A Multilingual Development Framework for Young Learners: Early Multi-Competence in South Tyrol 9783111106601, 9783111104652

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Barbara Hofer A Multilingual Development Framework for Young Learners

Language Contact and Bilingualism

Edited by Yaron Matras

Volume 27

Barbara Hofer

A Multilingual Development Framework for Young Learners Early Multi-Competence in South Tyrol

ISBN 978-3-11-110465-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-110660-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-110771-4 ISSN 2190-698X Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950640 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Anette Linnea Rasmus/Fotolia Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements The compilation of this book has been made possible thanks to the help of many kind people who supported me throughout my research. I am particularly indebted to the principals of the schools participating in the study: Brugger Elisabeth, GS Bruneck, Fink Veronika, GS Leifers, Niederkofler Heidi, GS Langer and Pestalozzi Niederkofler Liselotte, GS Gries, Karl Spergser, GS Lana, Raffeiner Herbert, GS Schluderns/Taufers/Glurns, and to all the teachers and children taking part in the study. My deep gratitude goes to Kathrin Oberhofer for her invaluable support with the statistical evaluation, to Romy Finazzer who assisted me with the CFMC and CMC models, and to Herta Puff who helped with the layout. Special thanks go to my mentor Ulrike Jessner and the DyME research team at Innsbruck University for their encouragement and inspiring exchange of ideas. Lastly, I wish to thank my family for their loving patience over the years. All weaknesses and imperfections are entirely my own.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-202

When a particular way of looking at something has become so established that it is taken for granted, an alternative way of looking is almost impossible to imagine. (Garner 2004: 47)

List of abbreviations CDST CLIN CFMC CT CUP DMM L1/L2/L3 Ln HFE MIE MLA MLC MCB MFE MLD MLU MLB OLB SIF SIE XLA YEM

Complex Dynamic Systems Theory Crosslinguistic interaction Complexity Framework of Multilingual Competence Complexity Thinking Common Underlying Proficiency Dynamic Model of Multilingualism Language 1/Language 2/Language 3 any language beyond L1/L2/L3 Hidden factor effect Multilingual investment effect Metalinguistic awareness Multilingual competence Multilingual competence building Multilingual facilitation effect Multilingual development Multilingual Learner User Mixed language background Other language background Stimulus Impact Factor Stimulus Impact Effect Crosslinguistic awareness Young emergent multilingual

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-204

Preface Recent scholarship suggests that multilingualism has replaced monolingualism as the linguistic and communicative norm (Aronin 2015: 15; Ecke 2001: 90). And indeed, an examination of the current literature reveals that in many parts of the world, attitudes to multilingualism and multilingual practices have become more favourable compared to only some decades ago, with support for minority language revitalisation and early language education programmes increasing (Fisher & Lahmann 2020: 116; Portolés Falomir 2015: 10; Vaid & Meuter 2017: 8), and acceptance of multilingual practices augmenting (cf. Elin Thordardottir 2017: 20; Enever 2009: 16; Rajendram 2021: 2; Rodrick Beiler 2019: 22). This positive trend is to some degree the merit of intensive international research output, but it is also, especially in Europe, linked to the efforts of European institutions and policy makers who in their aim to promote multilingualism as an asset for Europe have been seeking to raise “awareness of the value and opportunities of the EU’s linguistic diversity” (European Commission 2008: 5). This said, all is not well and there are many ‘construction sites’ as of yet. For instance, a report commissioned by the European Commission (2017), found that in most European countries, multilingual education is still far from being a reality. The report highlights that although “there is evidence on the benefits of multilingualism, very few European countries presently support multilingualism at school and thereby miss an opportunity to capitalise on the advantages it brings to the learning process” (6). Indeed, in many countries in Europe multilingual pedagogies still meet with resistance. This is particularly true of education systems which are oriented towards sedimented monolingual canons. With language classrooms still very much pervaded by an ideology of monoglossia and monoglossic normativity, diversity of usage – as is characteristic of multilingual practices – is widely deprived of a legitimate status and instead incurs disapproval as flawed and deficient (Paquet-Gauthier & Beaulieu 2016: 171; Stopfner & Engel 2019: 75). Adding to this there is in the specific minority setting of South Tyrol an historically determined fixation with the autochtonous German ‘mother tongue’, a de facto imposition of monolingualism (Giudiceandrea & Mazza 2012: 79) resulting from politico-strategic efforts to position the German minority language as under threat from the assimilationist influences of the former Fascist-colonialist powers. An officially trilingual region situated in the north of Italy on the border to Austria and Switzerland, South Tyrol, like most European countries, has seen substantive changes over the past few years. In analogy to the changing demographics at the global level, its socio-cultural landscape has undergone important transformations. Due mainly to employment-related immigration, the area has, within a short space of time, become a thoroughly multilingual place and home to people from 138 difhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-205

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 Preface

ferent nations (Astat Info 2020: 8). For the education system, these developments present significant challenges relating in particular to issues such as how best to tackle the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in the classrooms and make sure that the presence of multiple languages does not obstruct local children’s language development and academic learning. It is the complexity of the South Tyrol context where minority language issues intermingle with those linked to the ‘new multilingualisms’, as result from recent waves of migration and new ways of languaging, which provides the backdrop to this study, and it is against this highly complex background that the book sets out to investigate early multilingual competences understood as young learner-users’ multilingual resourcefulness and agency. With complexity constituting a major focal point, complexity thinking provides a propitious frame of reference for the current research. To the best of my knowledge no attempt has been made thus far to apply Complexity and Dynamic Systems Thinking to the study of multilingual competences in young learner-users. In breaking new untrodden ground, the book therefore has an important contribution to make towards augmenting scholarly understanding of early multi-competence. Originating in the natural sciences, Complexity and Dynamic Systems Thinking has, over the past two decades or so, found increasing application in the social sciences, in applied linguistics and multilingualism research. By offering new perspectives on long-standing – encrusted – theoretical positions and ideologies, complexity thinking has important implications for how (institutionalized) multilingual learning is framed, both at the politico-educational and wider societal level. Approaching multilingualism from a complex dynamic systems-inspired perspective, it will be argued, has the potential to change the way we think and talk about multilingual realities and multilingual education, both, in South Tyrol and beyond. Framed within a multilingual orientation the book embraces a holistic conception of linguistic competence. As such it rejects the constraints of native-speakerism and unilingual norm expectations and takes special account of identity- and context-related aspects implicated in the formation and enactment of learner-users’ multilingual competence. The principal aims of the volume are then to – offer a dynamic and complexity-inspired view of early multilingual competence building (MCB) – highlight new conceptions of the (young) multilingual learner-user – present holistic notions of ‘language competence’ – provide a new comprehensive framework for the discussion of early multilingual development (MLD) and competence building (the two notions clearly overlapping)

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propose a new measure for the assessment of multilingual competences (MCT) in young learner-users stimulate trans-disciplinary approaches to multilingualism research, and further research in the field.

The approach taken is innovative for several reasons. First, the author presents a new extended framework for the study of early multi-competence by conjoining complex dynamic systems thinking with recent psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and ecology-inspired principles. A major thrust of the book consists in weaving these new perspectives together into one explanatory model for the development of multilingual competences at the individual learner level. Second, the book proposes a conception of multilingual competences with English as a valuable educational target to be aimed at from pre-school to university and a view of the multilingual learner-user as a competent speaker-hearer (Grosjean 1989) and Ln user (cf. Cook 2002). Finally, the book advocates the application of multilingual measures alongside the assessment of single language proficiencies and presents a new practical tool for the investigation of multilingual competences with English in young learner-users at the primary level.

Structure of the book Inspired by Lantolf’s appeal to let “all the flowers bloom” (1996: 739), this book draws together various theoretical formulations to allow for a fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas. Accordingly, the chapters in this book cover a wide range of topics. As central themes are developed and taken up in different sections of the book, their interrelatedness and the overall complexity to which they contribute become apparent. Chapter 1 discusses issues pertaining to early multilingual development and acquisition together with key aspects of multilingual processing. It proposes a redefinition of Cook’s original notion (2002) of multicompetence and looks at multilingual competences from a holistic CDST-inspired point of view. Chapter 2 presents conflicting representations and discourses on multilingualism. Ruiz’s orientations (1984) according to which multilingualism can be positioned as a problem, a right or a resource are examined against the South Tyrol background. Chapter 3 offers a critical analysis of the native speaker model together with alternative (multilingualism-informed) ways of framing language competence. Recent sociolinguistic understandings of language and new forms of languaging as are characteristic of the new global realities are explored. Chapter 4 addresses issues related to multilingual education and highlights important benefits that derive from integrated classroom practice. Chapter 5 presents a CDST-informed view of multilingualism. Basic principles of complex dynamic systems theory are introduced and a new integrated framework (CFMC) for the study of multilingual competences is presented. Chapter 6 provides a comprehensive overview and discussion of the effects of complex factor bundles on the development of the multicompetent system. Chapter 7 reports on research carried out in South Tyrol. The chapter opens with an introduction to the socio-linguistic and politico-historical context in which the current research is situated. This is followed by a critical analysis of institutionalized language learning in South Tyrol and an outline of the study. A detailed description is provided of the test instruments and procedure. Chapter 8 presents and discusses the quantitative and qualitative findings yielded by the current study. Chapter 9 offers final considerations and implications for further research, language policy-making and instructional practice.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-206

Contents Acknowledgements 

 V

List of abbreviations 

 IX

Preface 

 XI

Structure of the book 

 XV

Introduction: Terminological and conceptual clarifications 

 1

Part I Chapter 1 Multilingual is as multilingual does   5 1.1 Children’s path to multilingualism and multicompetence  1.2 Multilingual processing and acquisition   7 1.3 In defense of multilingual competence   10 Chapter 2 Multilingualism: Problem, right or resource?  2.1 Language as problem   16 2.2 Language as right   17 2.3 Language as resource   19

 5

 16

Chapter 3 Monolingual native speaker vs multilingual norms   21 3.1 Who is the native speaker, and do we need the native speaker norm?  3.2 Defining the multilingual speaker   22 3.3 Monolingual norms and educational practices   23 3.4 New ways of ‘speaking’   25 Chapter 4 Rehabilitating Babel – Cultivating a multilingual learning ecology 

 26

Chapter 5 Widening perspectives: Applying CDS Thinking to multilingual competence building   29

 21

XVIII  5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.6.1 5.6.2 5.6.3 5.6.4 5.6.5 5.6.6 5.6.7 5.6.8 5.6.9 5.6.10 5.6.11 5.6.12 5.6.13 5.6.14 5.6.15 5.6.16 5.6.17 5.6.18 5.7

 Contents

Complex dynamic systems   29 Defining complex and dynamic systems   30 What do we mean by complexity?   32 CFMC – A Complexity Framework for Multilingual Competence   33 What distinguishes the CFMC from earlier CDST-informed models?   34 A CFMC view of multilingual competence construction   37 A holistic view of the multilingual learner-user   37 Conditional factors: factor weight and factor interaction   37 Time scales   38 The Stimulus Impact Factor   38 On the nature of external and internal factors   39 Hidden factors   39 Language development in context   40 Multilingual competence as derivable from experience   40 Attractor forces   41 Growth and stability   41 Complex learner-user psychologies   42 Multilingual competence building as distributed   43 Multilingual competence building as embedded and embodied   43 Multilingual competence building as dynamic co-construction   44 Self-investment   44 Multilingual investment effort   45 Iterative learning, feedback and development   45 Language practices as loci of struggle   46 Conclusion   46

Chapter 6 The impact of complex factor bundles on the multilingual system   48 6.1 The workings of the multilingual mind: Psycholinguistic perspectives on multiple language development   49 6.1.1 CLIN as a learning asset   50 6.1.2 Typology   50 6.1.3 Psychotypology   51 6.1.4 Supporter languages   52 6.1.5 Defining metalinguistic awareness (MLA)   52 6.1.6 Multilingualism, metalinguistic awareness and (meta)cognition   53 6.1.7 Can meta- and crosslinguistic awareness be taught?   54 6.2 Strategies   56 6.2.1 Definitions of strategy   56 6.2.2 On the benefits of strategy use and training   56

Contents 

6.3 6.4 6.4.1 6.4.2 6.5 6.6 6.7 6.8 6.9

 XIX

Reconceptualising the Good Language Learner from a multicompetence  57 perspective  (No learning without) Emotions   60 Emotions and learning from a Positive Psychology perspective   62 Learning and love   63 Motivation   63 The learner’ self’   65 Learner autonomy   67 Learner-user beliefs and attitudes   68 Affordances   70

Part II Chapter 7 The study   77 7.1 South Tyrol – Political and historical background   77 7.2 Language education in South Tyrol   80 7.3 Language division in the educational system/language policy issues   81 7.4 Contexts of diglossia   83 7.5 The role of English as additional language   84 7.6 Study design and procedures   84 7.6.1 Terminological considerations   85 7.6.2 Research interest   85 7.6.3 Research questions and hypotheses   86 7.6.4 Data collection   88 7.6.5 Participants   89 7.6.6 The continua of multilingual competence and the intertwining of inner and outer contexts   95 7.6.7 Test procedure and instruments   97 7.6.8 Test administration   100 7.6.9 Operationalising multilingual competence   100 7.6.10 The Multilingual Competence Test (MCT)   101 7.6.10.1 Structure   102 7.6.10.2 Scoring procedure   109 7.6.11 Metalinguistic abilities test-2 (MAT-2)   109 7.6.11.1 Scoring procedure   111 7.6.12 The Italian and English test   112 7.6.12.1 Scoring procedure   113

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7.6.13 7.6.14 7.6.15 Chapter 8 Results  8.1 8.1.1 8.1.1.1 8.1.1.2 8.1.1.3 8.1.1.4 8.1.1.5 8.1.1.6 8.1.1.7 8.1.1.8 8.1.1.8.1 8.1.1.8.2 8.1.1.8.3 8.1.1.9 8.1.2 8.1.3 8.1.4 8.1.5 8.1.6 8.1.6.1 8.1.6.2 8.1.6.3 8.1.7 8.1.8 8.1.9 8.1.10 8.1.11 8.2 8.2.1 8.2.1.1 8.2.1.2

Attitudes and motivation questionnaire  Strategy use questionnaire   114 Oral interviews   115

 113

 117 Quantitative findings   117 Research questions 1 & 2   118 Between-group differences ≥60% threshold MCT   119 MCT success level rates per group   122 Results MCT total score group comparison   122 Results MCT Part I group comparison   123 Results MCT Part II group comparison   124 Results MCT MLX items group comparison   125 Results MCT MV items group comparison   126 Results language tests   127 German test success rates✶group   133 ✶ English test success rates group   134 Italian test success rates✶group   135 Other findings: Associations report marks✶language tests & report marks✶MCT results   136 Research question 3   137 Research question 4   139 Research question 5   140 Research question 6   140 Research question 7   144 Attitudes/motivation: Comparison by group   145 Attitudes/motivation: Children with Italian as HL vs. children without Italian as HL   147 Attitudes/motivation: Between-group differences on individual questionnaire items   148 Research question 8   151 Research question 9   155 Research question 10   157 Research question 11   160 Research question 12   161 Discussion: Quantitative findings   164 Research question 1 & 2   164 Cross-linguistic cognitions verbalised (MVs)   165 CLIN effects and typological proximity   167

Contents 

8.2.1.3 8.2.1.4 8.2.2 8.2.3 8.2.4 8.2.5 8.2.6 8.2.7 8.2.8 8.2.9 8.2.10 8.3 8.3.1 8.3.1.1 8.3.1.2 8.3.1.3 8.3.1.4 8.3.1.5 8.3.1.6 8.3.2 8.3.3 8.3.4 8.3.5 8.3.6 8.3.7 8.4

 168 Multilingual competence test (MCT): Success rates by group  Individual language test success rates by group   170 Research question 3   175 Research questions 4 & 5   176 Research question 6   177 Research question 7   178 Research question 8   181 Research question 9   183 Research question 10   185 Research question 11   186 Research question 12   187 Qualitative findings: Analysis of interview data   189 Thematic cluster 1 – Strategic competence   190 Cognitive strategies   191 Memory strategies   193 Social strategies   195 Meta-cognitive strategies   197 Compensation strategies   199 Cross-linguistic (comparative and transfer) strategies   200 Thematic cluster 2 – Meta- and crosslinguistic awareness   205 Thematic cluster 3 – Language learning attitudes   206 Thematic cluster 4 – Learner theories   208 Thematic cluster 5 – The multilingual self   210 Thematic cluster 6 – Prior multilingual experiences   213 Conclusion   214 Study limitations   215

Chapter 9 Conclusion   218 9.1 Developing multilingual competences in complex contexts  9.2 Pedagogical implications and outlook   219 Bibliography  Index 

 XXI

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 223

 218

Introduction: Terminological and conceptual clarifications A careful analysis of the existing scholarship shows that bilingualism and multilingualism are often used synonymously (e.g., Grosjean 1989: 4; Myers-Scotton 2002: 1), or else, multilingualism is subsumed under the notion of bilingualism (see for example Garcia 2009). In this book the term bilingualism (the prefix ‘bi-’ indexing two) is used to refer to contexts where individuals or communities have knowledge of two languages. Conversely, multilingualism is understood as relating to more than two languages, both, at the individual and/or wider societal level. The term bilingualism will, unless stated otherwise, be retained where it is used in the original literature. This conceptual distinction is necessary because quite clearly the two notions differ from each other on a number of crucial aspects (Chua 2010: 109). No differentiation is here made between learning and acquisition. Instead, the notions language(s) learning and language(s) acquisition are used interchangeably. Likewise, the terms multiple language acquisition and multilingual learning are used synonymously. In contrast to monoglossic understandings of second or foreign language learning, according to which the languages are best learned in isolation and kept separate in the classroom  – with teachers expected to foster (high) proficiency in the single languages – the notion of language(s) (or multilingual) learning or acquisition is premised on an integrated, multilingual conception. That is to say, while mainstream second and foreign language learning and teaching are grounded in principles of language separation and native speaker norms, language(s), i.e., multilingual learning and teaching entail holistic cross-language approaches and aim at multilingual competence rather than monolingual native speaker competence (Hofer & Jessner 2019a, 2019b). From this follows that contrary to early conceptions such as propounded by Bloomfield (1933: 55), multilinguals are here not viewed as having (or needing) ‘native-like control’ of their languages. Indeed, native-like mastery and/or balanced proficiency in all languages are not considered necessary preconditions for speakers to qualify as multilingual and multicompetent (cf. Cenoz 2013: 11). Li (2008)’s broad vision of multilingualism and his conception of the multilingual as someone “who can communicate in more than one language, be it active (through speaking and writing) or passive (through listening and reading)” (4) aligns well with the stance taken here. In concert with Hymes (1971) I should like to stress that, in today’s globalized world, where the “ideally fluent speaker-listener is multilingual” (274), unbalanced or domain-specific competence “has nothing to do with ‘disadvantage’ or deficiency” (275). In fact, “learning to move between languages and to understand and negotiate the multiple varieties of codes, modes, genres, regishttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-001

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 Introduction: Terminological and conceptual clarifications

ters, and discourses that students will encounter in the real world” is at least as if not more important than “learning the elements of one whole symbolic system” (Kramsch 2012: 107), and clearly being bi- or multilingual is “more than a matter of [high] proficiency in two (or more) languages” (Barnes L. 1999: 237; square brackets added). A central focal point of the present research, the notion of multi-competence – used alongside that of multilingual competence(s) – is applied to a broad spectrum of skills, abilities, competences, attitudes, behaviours and various (other) properties that the individual develops over time (see Chapter 1). In contradistinction to earlier approaches, special prominence is here given to the overall complexity of the multi-competent system and the dynamics that are at work as the system (self-) organizes and evolves in space and time. Throughout this book, the notion of learner-user is employed to characterize anyone who is in the process of learning (any number of) languages. As learning a new language typically goes hand in hand with using it (this being particularly the case in South Tyrol where some of the languages studied in the school context are also spoken in the wider community), the concept of learner-user seems better suited than that of learner. In keeping with the present focus on multilingualism, the terms multilingual learner-users (short MLUs) and/or YEMs (young emergent multilinguals) will therefore be used. Terminological clarifications relating to the use of the labels L1, L2, Ln, will be provided in Part II of the book where the empirical study is mapped out. For an informative discussion of the unwieldly and not entirely felicitous terminology deployed in the field the reader is referred to De Angelis (2007: 8–12).

Part I “. . .a multi-competent speaker [. . .] can do more than any monolingual”  (Cook 2001: 179)

Chapter 1  Multilingual is as multilingual does Emerging from recent global developments and transformations brought on by waves of migration, the global marketplace, and the digital revolution is, what scholars consider, a new linguistic world order (Maurais 2003 in Kärchner-Ober 2013: 27), as reified in Aronin (2005)’s New Linguistic Dispensation, according to which “sets of languages, rather than single languages, now perform the essential functions of communication, cognition and identity for both individuals and the global community” (Aronin 2005 in Aronin & Bawardi 2014: 16). The new linguistic dispensation “is marked by the ubiquity of multilingualism, the increasing breadth and depth of the effect of multilingualism and its relationship to modifications of human experience” (Aronin & Bawardi 2014: 17) and as such premised on the understanding that the contemporary sociolinguistic situation is multilingual, and that multilingualism is integral to our modern life reality (Aronin & Bawardi 2014: 16; see also Busch 2017: 68; Kärchner-Ober 2013: 28). A counter-version to the monolingual episteme, the new linguistic dispensation (LD), assumes that “virtually every facet of life in the present era depends on multilingual social arrangements and multilingual individuals” (Aronin & Singleton 2012: 51). This new multilingual life-world (Busch 2017: 340) is hallmarked by so-called Dominant Language Constellations or DLCs (Aronin & Singleton 2008; Aronin 2019: 240) at the level of individual user and at the wider societal level, and is construed as an aggregate of languages conjunct in the individual or shared by members of an entire community for which this set of languages performs essential functions of communication, interaction and identity marking (Aronin & Singleton 2008: 59). It is in the light of these altered parameters that Chapter 1 offers a new holistic perspective on what constitutes language competence in multilinguals. The chapter first examines how children become multilingual and multicompetent –particular focus is given to the South Tyrol context – and then goes on to explore multilingual acquisitional processes and the mental procedures that mediate multilingual operations.

