-posttest control group study, we test how plurilingual foreign language teaching affects foreign-language development in 258 primary-school students learning English in Germany. We compare general proficiency development in a group of students experiencing plurilingual teaching versus a group having regular, target-language-only teaching o...

This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students’ minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test d...

Aims and Objectives We compared speech accuracy and pronunciation patterns between early learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different language backgrounds. We asked (1) whether linguistic background predicts pronunciation outcomes, and (2) if error sources and substitution patterns differ between monolinguals and heterogeneous bil...

It has been suggested that learners can use their phonological knowledge receptively in other linguistic domains, for instance to support lexical acquisition, a process referred to as “phonological bootstrapping” ( Christophe et al., 1997 ). However, research on productive phonological processes in early foreign language acquisition has been rare....

This longitudinal study tests effects of minority and majority-language proficiency in the early foreign language learning of English in German primary schools. In a study with monolingual German and bilingual students who speak a minority language at home (N = 200), we find that the bilingual group scores lower than the monolingual group overall, yet...

This chapter explores cross-linguistic influences in the lexical and grammatical acquisition of L3 English among child L2 learners of German with a variety of L1 backgrounds. For lexical development, we find interrelations in vocabulary size between L1, L2 and English lexicons. For grammar, a sentence repetition task does not show any differences b...