1.1 Children’s path to multilingualism and multicompetence Children become multilingual for a whole range of reasons. They may grow up in a home with parents who speak different first languages and learn an additional language later in kindergarten or school. Others may live in a region where multiple languages are spoken in the wider community and may therefore have an immedihttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-002

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 Chapter 1 Multilingual is as multilingual does

ate need to acquire these languages to perform basic daily functions (cf. Stavans & Hoffmann 2015: 136). Others again may be raised in a monolingual family but may then be schooled multilingually, or else, parents may decide to employ a childminder who speaks a language they wish their child to acquire. Alternatively, they may send their child to a target language playgroup, and children will of course also pick up languages from their peers and neighbours and on social media. Children’s pathways to multilingualism are manifold and so is the specific configuration of multilingual competence they develop. In South Tyrol children may be socialized into a German-Italian or Italian-German bilingual family, in which case they will either be dominant in German or Italian, or they may be equally at home in both languages, and if they have relatives in other parts of Italy, children may additionally be exposed to the dialect variants characteristic of those areas. Besides, South Tyrolean children come in contact with English in kindergarten or primary school and depending on what type of upper secondary school they later opt for they may then study further languages, typically French, Russian, Spanish or Chinese, or a combination of these. Children who grow up in a Ladin family (Ladin is the third official language in South Tyrol spoken by a minority of roughly 20,000) will have knowledge of Ladin and will be schooled according to an immersive system based on the principle of teaching parity with language and content learning distributed across German, Italian and Ladin, and they will study English as L4 (see Chapter 7). Other children may have heritage language background, and will speak Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Arabic or any other migrant language, but they may not necessarily be able to read or write those languages. Whatever children’s initial learning context, new languages may be added at any point in time, in different formal and natural contexts, and for different reasons. The addition of a new code can strengthen the multilingual system through the integration of new resources and emergent properties (see below) but it can also have adverse effects, weaken the system and result in scatter and forgetting of an earlier acquired code. Multilingual children’s languaging behaviour typically reflects the discursive patterns of their surrounds. If mixing is a common feature of their language socialisation then it is likely to become part of their own habitus. If, by contrast, children are educated to keep their languages separate, then their preferred mode of speech may well be unilingual. Frequency of use, input quality and quantity, media consumption, schooling, etc. will all influence the pace and direction of children’s multilingual acquisition (see Chapter 5). It is fair to say that in comparison to bilingualism research, the study of early multilingual development has been unsystematic and fragmentary, and what emerges from the extant data is but an incomplete picture. Indicatively, what has crystallised out is that language competences in mul-

1.2 Multilingual processing and acquisition  

 7

tilingual children are highly individual. They are rarely balanced, and they can fluctuate considerably across time and contexts. In what follows, some fundamental aspects of multilingual processing and acquisition in young learner-users are discussed against the background of the pertinent literature. For a detailed account of multilingual development and competence building the reader is directed to Chapter 5.

1.2 Multilingual processing and acquisition This section elaborates on multilingual processing and acquisition. It starts from the assumption that multilingual processing and cognition are distinct from monoand bilingual processing and cognition and that the experience of juggling multiple linguistic codes changes the mind and comes with a host of benefits for young learner-users (Carlson & Meltzoff 2008: 293; De Angelis, Jessner & Kresic 2017: 2; Vásquez 2009: 71). This said, it is important to note that research is not yet at a point that would allow for any definitive and exhaustive assessments to be made on this matter (cf. Alexiou 2009: 46; Blom et al. 2017: 3; McLeod 2010: 63). Methodological issues as relate to children’s distractability, memory limitations, over-attention to certain percepetual features in the situation (Donaldson 1978), desire to give some sort of response however nonsensical (Hughes and Grieve 1980), susceptibility to leading questions from an adult because of the adult’s social status (Spencer and Flin 1990), willingness to be dishonest in some conditions (Ceci 1991), and receptive and expressive language limitations (Lewis 1992: 417 in Pinter 2011: 201–2)

seem to complicate investigations into young learner-users’ linguistic and metacognitive behaviour and development. This notwithstanding, scholarship does provide us with important insights into the multilingual mind, some of which I undertake to outline next. The aim of this section is to highlight the complexity and dynamism and the specific nature of language(s) development in the multilingual child. As spelled out in the relevant literature, – multilingual children develop distinct profiles of competence (Edwards & Dewaele 2007: 221) and their way of processing language differs from that of monolinguals if only for the need to co-ordinate multiple ‘grammars’ in on- and off-line operations; – multilingual processing and development are highly complex (Aronin & Ò Laoire 2003: 15; Dijkstra 2003: 25). They present higher levels of dynamism, variability, and complexity than mono- or bilingual processing and acquisition (cf. Zobl 1982: 171) with complexity deriving primarily from the fact that the multilingual mind has to

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 Chapter 1 Multilingual is as multilingual does

administer multiple codes. Tackling multiple languages presupposes substantive amounts of attentional control, monitoring and management. It requires the multilingual child to be constantly alert, weigh which language(s) to activate and which to suppress in a given communicative task or situation. As such it contributes to enhanced levels of elasticity and plasticity and an overall cognitive and agentive flexibility not found in the same way in mono- or bilinguals (Abu Rabia 2019: 1066; Herdina & Jessner 2002: 64; Jessner & Allgäuer-Hackl 2015: 212). It also comes with a heightened capacity to adapt one’s strategy use to the specific communicative situation or task at hand (Allgäuer-Hackl 2017; Hoffmann and Stavans 2007); – as a result of their constantly having to coordinate differential codes, multilingual children develop enhanced executive functions which benefit not only their languages but also transfer to other, non-linguistic domains (Bialystok 2011; Bialystok et al. 2014; Blom et al. 2012: 2; see above). Bialystok and Craik (2010) note that “the experience of speaking two languages on a regular basis has broad implications for cognitive ability, enhancing executive control functions across the life span” (22; see also Langeloo et al. 2020: 1225; Maluch  & Kempert 2017: 10; Montanari 2019: 309). The proposition here is that, under favourable conditions, viz., in additive context and given sufficient multilingual investment effort on the part of the individual speaker (MIE, see below), the above effects are multiplied in speakers of more than two languages; – the multilingual mind operates on the basis of a common underlying operating system. This is to say that multilingual children dispose of one multilingual repertoire from which to draw in online and offline processing (Cummins 2003: 63). The interactions between the multiple languages in the mind allow for a high degree of transfer and cross-fertilisation. Elements from one language can serve as support for the de- and encoding of linguistic material in other languages. While crosslinguistic interaction can interfere with processing, the positive effects of cross-language phenomena seem to outweigh those instances in which intruding items from an Ln disrupt processing procedures (Herdina & Jessner 2002: 107). – multilingual processing operates on the basis of enhanced levels of meta- and crosslinguistic awareness and ability as accrue from children’s ample experience with different linguistic codes (Bialystok 2001; Hofer 2015; Jessner 1999); it seems fair to say therefore that multiple language processing and acquisition can rely on a multilingual facilitation effect (MFE) and propitious initial conditions: children with extensive prior language learning experience can draw on their extant knowledge when tackling new codes. They already have an understanding of the concept of language, they know what it means to learn a language, and they know that languages consist of words and sentences with grammar providing structure and

1.2 Multilingual processing and acquisition  

 9

meaning; they are familiar with (some) lexical, grammatical, phonological and/or orthographical idiosyncrasies of their previous languages and they can compare new linguistic patterns against existent ones (see also Mugler & Tent 1998 in Hopf et al. 2018: 88); – in the multilingual mind, all the languages are always activated to some degree (Herwig 2001: 129). There is no language switch (as postulated only decades ago by Penfield 1959, for instance), which deactivates the languages that are not being used. Rather, speakers can be in various language modes, or states of activation, ranging from monolingual to multilingual (cf. Grosjean 2013: 1); – multilingual processing or more specifically multilingual word search typically involves the consultation of some languages and the (relative) inhibition of others, whereby different languages play different roles as background or supporter languages (Jessner 2006: 99ff.; Hammarberg 2001: 35); – multilingual processing and development are contingent on speakers’ single language and overall multilingual proficiency (Bialystok 1987: 3; Leikin, Tovli & Malykh 2019: 60), their general cognitive abilities and their capacity to associate and/or dissociate their linguistic systems according to the requirements of the context; – multilingual processing and acquisition are dependent on the level of connectivity between the various linguistic subsystems and the interactions between them (Hall 2009: 268; Lindgren & Munoz 2012: 7). Degree of connectivity and interaction are determined by prior language learning experience, frequency of use and cross-language overlap (e.g., typological closeness, cognate relationships, etc.). Structural similarity and convergence of lexico-structural properties are seen as facilitative of multilingual processing and growth. Assorted research reports an enhanced facility in experienced multilinguals to identify such cross-lingual overlap (Aronin  & Singleton 2007: 83); – differences relating to number of languages, as well as type and order of acquisition effectuate differential learning trajectories and (dominant) language constellations (DLCs) at the individual learner level with commensurately distinct processing procedures (Aronin & O´Laoire 2003: 15; De Angelis 2007: 132); – different cognitive demands arise for multilingual learner-users depending on the specific type of processing they engage in (reception vs production, oral vs written, etc.). BICS (Basic interpersonal communication skills) and CALP (Cognitive academic language proficiency), respectively deployed in context-embedded and context-reduced situations, make very different demands on processing (Cummins 2008) and can therefore exhibit divergent, asynchronous developmental paths;

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 Chapter 1 Multilingual is as multilingual does

– Finally, multilingual acquisition and processing are based on “the interplay of environmental, cognitive, social-affective, and linguistic variables” (Ecke 2004: 341) in “a space in which an infinite number of possible trajectories may be realized” (Todeva & Cenoz 2009: 270). Based on the above and in support of a holistic perspective on multilingual development, the following discusses multi-competence as defined by Cook (1991, 2016) and reconceptualized more recently from a complex dynamic systems perspective by Hofer (2017).

1.3 In defense of multilingual competence Historically, discourses on language competence have been tainted by a monolingual fractional view and a conceptualization of the multilingual learner-user as lacking and incomplete (Grosjean 1989: 5; Cenoz 2001: 9). In current research output the trend is away from such narrow conceptions towards a stronger commitment to holistic representations which, as noted by May (2014: 9), manifests in a distinct multilingual turn in academia. The observed paradigm shift is linked to important changes in perception which relate in particular to the issue of what knowledge of a language actually means and what the aims are of language(s) learning. For most of the 20th century the predominant belief was that language learning is only ever worthwhile if native-like mastery in the (single) languages is attained. In the present day there is a growing appreciation that linguistic competence needs to be in tune with globalization and the requirements of individual speakers in a rapidly changing, highly networked society and world economy (Kramsch 2012: 123). The Council of Europe (2001) defines linguistic competence as the “ability to use languages for the purpose of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social agent has proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures” (168; see also CEFR Companion Volume 2018: 28) rejecting the notion that language(s) learning is to result in native-speaker competency and replacing it with the target set of functional multilingualism (cf. Kasper & Wagner 2011: 117; Radwanska-Williams 2009: 121). On this extended understanding, it is not degree of proficiency in the single languages, but the speaker’s overall multilingual agency that is accorded priority (see Chapter 3 on the native speaker) while normative definitions of bi- and multilinguals as having equal proficiency in their languages are abandoned as unrealistic (Clyne 2007: 301; Van Overbeke 1972: 112–8). Consonant therewith, Cenoz (2013: 11) presses the point that multilinguals will not ever measure up to monolingual standards because they “navigate among [several] languages and do not use

1.3 In defense of multilingual competence 

 11

each of their languages for the same purpose in all communicative situations, in the same domains, or with the same people” (square brackets added). Along these same lines, Blommaert, Collins & Slembrouck argue that “[m]ultilingualism should not be understood as ‘full competence in different languages’, despite dominant ideologies which emphasise complete facility” (2005: 199). According to Blommaert (2010) “[n]o one knows all of a language. That counts for our so-called mother tongues, and of course, also for the other ‘languages’ we acquire in our life time” (103). Rather, we all “have a determined range of specific competences, and some are very highly developed while others are considerably less developed. And there are always resources that we do not possess” (105). Conceiving of multilinguals (or L2 users) as multi-competent users in their own right rather than approximations to a monolingual native speaker, and defining multi-competence as “the knowledge that combines both the first language and the L2 interlanguage” (Cook 2001: 195), Cook (1991: 5) specifies that multilinguals have 1) differential use for languages from monolinguals 2) knowledge of their L2/n that is distinct from that of native speakers of these languages 3) different knowledge of their L1 when compared to monolinguals, and 4) different minds from monolinguals. Resultantly, multi-competence as a way of looking at language and language development from a non-monolingual perspective eschews positioning the L2 user as an eternal (wanting and deficient) learner in pursuit of an unrealistic native-speaker ideal, and instead acknowledges their unique characteristics and qualities (Cook 2016: 3; see also Yow, Tan & Flynn 2017: 12). Inspired by Cook’s idea of multi-competence (1991) and Grosjean’s conception of the competent hearer-speaker (1989), Herdina  & Jessner (2002: 75) condense multilingual competence or, to use their terminology, multilingual proficiency into the subsequent succinct formula: LS1 + LS2 + LSn + CLIN + M ≅ MP wherein LS1/LS2/ LSn relate to competence in the single languages, CLIN stands for crosslinguistic interaction between the languages, M denotes the M(ultilingualism) factor, and MP means multilingual proficiency. With the multilingual system containing components that the monolingual system does either not possess at all, or else in a different quality structure, multilingual competence as viewed from a DMM (Dynamic Model of Multilingualism) perspective differs substantially from language competence in monolinguals (Herdina & Jessner 2002: 130). Arising from the interactions between the multiple language systems in the mind, so-called emergent properties or qualities (which include

12 

 Chapter 1 Multilingual is as multilingual does

heightened levels of meta- and cross-linguistic awareness, enhanced monitor functions and special language-learning, language management and language maintenance skills) are the key constituents of multilingual proficiency as defined in DMM. Together, these new properties form part of a unique meta-system with potentially catalytic, i.e., facilitative and accelerating effects on (multiple) language development (129). More recently multilingual competence as conceptualised in Hofer & Jessner (2019, 2019a) has been linked “to all those skills and competencies that allow individuals to make strategic and efficient use of their languages and that enable them to successfully master a range of diverse communicative situations as encountered in their vari-lingual environments” (101). Comprising the totality of abilities, competencies, attitudes, orientations, behavioural habits and strategies that multilinguals develop and refine as a function of their regular and extensive use of multiple languages (101), multilingual competence manifests first and foremost in speakers’ “linguistic and metalinguistic behaviour and in their distinctive pragmatic approach to language(s) and language-related tasks” (101). Based on an understanding of multilingual competence as “a competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which languages interrelate and interact” (Common European Framework of References for Languages, European Council 2001: 4) and guided by the precept that [i]n different situations, a person can call flexibly upon different parts of this competence to achieve effective communication with a particular interlocutor. [. . .] partners may switch from one language or dialect to another, exploiting the ability of each to express themselves in one language and to understand the other; or a person may call upon the knowledge of a number of languages to make sense of a text, written or even spoken, in a previously ‘unknown’ language, recognising words from a common international store in a new guise. Those with some knowledge, even slight, may use it to help those with none to communicate by mediating between individuals with no common language. [.  .  .] bringing the whole of their linguistic equipment into play, experimenting with alternative forms of expression in different languages or dialects, exploiting paralinguistics (mime, gesture, facial expression, etc.) and radically simplifying their use of language (4–5),

important educational and practical implications ensue because “the aim of language education is profoundly modified” (European Council 2001: 5): It is no longer seen as simply to achieve ‘mastery’ of one or two, or even three languages, each taken in isolation, with the ‘ideal native speaker’ as the ultimate model. Instead, the aim is to develop a linguistic repertory, in which all linguistic abilities have a place. This implies, of course, that the languages offered in educational institutions should be diversified and students given the opportunity to develop a plurilingual competence (ibid.).

1.3 In defense of multilingual competence 

 13

It is probably true to say that 20 years on from the publication of the Common European Framework of References for Languages, most European schools, certainly most German-language schools in South Tyrol, are still anchored in a monolingual habitus and (choose to be) oblivious to the above recommendations. However, in the face of new migration patterns and increased mobility, the need to re-think and re-define key competences in relation to multilingualism (NESET Report 2017: 7) is more urgent now than it has ever been in the past (Codó & Pérez-Milans 2014: 383). It is against this backdrop that the present book advocates a new expanded conception of linguistic competence for multilingual speakers. The following inventory of multilingual competences is proposed (see also Hofer  & Jessner 2019: 14ff.) with this in view. It includes proficiencies in the single languages (LS1, LS2, LS3, LSn) the ability to reflect, analyse and compare linguistic structures and functions in single languages and across languages the ability to think and act across language borders the ability to translate from one language into another the ability to decode and comprehend new linguistic input and put it in relation with prior linguistic knowledge the ability to transfer linguistic knowledge and skills the ability to switch flexibly between various languages and/or, if the situation requires, to avoid switching the ability to mediate between speakers of different languages and cultures communicative sensitivity (e.g., with regards to the needs of the interlocutor) the ability to perceive affordances and synergies and the capacity to harness them for one’s own learning and performance the ability to use a range of strategies including communication, compensation, inference, and transfer strategies as required by the situational context the ability to manipulate language and use it, amongst others, for ludic and/or humorous functions the ability to (creatively) deal with knowledge gaps the ability to (creatively) deal with ambiguity the ability to reflect and optimise one’s own learning and performance the ability to maintain one’s language learning motivation and adopt a positive learning attitude

14 

 Chapter 1 Multilingual is as multilingual does

the ability to reflect on one’s language learning experiences, perceptions, feelings, self-concept and the ability to self-balance the ability to comprehend new target-specific cultural input and relate it to previously acquired knowledge/skills the ability to acquire, contrast and/or transfer pragmatic and cultural skill and know-how the ability to conceive of oneself as a successful multilingual agent or to envision multilingual agency as a target for the future an awareness of the added value of multilingualism in general and one’s own multilingualism in particular an awareness of contemporary multilingual realities and an ability to deal constructively with (the) new linguistic and cultural circumstances and adapt to new situations the ability to critically reflect on and question socio-linguistic and socio-political phenomena (e.g., prestige and status of minority languages and/or heritage languages in comparison with majority languages, language ideologies and hierarchies, linguistic imperialism, etc.) a critical awareness of linguistic and cultural stereotypes and prejudice an awareness of and openness towards alternative forms of communication and situated engagement with such practices (e.g., sign languages, translanguaging, code-switching, code-mixing, etc.) an awareness/understanding of and openness towards new forms of communication as have been opened up by digital technology, the competence to navigate between various linguistic and semiotic codes as constitutive of new global realities.

Premised on the above, multilingual competence is here construed as a bundle of competences and systems properties, a composite of skills, abilities, attitudes and cognitions (rather than as a single uniform phenomenon), and as a gradient condition situated on a continuum with more multilingually competent and less multilingually competent at the far ends. less multilingually competent more multilingually competent < __________________________________________ >

In contrast to earlier theorising, the notion of multilingual competence as understood in this book, is grounded in complex dynamic systems thinking. The Complexity Framework of Multilingual Competence (CFMC) outlined in Chapter 5 provides the wider theoretical underpinning for the newly proposed conception of multilingual competence. What remains unclear at this stage is whether assessment of multilingual competence requires that the entire range of component skills be systematically

1.3 In defense of multilingual competence 

 15

measured (which would of course raise serious questions as to its practical implementation), or whether one can agree on a smaller sample of skills for the evaluation of key components of MLC. For the purposes of the present research, the latter option is without doubt preferable (see Chapter 6 for how multilingual competence is operationalized in this study), though this immediately throws up the question of whether components of multilingual competence can at all be measured individually. Based on obvious practical considerations the answer has to be in the affirmative. By way of qualifying, it is however vital that they be considered as a whole, in their reciprocal interaction with each other rather than in isolation. Concluding, it is fair to say that with multilingual competence taking centre stage, the primacy of the monolingual native speaker ideal – and with it much of the early research output in the field of applied linguistics and SLA – are seriously challenged. This effect is increased by a growing acceptance that multilingual competence needs to be measured in terms of users’ multi-lingual skills and abilities, rather than their single language proficiencies alone. Next, Chapter 2 looks at multilingualism through Ruiz’ lens of language as problem, right and resource. Chapter 3 takes a critical look at the all-pervasive native speaker norm. With a view to mapping the complex ecology of contemporary multilingualism, the two chapters pursue the dual aim of highlighting how theoretical/ideological positions and social perceptions of what languages are or should be are intertwined, how patterns of language(s) use are sanctioned or rejected in the intricate interplay between multiple agents and/or factors, and how these interactions contribute to the overall complexity of multilingualism (cf. Sharifian & Musgrave 2013: 368).

Chapter 2  Multilingualism: Problem, right or resource? It has been suggested that in any given nation specific sets of values, or orientations, underlie language policymaking (Codó & Garrido 2014). Based on the values held, language and language diversity are then conceptualized as either a problem, a right or a resource (cf. Piccardo 2017: 2). According to Ruiz (1984), the said orientations “delimit the ways we talk about language and language issues, they determine the basic questions we ask, the conclusions we draw. . .” (31; cf. Schwinge 2017: 149). In the following Ruiz’s orientations are delineated and applied to LP (Language Planning) in the context of South Tyrol. The aim is to shed light on different representations of linguistic plurality and multilingualism in the region. Ruiz’s (1984) orientations are here treated as open categories with varying in-between possibilities and fluid transitions; no clear demarcations between them are assumed. Readers are reminded that the proposed orientations are not exhaustive, neither with regards to the single values listed for each orientation, nor with regards to their overall number. Rather, as pointed out by Ruiz (1984) himself, there may be other, additional orientations at work in any given context (Hult  & Hornberger 2016: 43).

2.1 Language as problem Ruiz’s language as problem orientation is grounded in a monolingual world view. Policies premised on this orientation typically aim to restrict and regulate multilingualism both, in educational settings and society at large. From a language as problem perspective, the objective is to promote the dominant language in all domains and at all levels of social life (cf. Pérez-Milans & Patino-Santos 2014: 451; Van Gorp & Verheyen 2018: 237). Curbing linguistic diversity is seen as one means to this end (cf. Lourenco  & Andrade 2014: 305). Analogously, education systems informed by a language as problem orientation follow monolingual norm specifications (see for instance Cantor et al. 2019; Jessner & Mayr-Keiler 2017: 88) with a tendency to construe multilingual schooling as potentially posing a threat to the dominant language, identity, and way of life (cf. Fishman 1997/2007: 338). As is the case in German schools in South Tyrol, the argument often put forth is that multilingual approaches to learning will result in students failing to master their L1 (German) at an adequate level and in all its fine nuances. Within a language as problem frame of mind, the development and promotion of the dominant language is seen as the primary educational mandate, the postulate being that attainment https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-003

2.2 Language as right 

 17

of (near-) perfect, native-speaker proficiency in L1 is to be given priority over the acquisition of other (especially heritage/migrant) languages, or, as in German schools in South Tyrol, over L2 Italian. From this perspective, partial, unbalanced competences in L1 are regarded as problematic and potentially harmful in as far as they can, apart from supposedly undermining the idea of a common identity, compromise students’ academic achievement (but see Jaffe 2007: 55–56 for a recent shift in discourses on bilingualism in Corsica), while students with other- or mixed-language background are typically appraised in terms of their ‘poor’ command of the dominant language and have their (multiple) linguistic background framed as a liability (again this being the case in German-language schools in South Tyrol; cf. also Chik 2019: 17). Under the language as problem perspective, multilingual education programmes are seen as benefitting other-language speakers more than the indigenous L1 community (Unamuno 2014: 416), allowing the former to expand their linguistic knowledge, while hindering adequate progression in L1 for the latter (because of reduced L1 teaching hours and the presence of other-language pupils which purportedly impede high-quality L1 instruction). The ideological construals underpinning such views are best described as ethno-regionalist forces (cf. Heller’s notion of ethnonationalism, 2003: 475; Kroskrity 2005: 509; Muehlmann & Duchêne 2007: 107; see also Nelde 2007 for an enlightening discussion of language contact and language conflict). Scholarship working from a multilingual perspective highlights the dangers linked to ideological constructs of this nature, warning that uniformity (of whatever type and in whatever domain of human life) leads to inflexibility and unadaptability (Baker 2003: 91) and obstructs development and growth (ibid.). On the assertion that “the strongest ecosystems are those that are the most diverse”, Baker (2001) persuasively argues that language diversity maximises “chances of human success and adaptability” (281; cf. Heller 2007: 10; Muehlmann & Duchêne 2007: 107). Strengthening this line of argument, Cilliers (2010: 3) pointedly adds that diversity “is not a problem to be solved, it is the precondition of the existence of any interesting behaviour.”

2.2 Language as right The language as right orientation is premised on the belief that language and personal freedom are inseparable (cf. Patrick 2007: 120). It emphasizes people’s human right to use and maintain their language(s) in the private and public sphere, and highlights issues of injustice and skewed power relations arising from linguistic (and/or concomitant social) inequality. The language as right orientation welcomes the legal anchoring of linguistic rights in de jure policy and may involve

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 Chapter 2 Multilingualism: Problem, right or resource?

the invocation of international laws or bodies (such as the UN in the case of South Tyrol in the aftermath of WWII) to ensure the legal safeguarding of linguistic rights, and it appreciates the mediating role of language with regards to social inclusion, employment opportunities, voting, education, jurisprudence, healthcare, media, etc., (Hult & Hornberger 2016: 33). Education is viewed as central to the free exercise of people’s human and linguistic rights. Accordingly, educational programmes for minority groups are considered paramount for the revitalization, maintenance, and development of minority languages. This said, instructional programmes may envision and pursue different language learning objectives for different minority groups in a country, which then begs the question of whom language rights are (or are not) granted to in a given context and why (cf. Bahry 2005: 49; Wojnesitz 2010: 72). (Language) Rights as specified by legal theory fall into two categories: positive and negative rights. In sociolinguistics these categories overlap with the notions ‘promotion-oriented’ and ‘tolerance-oriented’ (Kloss 1977: x), or the “right to use your language in the activities of communal life” and the “right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of language” (Macías 1979: 41). What becomes clear then is that the act of granting language rights may not automatically result in de facto linguistic equality because minority groups may continue to face opposition regardless of any legislative provisions. In fact, within a tolerance-orientated frame, the granting of linguistic rights may go but little beyond the right to teach a given minority or immigrant language in a private school context, this being the case of immigrant languages in South Tyrol where no heritage language teaching for learner-users with other home languages is provided for by the education system (cf. Haenni-Hoti et al. 2011: 100 who refer to such learning contexts as ‘subtractive’). Incidentally, a tolerance-orientation might in some way also be said to apply in the case of the Ladin idioms (cf. Gross  & Dewaele 2018: 42) since there has been no serious intention ever to promote Ladin on a broader scale in German or Italian schools in the region. A small minority language spoken by a mere 20,000 people, Ladin is today taught in the Badia and Gardena Valleys, but hardly anywhere else in South Tyrol. This said, the language has recently gained a solid footing at the faculty of education at the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano/Bulsan where a Ladin section has been established with an entire degree course for kindergarten and primary school teachers. German as a formerly suppressed minority language, is today offensively promoted at all levels of schooling and in all domains of public life. The right to use and study German is formalised in the South Tyrol Autonomy Statute (31st August 1972; Chapter 4, Art. 19) and enshrined by Italian law. The fact that the Italian language is a minority language in South Tyrol (350,000 German speakers compared to 150,000 Italian speakers) is rarely thematized.

2.3 Language as resource 

 19

Finally, an example of how personal rights and language (education) rights can clash is provided by Art. 8, DPR 89/1983, which stipulates that “Das Recht der Eltern oder ihrer Stellvertreter, über die Einschreibung in die Schulen der verschiedenen Sprachgruppen zu entscheiden, darf auf keinen Fall Einfluss auf die Unterrichtssprache haben, die für die verschiedenen Schulen vorgesehen ist.” [Parents’ or their representatives’ right to enrol their children at any given school must under no circumstances affect the linguistic practices of that school] (cf. Sharifian & Musgrave 2013: 368 on the complex language policies and practices in multilingual societies). Accordingly, as noted by Bonell  & Winkler (2010: 194), “steht dem Elternrecht auf freie Schuleinschreibung in eine italienische oder deutsche Schule die Notwendigkeit gegenüber, zu verhindern, dass der einsprachige Unterricht durch eine massive Anwesenheit von anderssprachigen Schülern gestört wird” [“the necessity to forestall potential disruptions caused by the presence of other-language pupils overrides parents’ right to enrol their child at a German or Italian school”; translations by this author]. What we derive therefrom is that public interests (whatever they may be in this specific context) and the postulate of monoglossic linguistic purity carry greater weight than the individual’s right to free choice of schooling. The above account is not intended to be evaluative or judgmental. It merely maps out current realities. This said, complacency about the status quo would be inapposite.

2.3 Language as resource Finally, the language as resource orientation is a direct counter-representation to the language as problem orientation. In settings where the language-as-resource view dominates, multilingualism and diversity are perceived as valuable assets and rich wellsprings to draw from. Languages and language(s) learning are seen as having intrinsic value for the purpose of intellectual engagement, cultural enrichment, self-confidence, social relations and participation, as well as extrinsic value for the purpose of strengthening national security, diplomacy, trade relations, business sectors, and so on (Jaffe 2007: 65). Far from being framed as a threat to national interests, linguistic and ethnical plurality are seen as benefitting the whole of society. Within the language-as-resource paradigm, multilingual instruction is not seen as an impediment but as yielding multiple linguistic and academic gains. In South Tyrol educational policy makers like to profess their support for all things multilingual, very much in keeping with the language-as-resource orientation. In practice, however, there is a handsome discrepancy between their profusive lip service, and the actions taken. Indeed, there is, to this day, considerable

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 Chapter 2 Multilingualism: Problem, right or resource?

reluctance to implement multilingual education programmes in German-speaking schools in the region, the argument being that such programmes contravene applicable law, notably Art. 19 of the Autonomy Statute. In the next chapter I develop some of the above themes further as I consider them against the blueprint of the native speaker ideal.

Chapter 3  Monolingual native speaker vs multilingual norms This chapter presents a critical examination of the native speaker notion. Traditional monolingual assumptions about language, language use and language norms are thematized and set against more recent theoretical perspectives in Applied Linguistics. A holistic multilingualism-oriented approach guides the discussion. First, a critical characterization of the idealised native speaker is given as monolingual mainstream views of linguistic competence are contrasted with new, I dare say, more enlightened positions. This is followed by a discussion of the implications of a monolingual native speaker culture for language(s) learning and teaching (Alfaro 2018: 1; Cummins 2009: 270; Heugh 2018: 348).

3.1 Who is the native speaker, and do we need the native speaker norm? Traditional conceptualizations envision the native speaker as being the “authority”, the “repository of ‘the language’” (Davies 2003: 207). The general perception is that the native speaker can “claim legitimacy in the use of the language” because the language ‘belongs’ to them (Jørgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen,  & MØller 2011: 31). However, while the contention that the NS is, by definition, the exemplary exponent of his/her language, goes largely unchallenged (Cruz-Ferreira 2010: 2), the one-sided focus on the monolingual NS norm has drawn much criticism in SLA and multilingualism research (e.g., Piller 2011: 72–3). And indeed, there are strong grounds against the monolingual native speaker as the (sole) exemplary norm: First, with monolingual native speakers in a minority globally (Aronin 2016: 190), important questions must be raised with regards to the desirability of an idealised speaker abstraction. Second, with (all) languages naturally characterized by diversity  – suffice it to think of dialects, registers, styles, etc.  – at the community and individual speaker level (cf. Milroy & Milroy 2007: 48), the question is how anyone can agree on (and impose) a native speaker model when there is no such thing as the ideal native speaker (cf. JØrgensen et al. 2011: 30). Therefore, rather than holding on to the myth of a “homogenised, error-free linguistic Eden” (Davis 2003: 214), alternative characterizations of the native speaker should include the native-like learner of a TL, the learner-user of a lingua franca, the ‘native user’ living and using the TL in post-colonial contexts, and all those speakers https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-004

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 Chapter 3 Monolingual native speaker vs multilingual norms

who have taken up residence in the target language country and who carry out their everyday social functions through the TL (Davis 2003: 214). Third, languages have always been in contact and these contact situations have resulted in the de facto hybridity of a large majority of human languages (Canagarajah 2014: 84), or what Denison (2007: 80) calls our “pluriglossic inheritance”. This itself should be reason enough to call into question traditional understandings of the ‘pure’ native speaker norm. Fourth and last, the notion of native speaker rests on the assumption that languages are stable and isolable systems (with neatly defined boundaries) of which NSs have full command. Quite contrary to this monolithic delusion we know that languages are neither stable nor isolable, but dynamic and fluent (see Chapter 5). The notion of a native speaker who masters a closed, unchanging language system is therefore a misinformed one (cf. Bright 2007: 81). Moving on from the notion of NS, the following therefore sets out to explore how the multilingual, who may be a native of several languages, relates to this (implicitly) monolingual and ‘larger than life’ native speaker.

3.2 Defining the multilingual speaker From a monolingual, fractional perspective, the ideal multilingual speaker is someone who strictly adheres to monolingual standard forms without ever mixing or switching their languages (Jørgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen, & MØller 2011: 33). S/ he keeps her/his languages separate and ‘uncontaminated’ at all times, is immune to interference effects, intrusions, lexical gaps, etc., and has perfect and equal command of all her/his languages (see Herdina  & Jessner 2002: 118 on ambilingualism). Fact of the matter is, however, that the multilingual speaker rarely has balanced and native-like command of her/his languages. Balanced knowledge of all languages “is not in fact the case in reality” (Pinter 2011: 70) because the vast majority of multilinguals have one or two dominant languages and asymmetrical competences (cf. Hopf et al. 2018: 89). Taking a holistic multilingual approach, Canagarajah & Wurr (2011: 6) describe the multilingual speaker as someone who has an integrated competence and whose language use is heteroglossic rather than monoglossic (cf. JØrgensen et al. 2011: 34). The centrality of heteroglossic practices is highlighted in much recent work (Blackledge and Creese 2017; Canagarajah 2018; Kusters et al. 2017; Pennycook 2017) wherein translingual usage finds recognition as a form of resourcefulness affording new possibilities for development and participation (Walker 2018: 19; see also Garcia & Sylvan 2011: 358; Mayr 2020a: 153).

3.3 Monolingual norms and educational practices  

 23

The claim is that in multilingual contexts speakers cannot always presuppose a shared grammar or language and therefore resort to translingual practices and strategies to negotiate meaning and seek common ground (Canagarajah  & Wurr 2011: 2). The ‘pure’ native speaker norm is therefore neither a model they aim to copy, nor a realistic target for them to pursue.

3.3 Monolingual norms and educational practices Arguing the point that the notion of an idealized native speaker conflicts with holistic views of multilingual learning or that multilinguals cannot (fairly) be expected to operate on monolingual norms may come across as rather trivial. The reality however is that monolingual ‘native-speakerism’ is still the pervasive ideology in much of language teaching and learning (Alfaro 2018: 2; Hall 2007: 250; Holliday 2006: 385; see also Bisai & Singh 2018: 308; De Bartolo 2018: 158; Codó & Garrido 2014: 399; Dendrinos 2019: 1; Gopalakrishnan 2020: 3; Heugh 2018: 343; Llurda 2009: 39; Mady 2014: 250; Moussu & Llurda 2008: 331; Padilla & Vana 2019: 27; Piller 2011: 63; Putjata 2018: 260; Schissel, De Korne & López-Gopar 2018: 2; Wojnesitz 2010: 88). Byram (1989 in Padilla & Vana 2019: 24) points to “a hidden curriculum” in educational institutions which typically works in favour of the dominant members of a community (see Kibler  & Valdés 2016: 98 on the ‘curricularization of language’). Others have noted that in formal learning contexts competency in a second or additional language is widely taken to mean “monolingual-like command of an additional language” (Ortega 2009: 5) with little or no acceptance of ‘in-betweenness’ (Bhabha 1994/2004 in Ortega 2011: 170). Resultantly, it is customary in many schools around the world to treat learners as “potential approximations to native speakers and measure their achievements against those of monolinguals” (Andreou  & Galantomos 2009: 200; Lorenz  & Siemund 2019: 88). Garcia (2009) laments that bi- and multilingual students often “suffer linguistic shame” burdened as they are with monoglossic ideologies which value only monolingual ways of doing and deny them the possibility to develop their multilingual agency (308). While admittedly the relationship between classroom practice and top-down language regimes is neither a simple nor straightforward one (Martin 2003: 83), the position taken here is that the wide-spread NS bias can have serious implications for instructional practices and language(s) learning in so far as it 1) sends out a strong message to the effect that only monolingual ways of speaking are “good” and “valuable” (Garcia 2009: 308; Blommaert et al. 2012: 5) and that the native-speaker model is superior to that of the non-native-speaker (De Bartolo 2018: 158),

24  2)

3)

4)

 Chapter 3 Monolingual native speaker vs multilingual norms

fails to recognize the linguistic repertoires that pupils bring with them (Catalano et al. 2018: 2; Rajendram 2021: 22) depriving them of important multilingual experiences and competencies (Walker 2018: 34), discriminates against heritage and minority language learners who are expected to perform in native-like ways in the majority language (Bourdieu 1991: 56; Cummins et al. 2006: 12; Haim 2014: 54; Hopf et al. 2018: 75; Jessner, Hofer & Malser-Papp 2021: 12; Sembiante 2016: 48), and fails to encourage cross-language strategy deployment, creativity and risk-taking, and as a result, stands in the way of learner autonomy, self-reliance (cf. Gopalakrishnan 2020: 1; Grenfell & Harris 2012: 25; Meier 2018: 109; Verhoeven 2007: 394) and, ultimately, multilingual competence building.

Typically enough, the NS ideology is also at work in the most private of social spheres, the family (cf. Li Guofang 2006: 374–5; Palviainen & Bergroth 2018: 271–2). As specified in Grosjean (2001: 123), the “phenomenon of parents helping their children learn the ‘correct’ language [. . .] is widespread.” While both, the CEFR (2001) and its Companion Volume (2018) explicitly indicate that the goal of language(s) learning is not “balanced mastery of different languages [.  .  .], but rather the ability (and willingness) to modulate [.  .  .] usage according to the social and communicative situation” (2018: 157; Cantor et al. 2019: 4), school systems across Europe are still very much NS- and monolingual-oriented (Cummins 2017: 103; Fischer & Lahmann 2020: 117), with monolingual NS norms and an explicit emphasis on “correct” (monolingual) behaviour pervading much, if not all, of everyday school life (Jørgensen, Karrebaek, Madsen,  & MØller 2011: 33; Pérez-Milans  & Patino-Santos 2014: 451). With language separation constituting an essential ingredient of the monolingual native speaker regime, there is little place for non-conformist ways of ‘languaging’ (Bade 2008: 175; Blackledge & Creese 2010: 203; Duff 2012: 414). Multilingual use of language(s) is widely frowned upon as “grammarless language mixture or gibberish” (157) and the perception is of multilingual speakers as multiple semi-linguals who do not command any of their languages “fully” and only have partially developed languages, which, as noted by Cook (2001: 178), relegates them to “an unflatteringly powerless status”. With Cook (2001: 179) I should like to make the point made that the aim of language(s) teaching must be to help learners become multi-competent speakers rather than “ersatz native speakers” because the goal of learning additional languages is to become an L2/Ln user, and not to pass for a native speaker (Cook 2003: 4). As for L1 competence, it is important to bear in mind that native-speaker command of any language is always a relative measure as native speakers vary significantly in terms of the breadth of their lexico-structural knowledge repertoires.

3.4 New ways of ‘speaking’ 

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3.4 New ways of ‘speaking’ Following on from the above, current understandings of language use and knowledge differ considerably from those of earlier theorisations. Contemporary research in sociolinguistics is increasingly guided by the shared perspective that in a globalised and multilingual world people make meaning in whatever way possible (Blackledge and Creese 2017: 41; Walker 2018: 19; Willoughby 2013: 452). Much of the recent work concerned with the study of language use – both, at the microand macro-level – focuses on forms of communication that go beyond traditional understandings of language(s) (Atkinson 2011: 162; Ortega 2011: 168; Seidlhofer & Widdowson 2017: 23). This new trend pays testament to a changing perception of what it means to have and use language(s) and it is indicative of a growing recognition that language is not the sole means of communication, but that instead communication is achieved by virtue of broader and more multifarious repertoires (Kusters et al. 2017: 223; Blackledge and Creese 2017a: 252). Especially in multilingual and/or multicultural contexts where different biographies and linguistic and cultural histories are in contact, language is often just one among several ways to communicate which is why the concept of repertoire as a more encompassing notion is preferred. The notion of repertoire implicates a view of language as multi-lingual and multi-modal semiotic assemblage without any of the restrictive boundaries between single languages and/or modes of semiosis assumed by traditional theory (Pennycook 2017: 270), and it allows for the inclusion of alternative ways of communication (such as provided by internet, social networking, mobile phone text messaging, linguistic landscaping, sign languaging, etc.) which are often ignored in the debate. With this new expansive perspective, a series of novel concepts and designations including languaging (Creese & Blackledge 2010), translanguaging (Garcia 2009, Garcia & Wei 2014; Heugh 2018), multilanguaging (Makoni & Makoni 2010), translingualism and translingual practices (Canagarajah 2018), metrolingualism (Pennycook 2010; Pennycook & Otsuji 2015), polylingualism (JØrgensen 2008), superdiversity (Vertovec 2007), and various forms of -scaping (Landry  & Bourhis 1997), etc., has been proposed, each with their own specific foci and theoretical underpinnings. What these new approaches have in common is a strong dissatisfaction with traditional notions of language and a shared understanding that there is no single-language grammar, just “one language system, one grammar, from which speakers select features” (Vogel and Garcia 2017: 7). Next up, Chapter 4 enlarges on multilingual education. It explores different perspectives on multilingual learning and discusses multilingual classroom approaches as a counterpoise to mainstream education.

Chapter 4  Rehabilitating Babel – Cultivating a multilingual learning ecology Multilingual learning is “a complex phenomenon with multiple realities” (Garcia 2007a: 408). In consequence, perceptions of what multilingual education is and entails can diverge substantively (Hofer  & Jessner 2019; Hofer  & Jessner 2019a). While for some multilingual education exhausts itself in the additive provision of two or more separately taught languages, more informed understandings include a concern for holistic-integrative learning aimed at bolstering students’ multilingual competences and intercultural agency (Hufeisen 2018; Jessner, Allgäuer-Hackl  & Hofer 2016), and an explicit commitment on the part of schools to “aim at multilingualism and multiliteracy” (Cenoz 2009: 32). In the most comprehensive overview of its kind, Garcia (2009) provides a critical examination of extant models of bi- and multilingual education which she groups into two main categories: monoglossic and heteroglossic. The former is subdivided into subtractive and additive, the latter comprises what Garcia refers to as recursive and dynamic frameworks. Subtractive and additive models are premised on monolingual norms and value systems with each language neatly compartmentalized for the sake of linguistic purity (115). They either frame bi- or multilingualism as a problem to be overcome or construe multilingual competences as “the simple sum of discrete monolingual language practices” (ibid.). Conversely, heteroglossic models aim to “educate profoundly and globally.” They focus on the learner’s entire spectrum of ‘languaging’ faculties and provide for the development of strategic multilingual competence (Garcia 2009: 117). The aim is not balanced but dynamic and functional bi/ multilingualism, viz., a linguistic ecology for efficiency, equity, and integration (119). In comparison, monolingual education is limited in scope and falls short of the wider social realities of multilingualism. According to Garcia, monolingual education fails to fulfill its educational brief because it does not offer (all) children the opportunity to develop cognitively, socially, and linguistically (Garcia 209: 16, 113; see also McKinney, Carrim, Marshall & Layton 2015: 103). It is on this understanding that Garcia (2009) points to bi/multilingual education as the only way to educate children in the 21st century (5), and “the only way to educate as the world moves forward” (16). Transitioning “from a monolingual habitus to one where multilingualism is valued” (Hélot 2008: 376), multilingual education creates space for dynamic crossanguage practice and the integration of multiple linguistic resources. It is based on the precept that learner-users will progress on their developmental path to the extent that classrooms https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-005

Chapter 4 Rehabilitating Babel – Cultivating a multilingual learning ecology  

1) 2) 3)

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“affirm the ‘multilingual competence’ of their learners across multiple meaning-making systems” (Mei French 2016: 302), take account of the special needs, resources, and language practices that children bring to the classroom, and harness pupils’ prior knowledge, e.g., through crosslingual reflection and a curriculum that highlights commonalities between languages (Castellotti  & Moore 2005: 117; Mady 2014: 249).

In the European context a number of propositions for multilingual approaches to language(s) education have been advanced in the recent past. Among the common features shared across the range of these is a focus on integrated multilingual learning and cross-language awareness raising (Allgäuer-Hackl et al. 2018; Duarte  & Günther-van der Meij 2018; Hawkins 1974; Hufeisen 2018) and an understanding that teaching for cross-linguistic transfer of knowledge and skill is key to the successful deployment of one’s multilingual resources (cf. Cummins 2017: 105ff.) and academic success (Cummins 2009: 22). Cummins’ interdependence hypothesis (1979), and the M(ultilingualism)-factor proposed by Herdina & Jessner (2002), provide a strong theoretical underpinning for cross-lingual approaches with the former positing a “common underlying proficiency that mediates transfer of concepts, language structures, and learning strategies across languages” (Cummins 2009: 266; see also Kecskes & Papp 2000), and the latter predicting positive effects of cross-linguistic applications for students’ language development and (meta)cognition (Jessner 2016: 5). In South Tyrol, first proposals for an integrated multilingual approach to language(s) learning and teaching were submitted in the 1990s when Gelmi  & Saxalber set forth recommendations for an Integrated Language Didactics. However, their call for cross-language comparative practice went largely unheard. Take-up has been equally modest for The Multilingual School Curriculum (Schwienbacher et al. 2016) which is a more recent attempt at promoting multilingual integrative approaches in German-language schools in South Tyrol. While similar approaches have been readily espoused by Italian and Ladin schools in the region, the German school administration has been somewhat reluctant to invite in change, possibly because this would require transformations at the level of curriculum planning together with the abandonment of well-tried and much cherished ways of doing which have for decades provided a stable and reliable frame of reference, sanctioned and promoted by both, the German school authorities and political stakeholders. The “epistemological rethinking” that Morin (2006: 6) cites as a precondition for reinventing encrusted pedagogical discourses and practices seems to be particularly laborious in the specific context of South Tyrol. Integrated multilingual approaches as described above have to my knowledge only been implemented in

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two German primary schools in the region. Both schools take part in the current research. Part II of the book provides a detailed profile of each. Next, Chapter 5 provides the theoretical foundation for the research reported in this book. Atomistic piecemeal approaches, it will be argued, and a concern with single aspects of very complex processes, together with linear causality assumptions and a reductionist preoccupation with the native-speaker benchmark  – as have been characteristic of epistemological frameworks in the past – are inadequate for the study of complex multilingual systems because they mask a vision of the whole. I shall make the point that a comprehensive account of multilingual development and competence building needs to widen its scope and adopt a holistic multi-perspectival heuristic such as advocated by complex dynamic systems thinking. The chapter opens with an outline of the central tenets of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory. It then moves on to present a new conceptual framework, the Complexity Framework of Multilingual Competences, and it discusses this latter’s relevance for the present study.

Chapter 5  Widening perspectives: Applying CDS Thinking to multilingual competence building There is a growing perception in all academic disciplines today that traditional ways of thinking and looking at the world fail to provide us with satisfying insights and solutions (De Bot 2017: 56). Traditional ways of thinking (widely referred to as reductive or reductionist) are characterized by a tendency to focus on the separate parts of a phenomenon or whole, rather than the entire system. A central principle underlying traditional approaches is that by taking things apart and analyzing their constituent components in isolation, one can arrive at a (more or less) complete understanding of the whole. What the heuristic of ‘reduction to components’ fails to disclose is how “complex things” behave, and how they react when “exposed to a complex set of influences” (Laszlo & Krippner 1998: 9–10). As such the reductionist approach stands in direct opposition to CDS thinking, which focuses on complex behaviours and submits to the contingency that phenomena and systems may not be knowable, and that scientific objectivity and truth may be something of an illusion (Larsen-Freeman 2011: 68; Larsen-Freeman, Schmid & Lowie 2011: 6; Pigott 2012: 30; Rogers et al. 2013). Complex Dynamic Systems theory views the universe and all living systems or organisms in it as complex dynamic systems and integrated wholes. It endorses the notions of complexity, dynamism and interrelatedness and considers systems in terms of the relational interactions between their component parts and the larger environment (Larsen-Freeman 2019: 64). Change is seen as a major driving force of complex dynamic systems.

5.1 Complex dynamic systems Various labels have been applied to complex systems and complex dynamic systems theory over the years (Mercer 2013: 376). Following De Bot (2017: 51), complexity thinking is here used to talk about the complexity paradigm in very general terms. The label CDST subsumes Complexity Theory (CT) and Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). CDS or Complex Dynamic Systems designate what is variously referred to as complex systems, dynamic systems, dynamical systems, (complex) adaptive systems or complex nonlinear systems. As for the application of CDST to multilingual (competence) development, the proposition here is to conceive of complexity thinking as a metaphorical lens rather than a theoretical model or coherent theory with a clearly demarcated focus or https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-006

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 Chapter 5 Widening perspectives

thrust. In this book, CDS thinking is therefore construed as just that, a prism through which to investigate the complexity and dynamism in multilingual development and competence construction (cf. Van Niererk 2013: 104). A further important aspect to clarify concerns my own understanding of CDST. As an applied linguist my grasp of many aspects of CDST is ipso facto limited and many of the axioms of CDST are beyond what I could ever hope to be sufficiently cognizant of. Accordingly, the humble concession is that this book can only ever scrape the surface of the highly complex field of science that CDST presents.

5.2 Defining complex and dynamic systems The first scientist to apply the notion “system” to living organisms and social systems was the biochemist Lawrence Henderson (1878–1942) (Morin 2006: 15). A broad spectrum of definitions of (complex dynamic) ‘systems’ has been advanced since. According to Richardson et al. (2004), (complex) systems are amalgams comprised of multiple entities which display a high level of interactivity, evolve in a dynamic and non-linear manner, and exhibit adaptive, self-organizing and emergent behaviors. Likewise, Baicchi (2015) takes complex systems to consist “of a large number of heterogeneous entities which, interacting with each other and with their environment, generate multiple layers of collective structure exhibiting hierarchical self-organization without centralized control” (10). This notion of systems finds echo in Laszlo & Krippner (1998) who conceive of a system as “a whole made up of interdependent components in interaction” where each element of the system “has an effect on the functioning of the whole, and each element is affected by at least one other element in the system.” (8). Ecosystems, social systems, cognitive systems, political systems, human systems, as well as languages, language use and language development, all exhibit characteristics of complex dynamic systems. The following gives a succinct overview of the key properties of Complex Dynamic Systems. CDS – are complex in the sense that they consist of a large number of different components, and their behaviour emerges from the interactions and self-organisation of the component parts (Larsen-Freeman, Schmid & Lowie 2011: 6); they – are dynamic, in constant flux, and changing all the time. They – self-organise in dynamic, spontaneous ways; they – are emergent, which is to say that they arise out of the interaction with other systems or system components. They – are unpredictable because they develop in a non-linear fashion (i.e., CDS may respond in completely unexpected ways to a given perturbation or stimulus). They

5.2 Defining complex and dynamic systems 

– – – – –

– – –

–

–

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are sensitive to initial conditions. They are variable. No two people develop in precisely the same way. No two learners learn languages in exactly the same way; CDS are open systems and as such communicate with other systems; CDS are interconnected, i.e., inseparable from their context; CDS rely on iterative activity – an iteration denoting “a process that takes its output as its new input, produces new output, which it takes as input, and so on, ad infinitum” (Van Geert 1994: 14); CDS are feedback-sensitive and adapt to their surroundings; CDS are fractal (fractals relate to (systems) properties that are found at multiple levels; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron 2008: 110); CDS can be chaotic and at the same time exhibit features of stability or order (indeed they can be one thing and another – as posited by fuzzy logic). Order and chaos are closely intertwined in CDS (Herdina & Jessner 2002: 84); CDS are fuzzy in the sense that they do not have any clear-cut border or demarcation and are therefore not to be regarded as discrete objects or entities but as (constantly) coalescing with other systems. This does, however, not mean that they do not have an identity or structure of their own. In matter of fact, complex systems do have their own distinct identity. They are what emerges from the combined interplay of their own history and that of the network of systems they are nested in (Haggis 2009: 9).

Next, I undertake to link some of the characteristics of CDS as spelled out above to multilingual competence building. The usefulness and added value of CDS thinking for the field of multilingualism are considered as central tenets of CDSTheory are related to aspects of multilingual competence and growth. Practical implications of a complexity view for our conception of the multilingual learner-user and the learning process are discussed against the background of the pertinent literature. I explain what a CDST approach entails for a theory of multilingual development starting with terminological clarifications regarding the notion of complexity as it applies to individual multilingual development. This is followed by an outline of a new complexity-inspired framework for multilingual competence building  – here seen as obtaining at the intersection of language, (meta) cognition, identity, and the larger social reality (cf. Pavlenko 2000; Kramsch 2012; Norton Peirce 1995). In Part II of the book the new framework is then applied to the primary classroom. To the best of my knowledge, no previous attempts to investigate early multilingual competence within a complexity framework have been undertaken so far.

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5.3 What do we mean by complexity? Complexity is an inherent emergent property (Jessner 2013: 4) and the “most outstanding characteristic of current multilingualism” and multilingual development (Aronin 2015: 16). In analogy to Anderson’s ‘More is different’ (1972) the proposition here is that ‘More is complex’, which is to say that complexity as a function of the dynamic multidirectional interactions between the multitude of factors and/or agents that influence multilingual learning across time and space is compounded in multilingual systems compared to mono- or bilingual systems (cf. Jessner 2019 who speaks of hypercomplexity of the multilingual mind). In what follows I offer a brief account of how complexity eventuates and takes effect in the multilingual system. The remainder of the book will then proceed from these considerations. The result of complex dynamic cycles of interaction and emergence, – complexity arises from different (initial) conditions, which determine vastly differential evolutionary trajectories and/or learning outcomes (Jessner 2018: 34). In the present study these conditions relate in particular to distinct instructional settings, classroom compositions, and language constellations at the individual learner-user level (see Part II); – complexity derives from the fact that variables or stimuli affect people or circumstances in different ways depending on the specifics of the context and/or on how a given stimulus is received by the individuum (see Stimulus Impact Factor, Hofer 2017). – The overall complexity of the learner-user system is escalated by an increase in the number of stimuli that come to affect it over the lifespan. As children grow up and gain new (life) experiences as members of their respective sociocultural ecologies, their cognitive potential and their horizons expand, their identities and their emotive and perceptive sensitivities become more complex, and their reasoning skills more sophisticated. As a result, there is a significant increase in the system’s overall complexity. – Systems complexity is magnified by the presence of unknown or hidden factors that we as researchers may not be aware of, but which affect the system without our knowing (see CFMC below). Their impact on the system is here referred to as the Hidden Factor Effect or HFE. So far, SLA and multilingualism research have largely ignored the effects of hidden factors. – Finally, complexity emanates from so-called emergent properties which develop in the multilingual mind as a consequence of the complex interactions between multiple (psycho)linguistic systems. These interactions entail significant qualitative changes and a complete metamorphosis of the entire system as they give rise to new qualities or properties which are subsumed under the so-called M(ultilingualism)-Factor (Herdina & Jessner 2002).

5.4 CFMC – A Complexity Framework for Multilingual Competence 

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An open adaptive system, the multilingual system flexibly accommodates to the complex and dynamic circumstances that present themselves over time. Processes of accommodation or adaptation are mediated by the special properties of elasticity and plasticity where elasticity denotes the ability of the multilingual system to adapt to temporary changes in its surroundings, and plasticity refers to its capacity to develop new properties in response to altered environmental conditions (Herdina & Jessner 2002: 151). In the course of these processes of accommodation, the multilingual system metamorphoses, which is to say that it undergoes complete change, from which follows that complex dynamic systems are never the same at any two points in time or space (Verspoor, Lowie & Van Dijk 2008). A conclusion to draw from the foregoing is that the complexity of the whole is magnified in relation to that of the single parts which compose it, because the whole exhibits qualities or properties that its parts do not possess. In this sense, the whole is more than the mere sum of its parts. In the special context of multilingual development, ‘the whole’ relates to both, the learner-user system (with their linguistic and cognitive abilities, their emotional self, their expectations, needs and motivations, etc.) and the larger social ecology in which the system is lodged. How, in this context, single parts and systems relate to and impact one another, and what this means for multilingual competence building will be examined in more detail in the following where the mainstays of the Complexity Framework for Multilingual Competence (CFMC) are drawn up.

5.4 CFMC – A Complexity Framework for Multilingual Competence Probing into the processes that drive multilingual competence and agency this section proposes a re-examination of multilingual competence development from a complex dynamic systems perspective. The Complexity Framework for Multilingual Competence (short CFMC) proposed here conjoins central tenets from CDST and multilingualism research and links them to recent precepts in neighbouring disciplines. The aim is to bring together different strands of research and weave them into a coherent complexity-framed tapestry. Motivated by this ambitious plan, extant theoretical conceptualizations are reinterpreted and extended through the introduction and integration of novel dimensions in an effort to throw fresh light on phenomena which are currently only poorly understood. The broadened conceptualization underpinning the CFMC offers a new perspective on some of the complex processes at work in multi-competence development. The new framework draws significantly on previous models and theorisations, notably Herdina & Jessner’s Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (2002), and Larsen-Freeman & Cameron’s

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(2008) expositions on complexity theory in applied linguistics. It further draws inspiration from Hufeisen’s Factor Model (2005, 2010, 2018), Grosjean’s conceptions of the competent speaker-hearer (1998, 2001), Cummins’ Developmental Interdependence Hypothesis (1991), and Cook’s notion of multi-competence (2016). All of them have contributed greatly to our current understanding of multilingualism and multilingual acquisition.

5.5 What distinguishes the CFMC from earlier CDST-informed models? Several important features differentiate the CFMC from prior CDST-inspired frameworks. The most salient are sketched here: First, the CFMC is, to the best of my knowledge, the first theoretical framework to apply CDST to multilingual competences in young learner-users. Second, the CFMC takes a more inclusive approach than most previous models in that it conjoins different branches of contemporary scholarship and addresses very specific aspects that have not been given (much) consideration heretofore (see Fig. 5.1). In so doing it sheds new light on current discourses of multilingual competence development. Third, while previous attempts at modelling multilingual development have contented themselves with presenting a theoretical frame of orientation, the CFMC finds direct practical application in a study of multilingual competences at the primary level (see Part II). Figure 5.1 provides a visual representation of the Complexity Framework for Multilingual Competence complete with some of the key factors involved in multilingual competence building (the undulating wave-motions indexing the dynamic interconnectedness, fluidity, and non-linearity as characterise the multi-competent system). Factors are construed as continua which intersect and interact with one another across space-time (see Continua of Multilingual Competence or CMC Fig. 7.3 for more). Factors and their dynamic interactions are the focus of Chapter 6. The forces at the extreme (top and bottom) ends of the illustration give an indication of the complex dynamics that drive multilingual competence building (MCB). Far from being the product of single factors, MLC is here seen as the outcome of complex factor interactions mediated by varyingly powerful attractors, autopoietic and hidden factors, differential factor weights and the so-called stimulus impact effect, as well as by autocatalysis and emergence (see below). Conceived as an open framework, the CFMC is flexibly extendable in the sense that new factors and influences can be added at any one time to accommodate altered conditions and contexts. As such the CFMC is itself in continuous motion, changing and adapting constantly according to the given circumstances.

5.5 What distinguishes the CFMC from earlier CDST-informed models?  

 35

Fig. 5.1: The Complexity Framework of Multilingual Competence.

The following outlines the major keystones underpinning the CFMC. Each is then addressed in more detail. An inclusive and adaptable frame of reference, the CFMC is premised on the following key principles: 1) Complexity and dynamism are pervasive aspects of multi-competence development at all levels and times.

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2) Multilingual competence development is contingent on a multitude of identity-related psychological factors (linked to the learner-user self and their meta/ cognitive and emotional dispositions), linguistic factors (relating to the nature of the languages involved and the typological distance or proximity between them), and social factors in the widest sense (including socio-demographic, sociolinguistic, historico-political, cultural, and educational factors) some of which may elude our observation (a phenomenon I have chosen to term ‘hidden factor effect’, Hofer 2017). 3) Conditional factors tend to exert their influence in bundles or factor agglomerates. Interactions between factors and/or factor bundles are highly dynamic and complex, and new emergent structures are borne out of these interactions. 4) Factor constellations differ from context to context and from person to person. Factors carry different weight in different learner systems and across different phase moments, as predicted by the SIF (Stimulus Impact Factor). 5) As a result of the ‘chaotic’ confluence of multiple factor(bundle)s, important aspects relating to multilingual growth may remain impenetrable for as long as we lack the capacity to disentangle the knot (Larsen-Freeman 1997: 157). 6) Multilingual competence is emergent and contingent on prior (language learning) experience and constant investment. 7) Multilingual competence development is non-linear and mediated by dynamic feedback loops. 8) Multilingual learning and competence are embedded and embodied in the sense that they involve both the mind and the physical body. 9) Multilingual competence and agency are nested and context-dependent which is to say that they arise from the interactions of the individual learner-user in and with their surroundings. This includes tensions and struggles at the psychological and wider societal level (Edwards 2003: 33; Patrick 2007: 111ff.; Putjata 2018: 270). As external and internal contextual factors conflate, the social order inscribes itself in the mind and body through re-iterative confrontation (cf. Bourdieu 2000: 141). In what follows, I proceed to sketching the main principles of the CFMC in more detail though not necessarily in the order in which they are indexed above. The contention is that we can only ever hope to penetrate the complexities involved in multilingual competence development if we look at them through a holistic complexity-informed lens.

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5.6 A CFMC view of multilingual competence construction The CFMC assumes no universal learning trajectory or stable end state but multiple developmental pathways leading to varying manifestations and degrees of multilingual competence. Multilingual competence building and attainment are understood to be variable and highly individual (Lantolf  & Thorne 2006: 215; Van der Steen, Steenbeek & Van Geert 2012: 26; Verspoor. Lowie, Chan & Vahtrick 2017: 1), and as such a journey that takes each individuum on a different adventure.

5.6.1 A holistic view of the multilingual learner-user Taking account of multilinguals’ entire communicative repertoire  – inclusive of minimal proficiencies and translingual and multimodal semiotic means of communication – the CFMC envisions the learner-user as multi-competent (and) agentive in her/his own right. This holistic perspective serves to underscore the fact that multilingual usage is not flawed or deficient but highly idiosyncratic and very much contingent on the individual speaker’s life history and experiences. Accordingly, the claim is that multilinguals’ abilities cannot be judged on the basis of monolingual norm expectations, nor for that matter, in terms of their single language skills alone (De Angelis 2012a: 24).

5.6.2 Conditional factors: factor weight and factor interaction The CFMC view is that multilingual competence building is dependent on a large range of factors (cf. Hufeisen’s factor model, 2010, 2018) which affect the learner-user system across time and space and contribute to (vastly) differential (initial) conditions and learning trajectories. Factors are seen as (potentially) carrying “co-equal” weight in producing a given outcome or behaviour (Thelen 2005: 261). This simplification is necessary if we accept that factors can, theoretically at least, exert equal influence on the system, even if in practice this may not be the case. Starting from the premise that there is total connectedness and interdependence between all the factors involved (linguistic, cognitive, psychological/affective and social), multilingual competence development is best explained in terms of complex factor bundles’ conjoined impact on the learner-user system. The specific constellation and synergistic interplay of the factor(bundle)s implicated give rise to unique learner-user configurations. New emerging factors or stimuli may enter the picture at any one moment in the evolutionary trajectory of the system, changing the dominant factor constellation, and with it the weight and impact of individual

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factor(bundle)s, and the directionality of the learner-user’s developmental path (cf. Bastardas-Boada 2019: 127). In the present study complex factor constellations are constituted by the diverse sociolinguistic and socio-educational ecologies in which the study participants operate. While all the pupils attend German-language schools, the sociolinguistic and educational parameters differ considerably from one school setting to the next. This makes for very different multilingual (learning) experiences. The aim is to examine how the respective factor bundles relate to one another and how they impact children’s multilingual performance and attitudes.

5.6.3 Time scales The CFMC takes account of temporal dimensions of interactions and change. With developments obtaining at multiple time scales, micro-genetic (short-term) processes are seen as intersecting with macro-genetic (long-term) evolutions (see Divita 2014: 2). This is to say that events at one moment in time are always in some way or other linked to prior and subsequent episodes (see 5.6.8). Resultantly, factor(bundle)s exert their influence across different space and time scales.

5.6.4 The Stimulus Impact Factor The CFMC assumes the relativity of all factors, their effect on the learner-user system depending on the so-called SIF or Stimulus Impact Factor. As one of the central principles of the CFMC, SIF denotes the impact that a given stimulus can have on the multilingual system. Having regard to the temporal, spatial, and psychological context in which the multilingual system is nested, the SIF assumes that one and the same stimulus can have very different effects 1) on different learner-user systems and 2) on the same learner-user system at different moments in space-time. Negative reinforcement from a teacher, for instance, or a low grade in an exam, may result in increased language learning effort in one child but can cause another to become frustrated and disheartened. This is to say that any given stimulus can cause one learner-user system to improve and another to decline, a situation which largely results from the fact that the SIF modulates the effects of external variables and determines how stimuli from outside affect the individual in terms of their learning motivation and progression. As I have explained elsewhere, the “stimulus impact factor relates to the way exogenous forces impinging on the system are perceived and processed by the learner-user (system) and to the way and extent that endogenous forces or learner-user characteristics (such as attitudes, emotions etc.) are affected (and potentially altered) by these stimuli” (Hofer 2017:  99). Relating

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“to how exogenous and endogenous forces conflate to impact individual learner perception and behaviour” (ibid.) the SIF indexes the fusion between the individual learner-user system and so-called context(ual factors). Support for the SIF effect can be found in Laszlo & Krippner (1998) who observe that “[a]t the level of the individual psyche there are multiple processes of perception, interpretation, representation, explanation, and communication that push and pull at our individual and collective cognitive maps as they shape our subjective image of phenomena and events” (15–16).

5.6.5 On the nature of external and internal factors The CFMC suggests that it is not always possible to draw a clear distinction between internal and external factors because factors mesh and coalesce in the absence of rigid borders. As they do so it becomes difficult to establish whether factors are endogenous or exogenous or a combination thereof. For instance, learner-users’ self-concept or perceived ability may be strongly influenced by the amount of encouragement and support they receive, and by what their friends or parents believe, and they may internalize social values or expectations held by significant others or by society at large, at which point these values become an amalgam of their own values and those of other social agents or institutions (and in this sense a new feature of the multilingual self-system). As noted by Morin (2005: 10), Society is the product of interactions between human individuals, but society is constituted with its emergencies, its culture, its language, which retroacts to the individuals and thus produces them as individuals supplying them with language and culture. We are products and producers. Causes produce effects that are necessary for their own causation.

The influence of (external) forces does not however implicate determinism. Indeed, the multi-competent system is not governed by any defined laws or central control. The “system’s potential might be constrained by its history” and situated ecology but “it is not fully determined by it” (Larsen-Freeman  & Cameron 2008: 9). Each learner-user system, while integrated with other systems, is also at the same time autonomous. It develops and self-organises following its own rules which include preferences, motivations, interests, expectations, etc.

5.6.6 Hidden factors The CFMC posits that we have no way of identifying all the factors implicated in multilingual development and performance. Some factors will defy direct observa-

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tion and will remain hidden. What is more, we cannot know for sure which factor in a given factor bundle has the biggest impact on the system, nor, for that matter, how their combined interaction will impact the system over time. Indeed, it may not be possible to disentangle the single threads of a factor-cluster just as it may not be possible to establish their respective heft (see SIF). In consideration thereof, the CFMC acknowledges that all cannot be known (Larsen-Freeman  & Cameron 2008: 75). Such being the case, the potential presence of hidden variables in the learner-user system impels us to consider the possibility that we may not any time soon be able to gain a full understanding of multilingual competence development (Mercer 2013: 377; Van Niekerk 2013: 106). The dilemma of scientists in the pursuit of “a knowledge that is neither fragmented nor compartmentalized, and the recognition of the incompletion and incompleteness of any knowledge” is discussed in some detail in Morin (2000: 18 in Piske et al. 2017: 297).

5.6.7 Language development in context Multilingual competence building viewed from the perspective of the CFMC is closely intertwined with “its natural surroundings” and “the personal, situational, cultural, and societal factors that collectively shape” it (Cantor et al. 2019; Opitz 2017: 184; Rose & Fischer, 2009: 401). Context construed as the individual’s everyday experiences in the world (Contini 2013: 208–9), is seen as forming a nexus between the individual and the social (Van der Steen, Steenbeek & Van Geert 2012: 24), and between the past, present and future (Larsen-Freeman 2019: 70). As such, language, learner-user and setting are highly interdependent, each interacting with and existing with(in) the other(s) (Massip-Bonet et al. 2019: 7). From this follows that the socio-political/historical and psychological/cognitive spheres form intermingling realities which flow into one another and codetermine each other’s evolution. Far from being a decontexualised self-contained phenomenon lodged in the individuum, multilingual competence is thus taken to evolve in concert with the wider ecology. It becomes clear then that any serious discussion of multilingual competence building “in the classroom needs to be considered in the context of social conditions outside the classroom” (Martin 2003: 68).

5.6.8 Multilingual competence as derivable from experience The CFMC endorses a conception of multicompetence development as usage-based, i.e., as “derivable from experience” (Bybee 2003: 164) and as emerging from the “seamless interweaving of events in time” (Thelen 2005: 265) with speakers bor-

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rowing “heavily from their previous experiences of communication in similar circumstances” (Hopper 1998: 157) and drawing on all their resources to construct meaning. In this sense, multilingual competence as ‘soft-assembled’ in the moment (Larsen-Freeman  & Cameron 2008: 6) and adapted in in-situ responses to the requirements of discourse (Bybee & Hopper 2001: 3) is “an emergent fact” rooted in the individual’s life experience and history and in their strive to actualise successful communication (Hopper 1998: 164).

5.6.9 Attractor forces Past/present and future events in the learner-user’s life history can function as attractors with variable forces of attraction and impact on the system. Attractors are defined as conditions or states that complex systems prefer or are attracted to (Paiva 2011: 59). When systems are drawn to a particular attractor, they may settle into and remain in this particular (attractor) state over any given period of time until, for instance, a perturbation or stronger attractor comes along and exerts its pull on the system (Harshbarger 2009: 19). When this happens, the system is said to undergo a phase shift (or bifurcation), i.e., it moves into a new phase moment and a new behavioral mode (the terms ‘phase moment’ or ‘state phase’ are here preferred over ‘state’ because they more adequately reflect the transient nature of an evolutionary moment). In language(s) learning attractors can be a particular language that learner-users prefer over another, or the learner-user’s expectation about what learning in class should be like. For instance, learner-users may, in a particular attractor moment, prefer certain activities over others and/or may develop a certain reluctance to engage in activities that do not meet their expectations. Learner-user systems in a ‘strong’ attractor moment, exhibit a relatively stable mode of behaviour, whereas systems in chaotic attractor moments, tend to be highly responsive to energy or stimuli from outside. In the latter case the system’s behaviour will become unstable and undergo change.

5.6.10 Growth and stability From a CFMC perspective, stability is never static but dynamic and, by implication, subject to change. Once an orderly state (e.g., a given level of proficiency or agency in one or several languages) has been attained, the system needs to carefully balance its resources in order to maintain this equilibrium. Stability is taken to eventuate in degrees (Thelen 2005: 262); learner-users may master some target structures very confidently (in which case there is a high level of stability) but

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command others only poorly (in which case there is considerable instability). High levels of multilingual investment effort (MIE) will facilitate the establishment of (relatively) stable patterns or memory traces, allowing learner-users to maintain or improve their current proficiency level. If MIE is low, stability is compromised, and the system will plunge or revert into chaotic instability. This said, there are circumstances, in which it may be warranted to induce such chaotic disorder to effectuate a more positive learning attitude. If, for instance, learner-users are caught in an attractor state which is not conducive to their learning, it may be necessary to initiate action that can destabilise the current inauspicious state phase and nudge the system in a new direction. Linked hereto, the CFMC compels us to consider that multilingual competence development will not always occur on a level that is observable in learner-users’ linguistic productions and behaviour, nor does it relate to the integration of new linguistic structures alone. Rather, learning can sometimes take place on a more hidden level, possibly taking the form of more solid entrenchment of infrequently used structures, or a diminution of insecurity with regards to the use of certain linguistic forms (Larsen-Freeman 1997: 158). Equally, the advantages of language(s) learning, including early multilingual learning, may not always become immediately apparent but again, this must not be misconstrued as signifying that children do not accrue benefits from early experience with additional languages (Hélot & Young 2002). Indeed, as Wenger (1998: 8 in Zuengler & Miller 2006: 41) notes, learning “is something we can assume-whether we see it or not [.  .  .]. Even failing to learn what is expected in a given situation usually involves learning something else instead” (cf. Lucas 2020: 170). It follows that some phenomena or properties of multilingual systems may only become manifest when a certain point of criticality is reached, and a new state phase is entered (Jessner 2018: 33).

5.6.11 Complex learner-user psychologies From the CFMC perspective, affective, motivational and attitudinal factors are considered critical because they are “part of the causal web of behaviour throughout life” (Thelen 2005: 262). In concurrence with a growing body of research (Dörnyei et al. 2015, MacIntyre et al. 2016), the CFMC holds that learner-users’ complex emotional worlds and their willingnes to engage and invest in language(s) learning have a major impact on their learning success and progression. Constantly (re) negotiated in interpersonal encounters and speech events learner-users’ psychologies are subject to varyingly strong fluctuations in time and space (Darvin & Norton 2015: 37). New or shifting relations between the agents or factors involved are anticipated to cause the system to undergo – anything from minor to substantive –

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change. Psychological constructs including emotion, motivation, attitude, and identity are treated in some detail in Chapter 6.

5.6.12 Multilingual competence building as distributed According to the CFMC, language and multilingual competence building are distributed in the threefold sense that they are spread out at the neuronal (or processing) level, the social level, and the material level (cf. Hutchins’ notion of distributed cognition 2006: 376). This is to say that, 1) language(s) processing and multi(lingual) competence development are not locally controlled by a clearly delimited and specialized brain area or module but involve vast neuronal networks (see De Bot 2010, for instance, who strongly contests the existence of a stable language area and instead argues that language is mediated by dynamically changing networks (http://citeseerx.ist.psu. edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.706.5211&rep=rep1&type=pdf; de Bot ‘L1 and L2 as merging systems’ p. 7 / 293; accessed 27th May 2020). 2) Language and MLC are shared and shaped by communities of speakers (cf. Cook 2016). As stated in Garner (2004: 68), the “repository of all this [multilingual/ multimodal] knowledge and shared understanding is not the individual [alone], but the community.” (square brackets added by the present author). In other words, language and multilingual competence are distributed among co-participants in interaction (Brisard et al 2009: 70; Haggis 2009: 44; Morrison 2006: 3) rather than lodged (solely) in the individual mind (Martin-Beltrán 2014: 210). 3) Linguistic knowledge – and with that multi-competence – is spread out across the many resources or affordances that are available to the learner-user. Availability of these resources may not be perceived equally by individuals. Rather, learner-users may differ in their ability to discern and make use of the affordances provided by their environment. As teachers we are only too aware of the fact that students vary in their sensitivity and responsiveness to the affordances supplied. While some may be quick to perceive and capitalize on their presence, others may be entirely oblivious or indifferent to their existence and potential (cf. Complex learner-user psychologies, 5.6.11).

5.6.13 Multilingual competence building as embedded and embodied Following on from the foregoing, the CFMC conceives of multicompetence development as nested in a network of systems which rather than being merely adjacent systems are understood to intermingle and amalgamate with the learner-user

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system and with each other. With systems dynamically fusing into one another, language (use) and language(s) learning become inseparable from the physical (bodily), emotional and wider socio-political and cultural experience (cf. Atkinson 2011: 143; Bourdieu 2000: 141; Bucholtz & Hall 2016: 173; Busch 2017: 350; Kusters et al. 2017: 225; Mills 2014: 7; Nelson 2011: 96–97; Rosborough 2014: 229). Language(s) (use) and learning are then, by implication, embedded and embodied.

5.6.14 Multilingual competence building as dynamic co-construction Following ecological and Vygotsky-inspired sociocultural theorising (though not quite supporting postulates such as “the social world is the source of all learning” in Lantolf & Thorne 2006: 214; italics added), the CFMC highlights the benefits of social or collaborative forms of learning (cf. Clyne, Cordella, Schüpbach & Maher 2013: 384; Huang 2020: 34; Melo-Pfeifer 2014: 129; Sharifian & Musgrave 2013: 368; Weichhart 2013: 41) and conceives of language, language use and language acquisition as “simultaneously occurring and interactively constructed both ‘in the head’ and ‘the world’” (Atkinson 2002: 525; Canagarajah 2014: 79; Svalberg  & Askham 2020: 241) through the dynamic interactions of the mind in and with the wider ecology and in synchrony with other social participants. This latter point is particularly important since it is through “participating in various activities, and through being mediated by those around us” that we “come to master our cognitive functions” – language functions included – in unique ways (Poehner 2008: 14). In what follows, I discuss investment. Investment is here taken to relate to two different but interlinked dimensions: 1) investment of one’s self, and 2) expenditure of effort.

5.6.15 Self-investment With multilingual competence development framed as appertaining to the whole person and involving constant (self-) investment, the understanding is that learner-users invest their whole identity when they build up their multilingual competence (cf. Schuhman 1997: 37 and 155 on the interactions between body, emotion and cognition). This view implies a vision of the learner-user as agentive on multiple levels (including the linguistic, cognitive, interpersonal, emotional, etc.,) and as continuously engaged in the construction and reconfiguration of her/his multilingual competence and self. Various beneficial effects are anticipated for multilinguals who invest themselves in an effort to expand their multilingual competence. Learner-users exhibit-

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ing high levels of dedication and multilingual investment effort, or MIE (see below), can expect to benefit from robust feedback routines that help provision resources and verve for the maintenance and improvement of the overall system (see also 5.6.17). As motivated learners actively seek out opportunities for learning (e.g., through encounters and interactions with members of the target language community), they invest every bit of themselves, and in so doing they grow (the current research provides robust support to this effect).

5.6.16 Multilingual investment effort The CFMC construes of multilingual competence buildung as involving highly complex processes including cognitively demanding operations linked to the activation and inhibition of the required target language items, contrastive, analytical and/or monitoring procedures, the regulation of attentional control, etc. To maintain and/or expand a given functional level of MLC constant investment towards systems upkeep is required. Herdina  & Jessner (2002) posit a general language effort (GLE), composed of a language acquisition effort (LAE) and language maintenance effort (LME), which (co-)determines the degree of multilingual proficiency attained by the individuum (131). Inspired by the concept of GLE, the notion of multilingual investment effort is proposed here. The multilingual investment effort (MIE) relates to learner-users’ readiness to expend energy towards maintaining and enhancing the system (note that it may not always be possible to neatly distinguish one from the other). It denotes learner-users’ combined efforts to maintain and increase their overall multilingual competence or parts thereof. MIE is highly context-dependent and as such contingent amongst others on self-related variables, the speaker’s action repertoire and (external) contextual circumstances. The multilingual system is understood to grow to the extent that the learner-user mindset is oriented towards system accretion and to the extent that there is sufficient energy to keep it going. Conversely, if only low levels of effort are expended, conditions will not be sufficient for the system to advance and ameliorate.

5.6.17 Iterative learning, feedback and development The CFMC conceives of multilingual competence building as extending over the entire lifespan, viz., as ongoing with no fixed or static endpoint, the precept being that there is always some activity or change taking place, either in the form of positive growth (i.e., learning), or in the form of negative growth (or deterioration) (cf. Herdina  & Jessner 2002). As in biological systems, growth and development

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are taken to be iterative – each current state phase being the product of previous steps or iterations (Van Geert 1994 in Verspoor, Lowie  & de Bot 2008: 63)  – and mediated by feedback-loops which recirculate energy within the system (Van der Steen, Steenbeek & Van Geert 2012: 25) either catapulting the system forward (thus contributing to learning gains) or causing it to lose steam, and possibly grinding it down to a halt. Feedback loops, like all activity and development in complex systems work in a non-linear fashion. Their effects on the system are not easily predictable and may indeed result in unforeseen growth patterns and behaviours. Feedback phenomena significantly complexify causality effects and with that the evolution of the multilingual system.

5.6.18 Language practices as loci of struggle The CFMC submits that any conception of languages as closed and immutable sets of signifying practices and “linguistic communities as [. . .] relatively homogeneous and consensual” (Norton 2011: 172), fails to take account of the complexities and struggles that characterize multilingual realities and the exertions endured at the individual learner-user level (cf. Block 2009: 226; Pennycook 2001: 128). In opposition to the restricted focus of former construals, the stance adopted here is that language(s) are neither finite monolithic systems in the blueprint of a person, nor do they fit characterisations such as homogeneous or consensual. Rather, in line with recent ecological and poststructuralist perspectives, multilingualism is construed as involving tensions at different levels, including clashes between top-down socio-political impositions and the subjectivity of the multilingual self (Pavlenko 2003: 259), struggles for meaning “between conventional and non-conventional interpretation of signs” (Kramsch 2009: 44) and struggles at the psychological level of the self. With this established, we can conceive of MCB as a locus of struggle (Norton 2011: 172; Wand 2016: 331), a conceptualization which assumes particular relevance in the context of South Tyrol, where for various historical and political reasons, language learning and linguistic identity have become deeply imbued with ideological values and where discourse practices are highly politicized (cf. Pennycook 2000: 91). I elaborate further on this point in Part II of the book.

5.7 Conclusion Conjoining theoretical perspectives that have hitherto been largely treated as unrelated (when, clearly, there are important points of contact between them), the CFMC posits the complementarity of cognitive, emotional and social learning, and

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the added value of interdisciplinarity for theory building (cf. Fairclough 2001: 11; Heugh 2018: 347; Larsen-Freeman 2019: 62; Meier 2017: 153). It is on this premise that the CFMC aggregates differential theoretical orientations into one integrated framework from which to investigate the complexities of multilingual competence development. It has been argued in this chapter that conceiving of the multilingual learner-user as a complex, sophisticated, and constantly evolving system, susceptible to the influences of a multitude of factors, and as constituting an agentive and dynamically ‘functioning whole’ (Larsen-Freeman 2012 in Mercer 2013: 377), allows us to better understand and cater to their needs and motivations (De Angelis & Jessner 2012: 47). For one thing, framing multilingual learner-users in terms of a holistic complexity-inspired perspective entails foregrounding their potential for development and improvement instead of (always only) highlighting their lacunae in one domain or other. For another, conceiving of learning as a dynamic and open-ended process, by which individuals increase their knowledge and competences over time in response to their needs, experiences and the events in their surroundings (Haggis 2009: 11), helps us to move away from the unrealistic native-speaker model. In this sense if educational professionals can be brought to look at the multilingual learner-user through a holistic complexity-informed lens, this will give institutional language learning a more humane, inclusive and friendly coat of paint. Next, Chapter 6 enlarges on key conditional factors involved in multilingual competence building as will frame our discussion of early multilingual competence in the results section.

Chapter 6  The impact of complex factor bundles on the multilingual system Based on the CFMC delineated in the previous chapter and with particular regard to the following core principles, the present chapter examines the impact and range of complex factor bundles on the multilingual system. Reiterating, it is assumed that 1) the factors at work in a multilingual system are in constant interaction with each other. They are interlocked in a relationship of reciprocal interdependencies and causalities; 2) interactions at (complex) systems level include self-organisational, non-linear, and iterative procedures. Systems properties (e.g., motivation, attitude, MLA, XLA, MIE, etc.) may change substantially as a result of these interactions; 3) the complex and dynamic interplay between systems components (e.g., single languages, cognitions, etc.,) and other intervening variables (such as increased input or investment) gives rise to completely new (so-called emergent) qualities and/or phenomena (e.g., enhanced linguistic awareness) which are rarely predictable, nor are they traceable to a single causal factor. The ultimate outcome (if there is any such thing) is not deducible from single factors because it is the joint effects of multiple factors and/or systems components that generate a certain behaviour or reaction. From this follows that the evolution of multilingual systems is contingent on relationships and interactions, rather than on (the specific nature or impact of) individual factors alone (cf. Lai 2019: 297). While factors are understood to operate in conjunction – their effects on the multilingual system being a concerted one – they are here, for practical reasons, dealt with individually in separate subsections. On the understanding that theoretical formulations put forward in neighbouring disciplines have important contributions to make to the study of multilingual competence, this chapter gathers insights from a range of adjacent fields by bringing different perspectives into dialogue in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of the complexities that underpin early multilingual competence development. The considerations offered in this section prepare the ground for the discussion of multilingual competences in Part II. The chapter first examines the effects of crosslingual interactions in the mind and discusses their impact on learner-users’ linguistic and (meta)cognitive abilities. Next, the focus is on metalinguistic awareness and skill as a key factor in multilingual competence building. This is followed by a review of scholarship on https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-007

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strategies. An outline of the characteristics of the good language learner rounds up the discussion of how strategic behaviour can contribute to multilingual learning and growth. Identity-related factors including emotions, motivation, autonomy, self-concept, attitudes, etc. are discussed thereafter. Finally, affordances as a relatively recent concept are examined in terms of their relevance for the study of multi-competence.

6.1 The workings of the multilingual mind: Psycholinguistic perspectives on multiple language development Ever since research into bi- and multilingualism began, scholars have been keen to determine what the effects of multiple linguistic knowledge are on a person’s overall language(s) development. Early research had a tendency of looking at biand multilingualism through a deficit lens, linking it to interference and negative transfer (Genesee 2003: 221). Over time, evidence has accumulated demonstrating that knowledge of additional language(s) is advantageous, with XL activity providing stimulation to the brain and possibly improving general cognitive performance. The understanding is that multilinguals develop significant levels of metalinguistic (Hofer  & Jessner 2016), metacognitive (Le Pichon et al. 2009) and pragmatic awareness (Portolés Falomir 2015; Safont 2005), high levels of divergent thinking (Kharkhurin 2008), a good grasp of cross-lingual structural features (Woll 2018: 14), and a heightened ability to exploit the resources available as is reflected in their broad application of strategies and cross-language skill transfer (Mady 2014: 248). In the DMM, these benefits are linked to the so-called M(ultilingualism)-factor which supports and enhances language(s) development and processing in multilingual users. A function of the dynamic and complex interactions between the multiple language systems in the mind, the M-factor has significant transformative effects insofar as it triggers important changes which amount to a complete metamorphosis (Jessner 2006: 35) and manifest in a qualitative enhancement of the whole system. By way of qualification, it must be said however that positive effects of bi- and multilingualism are mostly found in additive contexts and in conjunction with literacy skills (De Angelis 2007: 118 ff.; Montanari 2019: 311–312). What is less clear is whether such effects also obtain in subtractive settings and for socially disadvantaged and/or language minority groups (Blom et al. 2017: 1). Future research will need to look into this more closely. Building on from the idea that previously acquired languages and language(s) learning experience provide individuals with a rich resource fund for multilingual competence construction, the subsequent section explores how the presence and interaction of multiple languages in the mind impacts the learner-user system.

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CLIN as a distinctive feature of the multilingual system sets the starting point for the discussion that follows.

6.1.1 CLIN as a learning asset The concept of CLIN was introduced by Herdina & Jessner (2002: 29) as an alternative to the widely used CLI (crosslinguistic influence) advanced by Sharwood-Smith & Kellerman which relates to “phenomena such as ‘transfer’, ‘interference’, ‘avoidance’, ‘borrowing’” and L2-related aspects of language loss (1986:  1). In contrast to the somewhat restricted scope of CLI, the notion of CLIN makes allowance for the dynamism and the interactions that emerge from the interplay of different (psycho)linguistic systems in the speaker’s mind, and the synergetic and interferential effects deriving from these interactions (Jessner 2019: 224). Based on the assumption that language activation in MLUs does not obtain in a selective manner with one single language called upon for use and the others switched off, the understanding is that a multilingual’s languages are always activated to some degree, not only when speakers are in a multilingual speech mode, but also when they are in monolingual mode (Grosjean 2001; see also Green 1998 on language inhibition and activation in multilinguals). Resultantly, CLIN, as the totality of dynamic and multidirectional effects stemming from the interplay of multiple psycholinguistic systems in contact, can  – as evidenced in the present study  – occur at all times and between all the languages implicated (Jarvis  & Pavlenko 2008: 21–22; Swarte, Schüppert  & Gooskens 2017: 173; Mieszkowska  & Otwinowska-Kasztelanic 2015: 200). At the level of metacognition, CLIN allows for associations to be established across language systems with facilitative effects for multilingual processing and skills acquisition, and significant potential for learning (Bono 2011: 25; Brutt-Griffler 2017: 222; Włosowicz 2020a: 257). Arguably, the ability to make (and exploit) connections between languages is a crucial component of multilingual competence and a prerequisite for successful performance in the multilingual competence test (MCT) administered to the participants in the current research.

6.1.2 Typology CLIN effects appear to be particularly strong when previously learned languages bear close resemblance with the target language (structures, lexicon, phonology, etc.) (Otwinowska-Kasztelanic 2011a: 5). Todeva & Cenoz (2009: 8) note that there is a strong tendency for multilinguals to “borrow more from the language which is

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typologically closer to the target language [. . .]”. Lexico-structural correspondences can, as is well attested, function “as pegs on which the learner can hang new information by making use of already existing knowledge, thereby facilitating learning” (Ringbom 1987: 134). For example, if a given concept or idea is realized similarly across languages, de- and encoding in the target language will be less effortful (Nachmani 2015: 353). This positive effect is important to highlight because, as mentioned, past research takes little or no account of the “‘positive transfer’ effect” of students’ previous linguistic knowledge (Ringbom 1986: 160).

6.1.3 Psychotypology Like typology, psychotypology, plays a crucial role in cross-linguistic interactions and the activation of languages in the multilingual mind. Recent studies have found perceived proximity or distance between the languages to have a major impact on learner-users’ processing and acquisition of languages (Cenoz 2001: 16; Garcia 2009: 143). In contrast to typological distance, which connotes the “distance that a linguist can objectively and formally define and identify between languages and language families” (De Angelis 2007: 22), perceived distance relates to the individual’s subjective perception of the congruence between languages and is seen as dispositive in determining which languages in the multilingual repertoire are drawn upon for support and transfer. As suggested by Ringbom (2001: 65), languages which are perceived to be similar “to the target language naturally provide many more reference points for the learner” than languages that are not. Research carried out by Dahm (2015: 59) confirms that learners tend to activate languages which they perceive as similar. Underscoring Kellerman’s (1979) hypothesis of psychotypology (i.e., perceived language distance), her findings attest to the central role that psychotypology plays in learner-users’ activation of languages and strategy use. Kellerman’s psychotypology hypothesis (1977) is based on the assumption that learners rely on their subjective perception of the proximity or distance between languages when they access new linguistic material. According to Kellerman (1979 in Dewaele 2010: 107), learners make psychotypological judgements by evaluating the typological distance between languages and gauging their relative usefulness for TL processing (cf. Vanhove & Berthele 2017: 98; Włosowicz 2020a: 257). Correspondingly, it may not be the actual but the perceived similarity between the different codes that counts. Odlin (1989: 142) argues along these lines noting that “transfer will most likely result from a learner’s judgment (made consciously or unconsciously) that particular structures in a previously learned language are quite like – if not the same as – structures in the target language.” Specifications such as ‘less similar’ and ‘more similar’ are then to be seen as relative rather than objective dimensions (Missler 1999: 25).

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6.1.4 Supporter languages Contrary to what one might assume, the main source language for transfer is very often not the L1, but the L2 (cf. Flynn, Foley & Vinnitskaya 2004; Hammargerg 2001: 22). Particularly in situations where the L2 and the target language are typologically close, L2 often takes on the role of so-called bridge or supporter language. The tendency to activate a second language for support (instead of L1) has even been observed in cases when there is no apparent typological analogy between L2 and L3 (cf. De Angelis, Jessner & Kresic 2017: 2), a phenomenon which in the relevant literature is variously referred to as foreign language effect (Meisel 1983), L2 factor (Hammargerg 2001) or Ln factor (Bono 2008b in Dahm 2015: 48), and which Hammarberg (2001: 36–37) ascribes to a “desire to suppress L1 as being “non-foreign” and to rely rather on an orientation towards a prior L2 as a strategy to approach the L3”. To conclude this section on cross-linguistic interaction, the literature suggests that CLIN is not restricted to language-related phenomena but also extends to transfer of (intrinsic) motivation and metalinguistic awareness (Clyne 2003: 44). Both motivation and MLA play a pivotal role in multilingual learning and growth. Metalinguistic awareness is the focus of the next section. Motivation will be dealt with later in this chapter.

6.1.5 Defining metalinguistic awareness (MLA) Scholarly attention to what was initially termed LA (language awareness) can be traced back to (late) 1800 Germany, where Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), Hildebrand (1867), Jespersen (1904), and von der Gabelentz (1901) led the way in opening up pathways for the inspection of “studial capacities of language studies” (Palmer 1922 in van Essen 2008: 5). In recent times, metalinguistic awareness and its cognitive basis has come to constitute a major research focus for scholars studying TLA and multilingualism. Operating within a DST-informed multilingual framework, Jessner (2008a) defines metalinguistic awareness as a “set of skills or abilities that the multilingual user develops owing to her/his prior linguistic and metacognitive knowledge” (275). According to Jessner & Hofer (2022: 166), the notion of language or linguistic awareness “relates to a person’s capacity to focus attention on language forms and functions”. They “interpret the terms language or linguistic awareness as referring to awareness of language in very general terms, without any direct reference to mono- or multilingualism.” Following Jessner (2006), the authors distinguish between metalinguistic, crosslinguistic and multilingual awareness as more

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specific manifestations of language or linguistic awareness. Metalinguistic awareness denotes “the ability to focus attention on language as an object in itself or to think abstractly about language and, consequently, to play with or manipulate language” (Jessner 2006: 42). A metalinguistically aware individual is then able to focus on linguistic form, function and meaning, switch focus between them, and carry out operations such as, for instance, categorizing words into parts of speech, explaining why a word has a given function within a syntagma, etc. There is broad acknowledgment that metalinguistic knowledge as “an essential component of multilingual competence” (Dahm 2015: 43) impacts language learning at all levels and even predicts learning outcomes (Maluch & Kempert 2017: 2). In the classroom metalinguistic awareness can be enhanced through language alternation (Damaskou 2014: 913). Crosslinguistic awareness refers to knowledge about the links between languages, including an understanding of the typological similarities and differences between languages and the etymological relationships between them, i.e., XLA refers to “learners’ tacit and explicit awareness of the links between their language systems” (Jessner 2008: 30). Finally, multilingual awareness subsumes meta- and crosslinguistic awareness and manifests in multilingual users’ skillfulness at tackling multilingual situations (Hofer & Jessner 2022). A key component of the M-Factor, multilingual awareness comes with positive effects for learner-users’ linguistic, cognitive, and metacognitive development, their information-processing capacity and literacy skills. Studies carried out in different multilingual contexts (Allgäuer-Hackl 2017; Bono 2011; De Angelis & Jessner 2012; Hofer 2015; Lasagabaster 1997) have furnished reliable data to this effect.

6.1.6 Multilingualism, metalinguistic awareness and (meta)cognition There is a substantive body of literature indicating that MLA (metalinguistic awareness) is positively correlated with children’s linguistic and cognitive development. MLA has been found to 1) increase children’s understanding of their first and additional languages (Hofer 2015), 2) provide children with a firm foundation for autonomous and self-efficient language(s) learning and 3) enhance their motivation and self-confidence (Pinto et al. 2011: 37). Proceeding from this it is reasonable to conclude that metalinguistic awareness provides the metacognitive prerequisites for additional language(s) acquisition and independent, explorative learning. A reverse effect with multiple linguistic knowledge boosting the development of metalinguistic awareness and ability and changing the nature and quality of learner-users’ multilingual awareness and learning is also assumed (Bien-Miller et al. 2017: 194–197). Vygotsky (1962) famously notes that having an additional language leads the child to see her/his “language as one particular system among many, to

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view its phenomena under more general categories, and this leads to an awareness of his linguistic operations” (110). On a related note, Bialystok (2001a: 134) posits “different initial levels of mastery of analysis and control” (Bialystok 2007: 210) and cognitive benefits relating to executive control functions for users of additional languages (Bialystok & Barac 2012: 72; Friesen & Bialystok 2012: 7; Kroll & Bialystok 2013: 498). Analogous advantages stemming from contact with multiple languages are reported in Carlson & Meltzoff (2008: 293) who found that “early exposure to more than one language may foster the inhibition and working memory skills necessary for cognitive flexibility in a variety of problem-solving situations” (see also Mohanty 1994: 92 on enhanced cognitive control and processing in multilinguals). Enhanced control functions for multilinguals are also posited in the DMM (Herdina  & Jessner 2002). The DMM assumes an Enhanced Multilingual Monitor, short EMM, which carries out important monitoring functions such as detecting and repairing errors, performing separator and cross-checker tasks, and activating the required resources in the multilingual repertoire (Jessner 2008a: 276). The monitor function is closely linked to learner-users’ meta- and cross-linguistic awareness and prior language learning experience. Extensive contact with additional languages is posited to result in enhanced monitor functions and control capacities.

6.1.7 Can meta- and crosslinguistic awareness be taught? Assorted research indicates that increasing learners’ awareness of language comes with important educational advantages (Gorter  & Cenoz 2017: 238; Moore 2006: 136). Early on Hawkins (1984) made the point that raising language awareness can enhance L2 learning (in Cook 2001: 42) by making learners more receptive in the new language (see also Swierzbin & Reimer 2019: 42–43). His theorizing resounds in R. Ellis (1993: 105) who also emphasizes the usefulness of consciousness-raising exercises to direct learners’ attention to formal aspects of language and to help them notice the gap between target language features and their own (non-conforming) use of these features (cf. Grima 2020: 202). Similar recommendations (though with a focus on strategy use rather than cross-linguistic awareness) come from research into the strategic behaviour of the so-called ‘good language learner’. In an unpublished paper entitled From “The Good Language Learner” to “Learner Self-Management”, Rubin (file:///C:/Users/User/Documents/Rubin%20From%20theGoodLanguageLearner%20to%20Learner%20Self-Management%20pdf.pdf, last accessed on 22 October 2022) reports on research which found that systematic instruction in the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies can result in improved listening comprehension, sharper metacognition (as evidenced by learners’ ability to give reasons for their cognitive choices), and enhanced self-efficacy or autonomy (4).

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Elsewhere it has been suggested that metacognition (i.e., thinking about thinking) causes learners to reflect on and evaluate their thinking which leads them to make “specific changes in how learning is managed, and in the strategies chosen for this purpose” (Anderson 2008: 99). The effects of targeted cross-language and meta-cognitive training are investigated as part of ongoing research carried out by the DyME (Dynamics of Multilingualism with English) research group at Innsbruck University (Allgäuer-Hackl 2017; Hofer 2014; Traxl 2015). Conducting her research in the trilingual context of South Tyrol, Hofer (2015, 2017) studied the development of meta- and cross-linguistic awareness in emergent multilingual primary schoolers aged 9–10 who were enrolled in multilingual and traditional educational programmes in two Italian language schools. Hofer’s findings revealed significant advantages for the children in the multilingual programmes who in addition received crosslinguistic training and routinely engaged in contrastive analyses in their curricular languages (Hofer 2014: 212). Hofer’s findings are supported by research carried out by Traxl (2015) in Austria. Traxl compared primary school children in a German-Italian immersion programme with pupils in a traditional education programme. Like the participants in Hofer’s study, Traxl’s test group received special multilingual training. In confirmation of Hofer’s findings, Traxl’s study brought to light significant linguistic and metacognitive advantages for the children in the multilingual test group compared to those in the control group. Investigating adolescent learners at the upper-secondary level in Vorarlberg, Allgäuer-Hackl (2017) likewise focused on the linguistic and cognitive effects of multilingual cross-language training. The author (2017) found robust evidence for the benefits of multilingual training interventions (i.e., fortnightly sessions over the span of two semesters) which involved task-based engagement with multiple codes aimed at fostering students’ multilingual skills and understanding of language- and culture-related aspects (see Hofer & Allgäuer-Hackl 2018). The test group in the multilingual seminar significantly outperformed the control group; they not only performed better with regards to their overall multilingual awareness but also with regards to their single language proficiency (a finding also yielded by Hofer’s study). In addition, they demonstrated greater language learning motivation and greater awareness of language learning strategies. In the context of multilingual competence development, the skillful deployment of language strategies (as manifests in children’s ability to make connections, identify analogies between languages, and transfer from one language to another) represents a key competence. The “ability to make appropriate selection and use from a strategy repertoire” (Chostelidou, Griva & Tsakiridou 2015: 1473) and “use strategies flexibly in accordance with task requirements” (Ellis 1994: 548) are in fact major determinants of language(s) learning success. Empirical evidence therefor comes from studies which show that successful learner-users draw on a wide

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range of learning strategies (Ellis 1994: 548). The following explores language learning strategies in some detail.

6.2 Strategies Research into language learning strategies began in the 1970s (Griffiths 2013: 1; Purpura 1999: 22). However, much of its early history was sporadic and incoherent (Chamot 2005: 112), its initial scope of action mainly descriptive and concerned with drawing up classifications of different types of strategies (Forbes 2018: 2; whence the criticism that the field was atheoretical; Griffiths 2013: xii). It is only recently that new approaches together with an increased awareness of the importance of language strategies for multilingual learning (cf. EuroCom; CEFR) and a renewed interest in strategy intervention programmes have contributed to revitalizing the field.

6.2.1 Definitions of strategy A pioneer in the field, Rubin broadly defines strategies as “the techniques or devices which a learner may use to acquire knowledge” (1975: 43). In much the same vein, Oxford (1990) describes strategies as “operations employed by the learner to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information” (8), in other words, “steps taken by students to enhance their own learning” and increase “active, self-directed involvement” (Oxford 1990: 8). According to Oxford (1990), the successful application of strategies bolsters learning and results “in improved proficiency and greater self-confidence” (1), a point echoed by Griffiths (2013: 50) who refers to strategies as “activities consciously chosen by learners for the purpose of regulating their own language learning”, and Chamot (2005) who conceives of learning strategies as “procedures that facilitate a learning task” (112). With special focus on multilingual competence development, language (learning) strategies are here construed as relating to all those observable and unobservable behaviours, actions, techniques, and tactics, together with the cognitions (i.e., thoughts and reflections) and mental operations that individuals draw upon, consciously or unconsciously, in time and space, to maximize their multilingual agency and learning.

6.2.2 On the benefits of strategy use and training There is increasing appreciation that language (learning) strategies play an important role for language(s) acquisition at all ages. Empirical evidence has found strat-

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egies to reduce working memory load (Jonsson et al. 2014: 388) and potentially enhance learning (Panzachi Heredia & Luchini 2015: 29; Forbes 2018: 139; Tódor & Dégi 2016: 132; Radwanska-Williams 2009: 124). Working on several levels, including cognition, memory, metacognition and emotional management (Oxford 1990: 11), strategies can therefore be seen a powerful learning tool (Griffiths 2013: 2; Rubin et al. 2007: 143). King & Areepattamannil (2014: 18) confirm that students who use a (wide) range of cognitive and meta-cognitive strategies are more likely to progress in their learning, perform higher academically, and attain better learning outcomes (18). Related literature highlights that “more competent learners use a wider range of strategies and demonstrate greater ‘self-supervision’” than less competent learners (Samo 2009: 128 in Courtney, Graham, Tonkyn, & Marinis 2017: 1; see also Lan 2005: 211; Lan & Oxford 2003: 339). Research suggests that learner-users who command more languages and as such have access to a greater number of linguistic systems – which in turn translates into a multiplication of affordances – tend to make greater use of strategies and draw on a broader range of resources than those who do not (Dmitrenko 2017: 16; Gibson, Grenfell  & Harris 2015: 2; Hufeisen & Libben 2001: 138; Psaltou-Joyceya & Kantaridoub 2009: 467). Multilingual learner-users it has been found use strategies more efficiently than their less experienced counterparts who are first time learners of a second language (Ramsay 1980: 73; Török  & Jessner 2017: 1), their strategy repertoire and resourcefulness expanding with the addition of each new language (Kemp 2007: 257). Concluding, what can be said is that while past research into strategy use was mainly directed at “the broad goal of communicative competence” (Oxford 1990: 8), the focus has shifted over time. Recent research in TLA and multilingualism is concerned with a broader range of competences and strategies (Cook 2016; Forbes 2018; Hofer  & Allgäuer-Hackl 2018, Kärchner-Ober 2013, Kordt 2018). Under the new holistic paradigm, the focus is no longer on isolated (productive, receptive, communicative, etc.) strategies, but on strategy or competence repertoires understood as multilingual support or resource funds which collectively contribute to boosting learner-users’ overall multilingual competence and agency.

6.3 Reconceptualising the Good Language Learner from a multicompetence perspective At around the same time as scholarly preoccupation with learning strategies intensified, another field of study caught the interest of the SLA community. New emerging conceptualisations of the learner-user as an active and agentive seeker of knowledge and skill (as opposed to the passive role attributed to her/him in previous paradigms; cf. Kasper  & Wagner 2011: 127) stimulated important research

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into the nature of the ‘good language learner’. The idea was that by identifying how successful learners approach the learning task, it would be possible to support less successful learners. Starting from the question who the successful learner is, Rubin (1975) draws up an elaborate profile of the so-called ‘good language learner’. For Rubin (1975), the particular hallmarks of the good language learner (GLL) include a series of higher order skills (such as inferring, attending to form and meaning, exploring relationships), together with lower order skills (like practicing, memorizing, etc.). According to Rubin the good language learner is a “willing and accurate guesser” (1975: 45), comfortable with ambiguity and keen to put her/ his guesses to the test. S/he exploits all the cues afforded by the contextual setting and is able to carry over into the new language behaviours, knowledge and skills from the first (45; see also Moir & Nation 2008: 159). In this sense, good language learners take charge of their own learning, they look out for patterns and regularities in their new languages and have a habit of analysing, comparing, categorising, and synthesising linguistic material (1975: 47), qualities, which also our study participants need for the successful completion of the Multilingual Competence Test (MCT). More recently, Moir & Nation (2008: 172–3) have characterised the good language learner as in possession of metacognitive skill and a good degree of autonomy, as taking control of their learning, and showing a positive attitude towards the learning task. Others argue that good language learners know their strengths and weaknesses and are able to take adequate measure to optimise their learning (Cotteral 2008: 118). Others still set the GLL in relation to personality factors, cognitive style, attitude (Naiman, Fröhlich, Stern & Todesco 1996: 150) and affordance sensitivity (White 2008: 125) or point to tolerance of ambiguity and field independence (218), i.e., “style flexing” as the ability to flexibly adapt one’s learning style to the requirements of a particular task or situation, as key for learning success (Nel 2008: 53). Based on the taxonomy of character strengths and virtues submitted by the Values in Action (VIA) Institute (2014), Oxford (2016) links the notion of the good language learner (GLL) with positive psychology theory and situates the GLL within a complex dynamic systems framework (10). Related to the notion of character strengths is the concept of habits of mind, which, as outlined by Costa and Kallick (2008), refers to behaviours that successful, effective learners habitually draw upon to attain high levels of performance (xi). Framed as a rich source of intellectual potential habits of mind are defined as “a disposition toward behaving intelligently when confronted with problems, the answers to which are not immediately known” (Costa and Kallick 2000: 1). Costa & Kallick (2008) describe habits of mind as a composite of many skills, attitudes, cues, past experiences and proclivities. It means that we value one pattern of intellectual behaviors over another; therefore, it implies making choices

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about which patterns we should use at a certain time. It includes sensitivity to the contextual cues that signal that a particular circumstance is a time when applying a certain pattern would be useful and appropriate. It requires a level of skillfulness to use, carry out, and sustain the behaviors effectively. It suggests that after each experience in which these behaviors are used, the effects of their use are reflected upon, evaluated, modified, and carried forth to future applications (17).

Costa & Kallick (2000)’s catalogue of habits of mind – as characteristic of effective thinkers and problem solvers – subsumes amongst others the following qualities or traits: persisting, being reflective, listening, thinking flexibly, thinking about thinking (metacognition), striving for accuracy and precision, applying past knowledge to new situations, taking risks, thinking interdependently, remaining open to continuous learning, etc. (this bearing considerable semblance with the notion of multilingual competences as reconfigured in Chapter 2). Intersecting with the idea of habits of mind is the notion of language learning strategies – or strategy domains (Oxford 2011b)  – which, as “consciously employed, goal-directed operations that the learner uses to aid the acquisition, storage, retrieval and use of information” can develop into habits through frequent use (Oxford 2016: 52). Further suggestive of habits of mind is the construct of intelligences employed by Gardner and Sternberg and defined as a set of biopsychological potentials for information processing (Gardner 1983 in Oxford 2016: 54), or as ‘that which’ helps individuals to succeed in life (Sternberg 1985, 1997 in Oxford 2016: 56). Intelligence, according to their interpretation, constitutes a blend of skills and abilities which allow individuals to achieve goals by successfully identifying their strengths and weaknesses, capitalizing on the former and compensating for the latter (cf. PP theory below). This broad conception of intelligence or expertise is here seen as overlapping to some significant degree with the notion of multilingual competence. The concept of expertise has more recently been taken up and developed by Johnson (2005). According to Johnson (2009: 1), “An expert is someone who is particularly skilled in a specific area” and possesses certain characteristics that non experts do not possess. The notion of expertise as something people ‘have’ is to be treated with caution, however. Bereiter & Scardamalia (1993: 4 https://thelearningexchange.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Surpassing-Ourselves.pdf) therefore propose to think of expertise “in terms of process – as something people do”, their primary concern being with how “to foster continuing growth in competence”. Bereiter & Scardamalia (2016) have recently advanced the concept of ‘good moves’ in relation to knowledge-building (12) which, applied to the notion to multilingual competence building, might be conceived as targeted actions taken by individuals to enhance their overall multilingual expertise and agency. To conclude, early research had a proclivity to relate success in language learning to aptitude (Ranta 2008: 142) typically construed as some special capability or

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talent for language(s) learning and as based on more or less stable characteristics of the individual. Carroll & Sapon (1959) famously proposed a model of language learning aptitude consisting of the following 4 components: (1) sound coding ability, i.e. the ability to identify and recall new sounds in an Ln, (2) grammatical coding ability, i.e. the ability to identify grammatical functions of parts of a sentence, (3) inductive learning ability, i.e. the ability to extract meaning from new linguistic material and (4) memorization, i.e. the ability to remember new words, rules etc. in a new language. Carroll  & Sapon’s view of aptitude as an “enduring” feature of the individuum, was widely taken to relate to an inborn, i.e., genetically determined and thus unchangeable talent or endowment (in Herdina  & Jessner 2002: 73). With the advent of communicative approaches to language learning and teaching in the 1980s however, the concept of aptitude lost much of its initial appeal and presently came to face criticism. While the debate surrounding the role of aptitude in language(s) learning has never really subsided, the CFMC perspective is that aptitude, or rather (multilingual) resourcefulness to employ a more apposite terminus, is emergent and can be enhanced through practice (cf. Jackson 2014: 215; see also Schuhman 1997: 157 for a conception of aptitude as coping potential). The conceptual shift from aptitude as a stable trait of the learner to a changeable property of the multilingual system has significant implications for how learner-users’ potential for improvement is conceptualized. While formerly, the propensity was to construe the learner’s language learning capacity as given a-priori, the perspective today is that learning parameters can be altered through effort and application. From this can be derived that “the good or successful language learner, with predetermined overall characteristics, does not exist” (Naiman et al. 1996: 224), but that instead there are “many individual ways of learning a language successfully” (ibid.; see also Ramsay 1980 on the notions ‘successful’ vs ‘multilingual’ learner). The ensuing first discusses affective and motivational factors and different representations of the self. Thereafter, the focus is on attitudes and learner autonomy. Lastly, affordances as a new subject of research are considered. Affordances are discussed in terms of the possibilities they afford the multilingual individual.

6.4 (No learning without) Emotions While few people would question the impact that emotions can have on learning (Hascher 2005: 611; Massip-Bonet, Bel-Enguix & Bastardas-Boada 2019: 6) very little is in fact known about how learning and emotions relate to one another (24). This said, there is broad agreement that affective experiences and/or emotions shape our cognition, thoughts, motivation(s), and actions. Recent scholarship provides robust conceptual underpinnings to this effect, suggesting that affective variables,

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including emotions, motivation, learner expectations, self-concept and self-beliefs, etc., underlie “most, if not all cognition” (Schuhman 1997: xv) and co-determine success in language(s) learning (Arnold 2001: 11; Manolopoulou-Sergi 2004: 432). Academic emotions in particular are highly correlated with learner motivation, learning strategies, cognitive resources, self-regulation, and achievement (King & Areepattamannil 2014: 24; Knollmann & Wild 2007: 63). If we accept that “the affective component contributes at least as much and often more to language learning than the cognitive skills” (Stern 1985: 386), then it is legitimate to surmise that even “relatively weak effects of emotions on academic achievement may have a strong cumulative impact on students’ long-term achievement” (Goetz & Hall 2015: 193). While the argument that positive emotions (always) lead to positive learning outcomes and negative emotions (always) result in negative outcomes appears to be too simplistic (Hascher 2017: 17), there is a strong tendency to that effect. Empirical research suggests that negative emotions (tend to) have detrimental effects on learning and performance (Arnold & Brown 1999: 2) in as far as they cause learners’ minds to clutter with pessimistic thoughts and negative memories (Beseghi 2018: 238). High levels of anxiety, in particular, can lower concentration levels, obstruct resource and strategy management, and provoke “closing off, withdrawal, and self-protection behaviour” (MacIntyre  & Gregersen 2012: 198; Pavlenko 2005: 33). When all the attention is focused on the learner-user’s negative emotions, the learning task recedes into the background. Negative emotions originating from experiences of academic failure can further intensify negative emotionality and cause students to withdraw from the learning situation. Conversely, positive emotions enhance motivation and learning by building up special resources (MacIntyre  & Gregersen 2012: 193). They help “envision goals and challenges, open the mind to thoughts and problem-solving, protect health by fostering resiliency, create attachments to significant others, lay the groundwork for individual self-regulation, and guide the behaviour of groups, social systems, and nations” (Pekrun, Goetz, Titz and Perry 2002: 149 in Goetz & Hall 2015: 193). According to Frederickson’s (2001, 2003) broaden-and-build model, positive emotions broaden individuals’ field of attention by creating an “urge to explore, take in new information and experiences, and expand the self in the process” (Frederickson 2001: 219ff.). This said, while positive emotions can increase learner-users’ self-efficacy beliefs and motivation (Hascher 2010: 17), they can also have adverse effects in the sense that they can lead learner-users to overestimate their own competencies and/or distract them from learning (Carver 2006: 106). To be sure, high degrees of happiness may cause learner-users to misjudge their abilities and neglect their studies (Aspinwall 1998: 7 in King  & Areepattamannil 2014: 18). MacIntyre & Gregersen (2012: 204) intimate that happy, optimistic learners may need to be “reminded more often than the pessimist of the need for a narrow focus on tasks”, possibly because their elevated moods lead their

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thoughts to stray from the task at hand. As emerges from contemporary research, positive and negative emotions can co-exist and generate a (complex) state of ambivalence (MacIntyre & Mercer 2014: 163). CDST-inspired accounts of the links between emotion and cognition posit complex nonlinear interactions, reciprocal causation and feedback effects with each “entirely dependent on” and reinforcing the other (Lewis 1996: 21 in Schuhman 1997: 31). The assumption is that reciprocal feedback effects engender “cognitive appraisals (or appraisal-emotion gestalts)” (Lewis 1996: 10 in Schuhman 1997: 30) whereby emotion-eliciting events result in dynamic self-organising processes which cause appraisal structures to emerge and (possibly) stabilize over time. Whether structures stabilize or fluctuate depends on the attractor state towards which a system is drawn and into which it then settles. Finally, the literature points to a strong link between emotions and learning context. Empirical research suggests that the organization of formal education, the school setting and the teacher all impact children’s learning (Hamre & Pianta 2006: 50; see also the results of the current research). A mismatch between learner-users’ needs and interests and/or a rigid curriculum organization can have negative effects on the acquisitional process. By analogy, emotions and sensitivities held by the teacher and manifested in their enthusiasm or impatience, for instance, will affect the learning atmosphere in the classroom and influence learner-users’ academic self-concept and motivation, and ultimately their learning progression (Nikolov 2009: 104).

6.4.1 Emotions and learning from a Positive Psychology perspective Recent approaches to emotion and learning have looked to positive psychology for new insights. A subfield of psychology, PP (Positive Psychology) studies how people thrive and flourish in their respective surroundings. One of the main postulates underlying PP approaches is that positive affective experiences increase well-being and broaden individuals’ range of perception. In contrast, negative emotive experiences (e.g., language anxiety) are seen as constricting their potential for agency (Gregersen et al. 2016: 148). A “valuable addition to current perspectives on language learning processes and contexts” (MacIntyre  & Mercer 2014: 156), PP has been commended for bringing to bear a fresh perspective on extant psychological constructs. Points of contact between PP and recent theorisations in the literature on TLA and multilingualism include a shared concern for holistic conceptions of the learner-user and a special focus on their positive self-concept, well-being, and full development of their potential. While positive emotionality and well-being come close to what is generally referred to as happiness, the term happiness is largely avoided due to its connotations of unscientificness (Helgesen 2016: 305; but

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see Csikszentmihalyi 2014: 69ff.). I shall return to the notion of happiness later on in the book.

6.4.2 Learning and love New fields of scientific study have undertaken to look into the hitherto neglected emotions of enjoyment and love (Barcelos & Coelho 2016: 130) and their role in language(s) learning and teaching. On the presumption that all learning is through love (Maturana  & Valera 1987: 147), Maturana  & Verden-Zoller (2008) intimate that love is the “only emotion that expands intelligence” because intelligence has to do with accepting the legitimacy of the other (https://de.scribd.com/document/30176663/Humberto-Maturana-Romesin-and-Gerda-Verden-Zoller-BIOLOGY-of-LOVE :C4; accessed 28 June 2019). hooks [sic] ponders that love as a combination of emotions (2003 in Barcelos & Coelho 2016: 135) leads us to embrace the reality of others. According to hooks (2003), “[l]ove in the classroom prepares teachers and students to open [. . .] minds and hearts. It is the foundation on which every learning community can be created.” (137). Frederickson (2001) lists love as one of 5 positive emotions that help build intellectual and psychological resources and stimulate desirable action tendencies (219). Her proposition accords with Noddings (2010) who emphasises that caring relations are at the basis of successful learning, and that learners who experience care in the classroom will pursue their learning objectives with more confidence (2010: 3). On a different understanding of love, Liston (2000) emphasizes the centrality of love of inquiry, discovery and creation to reach beyond oneself (89). Similarly, MacIntyre & Gregersen suggest (2012: 199) that “when learners [.  .  .] feel excitement, interest, or a love of learning, the positive-broadening power of emotion comes to the fore.” Summing up, the tenor then seems to be that by embracing love as a basic human condition and crucial element of learning, individuals’ potential can be enhanced. In this sense, love as a new field of enquiry, potentially linked to cognitive skill/development, merits to be pursued further in future research. Both, love and happiness as discussed in this and the previous section articulate well with the holistic stance advocated in this book. The following examines the role of motivation in language(s) learning and traces the history of research into motivation from its origins up to the recent dynamic turn.

6.5 Motivation A key component of all learning processes, motivation furnishes the energy that activates the brain and mind (Balboni 2006 in Beseghi 2018: 235). Motivation has

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been varyingly defined as “the force that gives behavior its energy and direction” (Reeve 2009 in MacIntyre & Serroul 2015: 109), a psychological phenomenon that determines whether individuals “begin a task, persist at it once they have begun, and invest adequate mental effort to succeed” (Cantor, Osher, Berg, Steyer & Rose 2019). Relating to beliefs, values, interests, goals, drives, needs, identity, and persistence (Cantor et al. 2019), motivation mediates the amount of time and energy expended on learning (Piniel & Csizér 2015: 165), it plays a central role in learner-user investment and achievement (Dörnyei 2001: 2; see also CFMC on the MIE), and I should like to add, in multilingual competence building. Research into motivation was first undertaken by social psychologists in Canada. Gardner and Lambert (1959) in particular, merit recognition for kickstarting scholarship in the field. The bulk of the early research on motivation was based on Gardner’s (1985; Masgoret  & Gardner 2003) social-psychological model of second language motivation, which is premised on two motivational orientations: integrative and instrumental motivation (Courtney et al. 2017: 826). Integrative motivation is reflected in people’s identification (or desire to identify) with the target language (TL) and TL community. Instrumental motivation relates to the individual’s desire to learn a language because of external rewards or benefits. Another such dichotomic (and I dare say simplified) classification is that proffered by Ryan & Ceci (2000) who distinguish between intrinsic motivation (stemming from the learner her/himself) and extrinsic motivation (deriving from external sources). For Ryan & Ceci intrinsic motivation, i.e., motivation ‘from within’, is to be rated more highly because it is the type of motivation that is accompanied by a sense of personal gratification and therefore results in effective learning behaviour and “a powerful self-sustaining dynamic” (Ushioda 2008: 21). Under this perspective, the intrinsically motivated learner is viewed as “deeply concerned to learn things well”, as putting effort into learning, and as engaging in efficient and creative thinking processes (Ushioda 2008: 22). In contradistinction to early binary conceptions of motivation, such as sketched in the foregoing, recent scholarship views intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as operating in concert and contributing equally to the learning process. It is true to say that much of the early research sought to explain motivation in terms of unconscious drives, emotions and instincts (Ushioda 2014: 127). The approach taken was one of macro-level analyses and statistical procedures based on linear cause-effect relationships and a somewhat careless neglect of the classroom context (Crookes & Schmidt 1989: 244). It is only in recent years, that there has been a shift towards more micro-level investigations, together with an increased focus on process-orientation and the dynamics involved in motivational phenomena (Dörnyei, MacIntyre & Henry 2015: 4). In analogy to neighbouring disciplines in applied linguistics, scholarship into motivation has taken  – what has become known as – the dynamic turn (Waninge 2015: 195).

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Under the new CDS paradigm, motivational factors, like other individual (or psychological) constructs, are seen as a dynamic self-organising system. The informed perception is of motivation as emerging “from the processes of interaction of many agents, internal and external, in the ever-changing complex world of the learner” (Ellis & Larsen-Freeman 2006: 563), and as closely connected to their temporal and contextual ecologies (cf. Norton 2014: 61; Norton & Toohey 2001: 310). Dörnyei (2002: 156) for instance argues that far from being static motivation “is constantly increasing or decreasing depending on the various social influences [. . .], the learner’s appraisal of these influences and the action control operations the learner carries out” (MacIntyre  & Serroul 2015: 112–113). Dörnyei  & Csizér (2002: 424) discuss motivation in terms of complex interdependencies and causalities with some motivational sources being “situation-specific”, viz., “rooted in the student’s immediate learning environment”, and others “more stable and generalized, stemming from a succession of the student’s past experiences in the social world.” Their approach dovetails with Paiva (2011) and Sade (2011). The former (2011) conceives of motivation as a complex and “dynamic force involving social, affective and cognitive factors manifested in desire, attitudes, expectations, interests, needs, values, pleasure and efforts.” (62–3). The latter (2011) views motivation as “woven together with processes of social belonging in which identity as a complex system plays an important role” (53). Identity-related factors are also the focus of Ushioda’s Dynamic Model of L2 Motivation which maps learning progression based on learners’ goal focalization, past experiences and degree of motivation (130). Related literature points to the centrality of contact experiences with the target language community (De Angelis 2012; Paladino et al. 2009). Csizér & Kormos (2009), for example, intimate that learners’ experiences with the L2/n community “can influence both their disposition towards the target language and their attitude to L2 speakers and the L2 culture. Intercultural contact can also be assumed to affect L2 learners’ motivated behavior, that is, the energy and effort they are willing to put into L2 learning” (63; cf. findings yielded by the present research). Recent theoretical formulations in motivation research reflect an increased focus on self-related psychological construals, notably the self. The construct of self in its various manifestations (past, possible, imagined, future, feared, ideal, ought to) is surveyed on the following pages.

6.6 The learner’ self’ Learners naturally generate self-concepts whenever “competence and worthiness are in play” (Rubio 2014: 48). This applies in particular to MLUs who as users of multiple languages engage in interactions wherein their linguistic competences

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and (sociolinguistic) value, viz., their very selves are under constant scrutiny (see also Kramsch 2012b for an enlightening discussion of modern and postmodern perspectives on how identity and multilingual subjectivity play into multilingual competence). Interest in the ‘self’ possibly goes back to humanistic theorisations as advanced by Stevick (1980, 1990) for example, while research linking language(s) learning to learners’ self-concept was first carried out in motivation research (Rubio 2014: 41−48). Whereas early reference to the ‘self’ exhausts itself in a somewhat limited focus on learners’ self-confidence, self-esteem and/or self-worth (see Mills 2014 for a conceptual discussion), recent scholarship has developed the notion further, extending it to concepts such as the ideal self, self-guides, the ought-to-self, etc., increasingly configuring them within dynamic frames of reference (and in relation to temporal and spacial events). It is these new conceptions of the ‘self’ that constitute the focus of this section. Conceptual clarifications set the starting point for the present discussion. Markus & Nurius (1986) propose the notion of ‘possible selves’ to account for “individuals’ ideas of what they might become, what they would like to become, and what they are afraid of becoming” (954). Providing a “conceptual link between cognition and motivation” (Markus & Nurius 1986: 954) possible selves are “manifestations or personalized carriers” of the individual’s goals, aspirations and fears (Dörnyei 2005: 99). As such they can stimulate motivation and action through the creation of imagined future images or scenarios. This said, possible self-projections, while an important source of motivation, may have limited impact if they are not accompanied by targeted strategies – such as initiating L2 interactions and orchestrating contact situations in order to boost L2 confidence (Sampasivam & Clément 2014: 36; see Ryan & Irie 2014: 115 on the possibility of negative outcomes of future self-projections). A related notion, past selves refer to images or memories of a person’s past experiences and histories (Falout 2016: 112). They constitute learner-users’ remembered self as constructed and constituted through their own subjective perceptions of self and through attributions from others. To the extent that past successes, struggles, expectations, and failures affect learner-users’ self-perception and self-beliefs and influence appraisal of their learning potential and capabilities, past selves can have substantive impact on an individual’s approach to the learning task and learning outcome – as confirmed by the qualitative findings in the present study. Likewise, what learners want to become, or think they have to become, has a strong influence on the decisions they make with regards to their language learning (Zaragoza 2011: 104). If learners perceive their current state (or self) to be in conflict with the envisioned future image of themselves, and if they worry about the widening gap between their current and hoped-for self they will take counter-action (MacIntyre & Gregersen 2012: 199).

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Featuring a plethora “of different dimensions or selves, namely physical, social, familiar, personal, academic, and many other situational ones” the self is a highly complex and dynamic construct (Rubio 2014: 43). As shown in the current research, this complexity is compounded in the multilingual self, wherein multiple (psycho)linguistic systems, conceptual worlds, identities, cultural experiences, etc. come together. Research has only just started to look at this ‘complex’ self through the prism of DSCT. At the forefront of related DSCT-informed research, Mercer construes of the ‘self’ as complex, dynamic, multifarious, situated, and embodied (Rubio 2014: 162–163) and as consisting of multiple interrelated self-beliefs, emotions, and experiences. Central to Mercer’s theorization (2014: 164) is the understanding that the ‘self’ does not exist in a vacuum but that it is influenced by environmental factors, experiences and interpersonal relationships. Recent conceptualisations further include a vision of the learner self as a complex chaotic system whose future actions and evolution cannot be reliably predicted, because “[n]obody can say, for example, which situation will motivate or demotivate different individuals, with different life histories” (Sade 2011: 47). In Sade (2011: 47) a prime concern is with the interrelations between the whole and its component parts, which she regards as key to understanding the identity system (47). Sade’s conception of the self articulates well Paiva’s understanding of identity as a dynamic and “complex system which displays a fractalized process of expansion as it is open to new experiences” (2011: 62). Multilingual identity- and competence construction are such processes of expansion as the current findings show.

6.7 Learner autonomy Closely bound up with aspects of learner identity, and the concept of multilingual competence, is the notion of learner autonomy. Little (1991: 4) defines autonomy as “a capacity  – for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action”. According to Little, autonomy “presupposes but also entails, that the learner will adopt a particular kind of psychological relation to the process and content of his learning.” (1991: 4). More recently and from a CDST perspective Paiva (2011: 63) describes autonomy as: a socio-cognitive system nested in the SLA system. It involves not only the individual’s mental states and processes, but also political, social and economic dimensions. It is not a state, but a non-linear process, which undergoes periods of instability, variability and adaptability. It is an essential element in SLA because it triggers the learning process through learners’ agency and leads the system beyond the classroom. Autonomous learners take advantage of the linguistic affordances in their environment and act by engaging themselves in second language social practices. They also reflect about their learning and use effective learning strategies. (cf. interview results in Part II).

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Being an autonomous language learner implies being able to monitor and evaluate one’s learning and experiences and plan one’s future efforts (Malcolm 2011: 206). It implicates the capacity to “take charge of” and assume responsibility for one’s learning (Holec 1981: 3 in Cotteral 2008: 110). It includes setting learning objectives, defining content and progression of learning, selecting adequate methods and techniques, monitoring the procedure of acquisition and evaluating what has been learnt (Cotteral 2008: 110). With expert opinion converging on the notion that learning is “more meaningful, more permanent, more focused” when learners are in control (Crabbe 1993: 443 in Griffiths 2013: 32; Chik & Breidbach 2011: 157; Huang 2011: 229ff.; Lamb 2011: 183ff.; Murray 2011: 259) the expectation is that an increased “capacity for autonomy will be displayed both in the way the learner learns and in the way he or she transfers what has been learned to wider contexts.” (Little 1991: 1). Sure enough, granting learners a certain degree of autonomy engenders a sense of being in charge and free to organize one’s learning, together with a heightened degree of emotional positivity and readiness for action. With this may come other positive corollaries including an enhanced awareness of one’s affective and motivational dimension (Beseghi 2018: 235), increased metacognitive skill and an enhanced ability to optimise one’s learning. The notion of learner autonomy intersects with (and is sometimes used synonymously with) that of self-regulation, which Dörnyei & Skehan (2003: 611) delineate as the “degree to which individuals are active participants in their own learning.” Based on their understanding of self-regulation as “the ability to accomplish activities with minimal or no external support”, Lantolf & Thorne (2006: 200) argue that in order to become proficient users of a language learners must become self-regulated and must transit from other-regulation to self-regulation. Lantolf & Thorne (2006: 200)’s line of argument finds confirmation in the current results which point to an important linkage between self-regulatory capacity and multilingual competence and agency. Self-regulation also interconnects with attitude. The aim of the next section is to shine light on the complex links between learner-user attitudes and multilingual competence building.

6.8 Learner-user beliefs and attitudes A key motivational factor in language(s) learning (Stern 1985: 386), attitudes can have a substantive impact on how learner-users approach languages and engage with a learning task (Baker 1992: 35). They can affect the way individuals think about languages and language(s) learning, they can shape their expectations for success, and they can impact their maintenance efforts (Oliver & Purdie 1998: 208) and learning outcomes (Armon-Lotem et al. 2014: 95). Language attitudes play a

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particularly prominent role in communities “where different language groups coexist” (Grosjean 2001: 118; cf. Wand 2016: 341). Definitions of attitude include characterizations such as “learned dispositions to think, feel and behave” (Allport 1954 in Garrett 2010: 19), “evaluative orientations” (Garrett 2010: 20), “sets of beliefs and psychological predispositions” (Tódor  & Dégi 2016: 124), and “positive or negative values attributed to a language” (Garner 2004: 210). One of the earliest conceptualisations of attitude is proposed by Gardner and Lambert (1959). They intimate that speakers’ motivation to learn an additional language is influenced by their attitudes towards the TL community and towards the learning task (Spolsky 1990: 149; Dewaele 2010: 119). Extending this line of reasoning, Gardner (1985) posits two types of attitudes: attitudes towards the people who speak a given TL and attitudes relating to the practical use of the language (Henry & Apelgren 2008: 609). Gardner (1985)’s position is that attitudes derive from the social milieu of the learner (Cook 2001: 193), a line of inquiry also pursued by MacIntyre et al. (1998: 555) who identify ethnolinguistic variables and communication networks as playing a central role in shaping learners’ attitudes and determining ultimate achievement. On the understanding that attitudes have “profound effects on the users of the language” (Grosjean 2001: 123), possibly holding the key to explaining certain learner-user behaviours, scholarly interest in the field has seen a sharp rise over the past years. Accordingly, our current understanding of attitudes is informed by an important body of scholarly literature from which we derive that children hold attitudes about languages and language(s) learning from a very young age (Harris & O’Leary 2009: 4), whereby attitudes which are developed early in life tend to be more stable and persistent (Gardner 1985 in Spolsky 1990: 149–150). Children’s attitudes we are told are closely linked to their self-concept as learner-users and to their overall achievement (Munoz & Tragant 2001: 211; Pinter 2011: 143) and they are therefore inseparable from language learning. Children’s beliefs and attitudes are context-dependent, i.e., they develop in a given socio-cultural frame or setting and are shaped by the people and events around them (Armon-Lotem et al. 2014: 93). For example, children’s attitudes and motivation are very much influenced by what goes on in the second or foreign language classroom with teacher, methodology, classroom activities and overall learning atmosphere all contributing to shaping their orientations towards a particular language and language(s) learning in general (Csizér & Kormos 2009: 71) and early language(s) learning experiences at the primary level persisting with learners and influencing their attitudes far into adulthood (Djigunocic 2009: 79; Wesely 2012: 107). However, it is not only the teaching or the persona of the teacher that influence the development of attitudes (and motivations) in learner-users (Festman 2018: 13; Lindgren & Munoz 2012: 1; Nachmani 2015: 353). Parents too play a major role in how children think about and approach language(s) learning (Chambers 1999: 82; De Houwer 1999: 76). Parents

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may exercise their influence directly by encouraging their child or helping with homework, or indirectly through comments or reactions to members of an L2 community, for instance (Lindgren & Munoz 2012: 2; Palviainen & Bergroth 2018: 263). By way of a final observation, and with a special view to the present research, it is important to note that early multilingual or ‘foreign’ language education has reliably been shown to foster positive attitudes (Lasagabaster 2001; Munoz & Tragant 2001; Pinter 2011: 91). Concluding this chapter on complex factor effects I now turn to affordances. I explain the relevance of the notion for the current research and spell out the ensuing practical implications.

6.9 Affordances The theory of affordances, first proposed by perceptual psychologist Gibson (1977), and recently applied to the field of multilingualism has fast gained foothold as a new and promising approach to the study of multilingual phenomena. A central tenet of the affordance paradigm is that multiple language acquisition can be facilitated by “attuning one’s attention system to perceive the [. . .] affordances provided by the linguistic environment” (Segalowitz 2001: 15–16) and by acting on these affordances (Svalberg & Askham 2020: 242). Gibson’s concern with “the world at the level of ecology” (Gibson 1979/1986: 2) situates his theory within a larger socio-ecological context, which makes it ideally suited for holistic applications in multilingualism research. Equally, Gibson’s interest in systems thinking (1979/1986: 2) aligns well with the CFMC proposed in this book. While Gibson’s original definition of affordances includes that which the environment “offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes” (1997/1986: 127; italics in the original), more recent conceptions construe affordances as action possibilities or “perceived opportunities for action provided for the observer by an environment” (Singleton & Aronin 2007: 84). On an even broader understanding of affordances, Aronin & Singleton (2012: 328) propose to apply the term to a wide “spectrum of phenomena” (328), “in all shapes and sizes” (319) as relate to actions, objects, possibilities, events, facts and realities, historical events and memories, cultural conditions, emotions and sensitivities, thus physical or emotional phenomena, phenomena of the past, present or future, phenomena of long or short duration, phenomena spread over vast territories or available only in tiny niches.

It is this multitude of affordances which, according to Aronin & Singleton (2012), accounts for the great “diversity of language learning outcomes and patterns of language use” (319).

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The general understanding is that in order for human agents to take advantage of the possibilities afforded by a given environment they first need to perceive an affordance (Dewaele 2010: 106; Gibson 1979/86: 129; Otwinowska-Kasztelanic 2011a: 13). This is to say that to derive benefit from a particular affordance, individuals need to recognize their functional significance (see Markus & Nurius 1986: 963 on “context[s] of possibility”). Here, an analogy suggests itself with Schmidt’s (2010) noticing theory which, as outlined earlier, underscores the importance of being or becoming aware of a phenomenon. Relatedly, Gibson’s proposition that needs “control the perception of affordances (selective attention) and also initiate acts” (Gibson 1982: 411) is in keeping with the notion of perceived needs as the major driving force for action in the DMM (Herdina & Jessner 2002: 136). Elsewhere it has been suggested that for affordances to have an impact on language(s) learning they have to operate in concert, i.e., in clusters or sets (Aronin 2014: 162). Single affordances alone may lack the clout or impetus required for learning. Moreover, as specified by Kordt (2018), affordance perception and use are contingent on the larger social context. Building on Gibson’s notion that the “possibilities of the environment and the way of life of the animal go together inseparably”, Kordt (2018: 136) posits the complementarity of the individuum and the environment. Operating from within an optics, i.e., visual perception framework, Gibson draws on a significant amount of technical language pertinent to this specific branch of physics. The notion of vision is a particularly recurring one in his works (see Gibson’s preface and introduction to The Theory of Affordances. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception 1997/86: 1−4) and one that, I believe, has some relevance for research into multicompetence. Gibson’s use of the term ‘vision’ (with all that it implies, including seeing, perceiving, understanding) can, in fact, be transposed to the study of multilingual competence construction and looked at through at least 3 lenses: a psycholinguistic, a socio-pragmatic and a politico-educational one. Expanding on Aronin & Singleton’s (2012: 315) considerations relating thereto I propose the following: With regards to the psycholinguistic dimension, Gibson’s notion(s) of ‘vision’ can be applied to aspects related to metacognition and multilingual awareness which afford learner-users an expanded ‘vision’ and heightened perception of how language(s) work. ‘Seeing’ properties of language(s) and ‘perceiving’ similarities between languages are in fact crucial aspects of multilingual development and competence. As regards the socio-pragmatic dimension, it can be argued that a global vision and broad horizon in relation to socio-cultural aspects and language(s) use together with an understanding of what resources to activate in what circumstances form part of the multi-competent learner-user’s socio-pragmatic awareness and strategic skills repertoire.

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Finally, concerning politico-educational aspects it is legitimate to argue that visions held at the political level determine availability of and access to affordances for the individual and society at large.

Discussing the role of affordances for multilingual development, Singleton & Aronin (2007) suggest that multilinguals benefit from “especially favourable conditions” and a special “awareness of the social and cognitive possibilities which their situation affords them” (83). Multilinguals, they argue, are advantaged over monolinguals because they habitually leverage the full range of available affordances. Their (pro)position receives support from Dewaele (2010) for instance who links the utility of affordances to the special action opportunities provided by the typological proximity between languages which he construes as a powerful “crutch in challenging communication situations” (125), an assessment which in turn finds empirical confirmation in research on awareness of cognate relationships carried out by Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (2011) wherein the multilingual test group outperformed the bilingual controls leading the author to conclude that the spectrum of affordances is extended for multilinguals compared to bilinguals (11−12). The relative utility of affordances must further be seen in relation to individual learner-users’ dispositions and preferences (Kordt 2018: 142). Gibson (1979/86: 128) specifies in this respect that different possibilities for action “afford different behaviours for different animals”, which translates as ‘one and the same object or contingency affords different opportunities to different individuals’ (cf. Aronin & Singleton 2012: 316). Moreover, while “affordances of the environment are in a sense objective, real, and physical” (Gibson 1979/86: 129), they are also at the same time “properties of things taken with reference to an observer but not properties of the experiences of the observer” (Gibson 1979/86: 137, italics in the original). This is to say that affordances are not an inherent property of ‘things’ but they emerge from the relations between observer/actant and ‘thing’. As highlighted above, affordances need not necessarily refer to tangible objects but can also be of a cognitive, evaluative, moral or intentional nature (Aronin 2014: 164), the underlying assumption being that “[t] he emotional, moral, evaluative and intentional and cognitive [. . .] are no less real for people than the material” (Aronin & Singleton 2012: 316). Various classifications of affordances have been proposed. Scarantino (2003: 960) differentiates between goal-affordances and happening-affordances. The former entail actively working towards a goal, and as such require ‘doing’. The latter relate to events that “just happen” (Aronin 2014: 160). As a matter of course, goal affordances require more time and effort to effectuate than happening affordances. A further categorization, also proposed by Scarantino (2003: 959), relates to surefire versus probabilistic affordances, where the former index certainty with regards to the actualisation of a given affordance, while the latter can only

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be expected to become available with some limited degree of probability. Aronin & Singleton (2010) additionally propose to distinguish between individual language affordances and social language affordances (Aronin & Singleton 2012: 312 italics in the original), a distinction which is of some interest to the present research. Social language affordances, according to Aronin & Singleton (2012: 312), are a “prerequisite to individual language affordances.” In the multilingual context of South Tyrol social language affordances can at times work to the individual’s disadvantage, as when parents, calling for the implementation of multilingual schooling, go unheard and provision of certain affordances (for the individual vs those which purportedly satisfy the needs of the larger society) is denied. On a related note, Aronin & Singleton (2012) contend that while some properties of multilingual environments provide affordances for the deployment of multiple languages, others clearly constrain their use. For instance, “[a]ffordances for some languages may be constraints for other languages” (326). Again, these considerations take on a special relevance when applied to South Tyrol where legal provisions in respect of language-related matters including those relative to (multilingual) education, for instance, operate a number of portentous constraints as legislation regarding the languages to be employed in the educational sector (I am here alluding, in particular, to Art. 19 of the Autonomy Statute) is subject to a strictly monolingual interpretation and application. To conclude, an inventory of affordances available for learners in the different geographical parts of South Tyrol (i.e., remote areas vs bigger towns and the capital, as representative of the specific life ecologies of the learner-user groups participating in the present research) is provided below (Fig. 6.1). A note of caution needs to be raised, though, as the ensuing index is a necessary simplification with representations of everyday life conditions in the respective regions somewhat romanticized and lacking empirical support. include a Affordances in more remote villages/valleys

– – – – –

Relatively high happiness factor Relatively close-knit community life Relatively traditional family constellations Relatively stable work/life conditions Relatively stable ownership structures (with many families owning property) – Relatively intact natural surroundings

Affordances in the larger towns and the capital

– Relatively multilingual and multicultural contexts – Relatively wide range of ethnical and cultural diversity – Relatively strong presence of L2/Ln interlocutors

Fig. 6.1: Geo-and socio-contextual affordances.

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Summarising, this chapter has provided an overview of selective factor bundles as can (to varying degrees) affect the multicompetent system in time and space. Factor effects, it has been illustrated, are dynamic, multidirectional, non-linear and cumulative, rather than additive and linear. They are the result of complex interactions between any number and/or combination of factors or factor bundles (hidden factors included). Highly individual and entirely unforeseeable, their impact on the system’s evolution and behaviour is mediated by complex and dynamic processes, differential (initial) conditions, and the Stimulus impact effect/SIE as delineated in the CFMC. The findings brought to light by the current research go some significant way to reinforcing the theoretical propositions laid out in the foregoing. Next, Part II of the book first provides an overview of the politico-historical and socio-linguistic context in which the present research is situated bearing in mind the specific local conditions. This is followed by a detailed outline of the study and research procedure. The chapter then moves on to discuss the findings yielded by the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the data before closing with final considerations and implications for future research.

Part II

Chapter 7  The study 7.1 South Tyrol – Political and historical background In minority language contexts, education – language education in particular – cannot ever be divorced from its politico-historical past and its resultant ideological outgrowth. Thence, when conducting research in minority settings, due consideration needs to be given to the distinctive local histories and sensitivities, as well as to aspects of ethnic identity and intergroup relations. Bordering Austria and Switzerland, the northern Italian province of South Tyrol  – where the current research was conducted  – is home to three linguistic communities. German, i.e., a dialect variant of standard German, representative of the southern end of the German dialect continuum (Stavans & Hoffmann 2015: 74), is the autochthonous language of a minority of 310,000 speakers. It is mainly spoken in the smaller towns and villages, and in the valleys. Italian as the second official (and national) language (spoken by 115,000 people) is the dominant code in the capital Bolzano/Bozen/Bulsan and its surrounds. Ladin (a Rhaeto-Romance language) is spoken in the Gardena and Badia Valleys. It is the third official language in the region and counts a community of approximately 20,000 speakers. The region’s historical past is a deeply troubled one and has, over the decades, given rise to persistent tensions linked in particular to issues of linguistic and cultural identity, socio-political interests and power struggles. In the aftermath of World War I, South Tyrol, formerly a province of the Austro-Hungarian empire, came to be part of Italy. In 1919, the Treaty of St. Germain decreed that Austria’s territories south of the Brenner Pass were to be ceded to Italy. Amongst the German-speaking population who made up 86% of the total population in the area, this “abomination” (Steininger 2003: 6) was perceived as gross injustice (Alcock 2001: 2). The advent of Fascism was to aggravate the situation further. The Fascist regime disposed the establishment of Italian as the sole official language to be used in all public offices and state institutions and ordered the closure of German-language newspapers and schools, as well as the dissolution of the German-speaking political parties in the region. Court hearings, official documents, road signs and inscriptions were to be in Italian only. Place names, even first names and surnames, were italianised. All teaching (with the exception of some limited religious education) had to be in Italian. Listening to German-language radio programmes or reading German newspapers was strictly prohibited. In the early 1930s Mussolini’s italianisation measures gained further momentum through the creation of a huge industrial zone on the outskirts of South Tyrol’s capital. The aim was to increase https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-008

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the number of Italians in the region by relocating workforce from other parts of Italy. And indeed, by 1939, only 5 years after the relocation programme had been put in place, the number of Italians in South Tyrol had risen to a staggering 25% of the overall population. In the wake of the 1939 agreement between Hitler and Mussolini, it was decided that South Tyroleans were to be given an ‘option’ (die Option). They could either leave the country and go to Germany where they were, under false pretences, promised land and a home to live in, or they would face and accept assimiliation. Over 80% of South Tyroleans opted to leave. However, owing to the course that the events of WWII took, less than half of the ‘optants’ actually left and of those who did leave, many returned (Alcock 2001: 3–4; see Hillebrand 1996: 68ff.). After the war had ended South Tyrol’s hopes to be reunited with Austria were thwarted. South Tyrol was to remain Italian. In recompense it was decreed that the region should be granted special autonomy status. An agreement signed between the then Italian prime minister De Gasperi and the Austrian foreign minister Gruber guaranteed autonomous legislative and executive powers. The agreement – appended to the 1946/47 Italian Peace Treaty reads as follows: 1. German-speaking inhabitants of the Bolzano Province and of the neighbouring bilingual townships of the Trento Province will be assured a complete equality of rights with the Italian-speaking inhabitants within the framework of special provisions to safeguard the ethnical character and the cultural and economic development of the German-speaking element. In accordance with legislation already enacted or awaiting enactment the said German-speaking citizens will be granted in particular: (a) Elementary and secondary teaching in the mother-tongue; (b) Parification of the German and Italian languages in public offices and official documents, as well as in bilingual topographical naming; (c) The right to re-establish German family names which were italianised in recent years; (d) Equality of rights as regards the entering upon public offices with a view to reaching a more appropriate proportion of employment between the two ethnical groups. 2. The populations of the above-mentioned zones will be granted the exercise of autonomous legislative and executive regional power. The frame within which the said provisions of autonomy will apply, will be drafted in consultation also with local representative German-speaking elements. 3. The Italian Government, with the aim of establishing good neighbourhood relations between Austria and Italy, pledges itself, in consultation with the Austrian Government, and within one year from the signing of the present Treaty:

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(a) To revise in a spirit of equity and broadmindedness the question of the options for citizenship resulting from the 1939 Hitler-Mussolini agreements; (b) To find an agreement for the mutual recognition of the validity of certain degrees and university diplomas; (c) To draw up a convention for the free passengers and goods transit between Northern and Eastern Tyrol both by rail, and to the greatest possible extent by road; (d) To reach special agreements aimed at facilitating enlarged frontier traffic and local exchanges of certain quantities of characteristic products and goods between Austria and Italy. (Alcock 2001: 7) Austria became South Tyrol’s kin state and protecting power and would intervene in the case of non-compliance with the clauses laid down in the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement. The Autonomy Statute promulgated in 1948 provided for institutional power-sharing between Rome and South Tyrol and constituted a crucial milestone for South Tyrol’s autonomy. The prospect of equalisation held out in the Paris Agreement was however not attained. South Tyrol’s demands that German should become an official language alongside Italian were rejected (Alcock 2001: 9); while German schools had to teach Italian as a second language, Italian-language schools were under no such obligation to teach German because German was not an official language. It was widely felt that the Autonomy Statute failed to deliver on the ‘parification’ promised in the 1946/47 Paris Peace Agreement, and it was to be long before the region could officially call itself “South Tyrol”. In the 1950s dissatisfaction with the status quo resulted in widespread civil unrest. In 1956 tensions escalated into violence as terrorist activists took to bombing electrical pylons. Massive demonstrations were staged, the biggest one at Sigmundskron, where Silvius Magnago, the then president, called for a separation of South Tyrol from its neighbouring province Trento. In 1960 Austria referred the causa South Tyrol to the United Nations. Intensive negotiations between Austrian and Italian government delegates and representatives of the local SVP (South Tyrol’s people party) followed resulting in a revision of the 1948 Autonomy Statute and a ‘package’ of some 137 provisions, referred to as “das Paket”. With the new Autonomy Statute of 1972 many competences and secondary legislative powers as regard the teaching in primary and secondary schools for instance were transferred to the province. A further revision of the Autonomy Statute in 2001 extended South Tyrol’s autonomy and resulted in far-reaching autonomous competencies. Today, a system of ethnic proportion, the ‘Proporz’, guarantees the equal distribution of public-sector jobs and housing but it comes with the obligation to declare one’s linguistic affiliation which for many

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bi- and trilinguals constitutes a fundamental dilemma. It is also true that while South Tyrol is rightly commended as an exemplary instance of diplomatic conflict regulation, nationalist ambitions and interethnic tensions are not eradicated but keep re-flaming at multiple levels. It is against this complex context that discourses of language learning and multilingualism in South Tyrol need to be considered.

7.2 Language education in South Tyrol Current debates on multilingual schooling in South Tyrol are probably best characterized as highly charged. More than 60 years on from the first Autonomy Statute in 1948, language education is still a highly controversial issue and the perception that too much contact with the ‘language of the other’ (De Angelis 2012: 411) might lead to loss of one’s native tongue and South Tyrolean identity is still strong (Riehl 2007: 111). The German language (forbidden during the Fascist dictatorship) carries great symbolic weight, its use widely framed as an instantiation of South Tyrolean identity. This is very much reflected in the German-only ideology in German-language schools in the region, which have sought to keep classrooms as Germanophone as possible, in the belief that this would enhance students’ language ability in their mother tongue and strengthen the position of the German language (Egger 1977: 152). The monolingual German habitus has over the years been (offensively) promoted by both the governing political parties (notably the majority party SVP, the Union for South Tyrol, and the Freedom Party) and the German school board. While publicly acknowledging and even emphasizing the importance of multilingualism for life and work, political and educational stakeholders have, to this day, shown continued reluctance to implement multilingual educational programmes in German-language schools. Conversely, all-out endorsement of multilingual pedagogies by the Italian and Ladin authorities has resulted in the extensive provision of multilingual education in schools catering for the Italian and Ladin communities in the region. Critics of multilingual schooling insist that while multilingual education does not pose a threat to the Italian-speaking community whose language is the national language and who therefore need not fear assimilation, an altogether different scenario presents itself relative to German-speaking South Tyroleans. Their number, so the argument, might in the long run be subject to sharp decline if the younger generations begin to identify with the Italian community and way of life and start to embrace the Italian language on a grand scale (cf. Barnes 1999: 243 for a discussion of anomie or cultural dislocation). While in the face of such concerns, one cannot help thinking that recent international discourses on minority language rights may have contributed to the reproduction of old language ideologies, with tendencies among minority groups to incorporate ideologies of the nation-state and mobilise

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“around language and culture to assert their own ‘national’ status and autonomy” (Patrick 2007: 114; Hornberger 2010: 2; Muehlmann & Duchêne 2007: 107), it might be helpful to ask why, if multilingualism purportedly erodes minority speakers’ identity and language, a numerically small community like the Ladin community does not oppose but instead endorses multilingualism and multilingual schooling, and linked hereto, whether it is perhaps not despite but rather because of their commitment to multilingualism that the Ladin community and language keep thriving. Whatever one’s view on the matter, the question at issue is, whether fear of assimilation (justified or unwarranted, that is a personal judgement to make) is sufficient cause for thwarting the wider introduction of multilingual programmes in German-language schools. In point of fact, a series of protective measures are in place today to guarantee the linguistic and cultural integrity of the German-speaking population. South Tyrol’s German-speaking community is granted special protection and status under the Autonomy Statute (1948, 1972, 2001) and under national law. The region’s political and economic interests are represented at the European Union level and South Tyrol can rely on Austria, as its kin state, for political backing. In addition, the geographical proximity allows for close ties and cross-border exchange and co-operation with the neighbouring German-speaking countries of Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. German-speakers in South Tyrol are part of a larger network of German-speakers which is to say that, in all objectivity, there is no apparent reason to fear the demise of the German language (or culture) in South Tyrol.

7.3 Language division in the educational system/language policy issues When talking about education in South Tyrol, several key aspects need to be considered. First, it is important to note that within the South Tyrolean school system the three local languages (German, Italian and Ladin) have clearly defined roles, both at the curriculum and at the institutional level. There is no tradition of language integration, at least not in German-language schools. The system, based on principles of separation and monolingual instruction (Alber 2012: 400), is divided along linguistic lines such that children whose home language is German, go to German-language schools, children whose home language is Italian typically go to Italian-language schools, and children whose home language is Ladin attend schools that cater to the Ladin-speaking community. If a child comes from a mixed-language background (Italian-German, German-Ladin, Ladin-Italian), it is up to the parents to decide which school their child should go to. However, if the child does not master the language of schooling at a level deemed adequate for academic advancement, a commission composed of representatives from the respective linguistic groups may

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be convened to determine whether the child should be allowed to stay on or not (executive measures 1988; see Hofer 2015: 139). In this regard, Art. 8, DPR 89/1983 states that “Das Recht der Eltern oder ihrer Stellvertreter, über eine Einschreibung in die Schulen der verschiedenen Sprachgruppen zu entscheiden, darf auf keinen Fall Einfluss auf die Unterrichtssprache haben, die für die verschiedenen Schulen vorgesehen ist.” [“Parents’ or their representatives’ right to enroll their child in a given school must under no circumstances interfere with the language of instruction at a particular school”. My translation]. The rationale behind this measure is to preempt the disruption of monolingual (German-language) education as might be effected by the massive presence of other-language pupils. The measure, though hardly ever implemented, clearly represents a curtailing of families’ personal right to select the school of their choice (Bonell  & Winkler 2010: 194; see also Barnes 1999: 242 on “mother-tongue education” in South Africa being “forced upon all to the exclusion of other rights such as the parents’ freedom of choice of the language medium”). Second, while until very recently, there used to be little cross-over in the schools, the situation has changed significantly over the years. Italian parents keen on securing a good language education for their children are increasingly sending their offspring to German-language kindergartens and schools. The new influx of non-German children is crescively perceived as precarious with German-speaking parents lamenting that kindergartens and schools, particularly those in the capital, are being ‘overrun’ by children from Italian- (and other-)language backgrounds. This preoccupation is echoed by many school principals who for their part have been voicing concern about L1 German instruction being undermined by the ‘massive’ inflow of non-native children. Third, educational provisions in South Tyrol are premised on Art. 19 of the 1972 Autonomy Statute which states (in rather vague wording) that all learners have the right to be instructed in their mother tongue. The legal interpretation of Art. 19 is, however, fraught with problems. While some interpret Art. 19 as decreeing that all subject teaching in German language schools must be delivered in German, others see greater scope for interpretation (cf. Schober 2006: 140). As I have explained elsewhere (Hofer 2015), efforts to hone pupils’ competence in L1 German have sprouted curious shoots. In 1945, a national law (Decreto Legislativo Luogotenziale 27 Ottobre 1945, n. 775, art. 3) which provided for some (limited) form of bilingual education in mixed-language communities was voted down by the local authorities who adjudged it to be untenable. A few years later, in 1948, an Italian-language school in the capital Bozen was refused authorization to implement a bilingual experimental programme (it appears out of fear that such programmes would eventually also arouse the interest of German-language schools) which had attracted great interest among the local Italian-speaking community. Further down

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the line, in 1992/93, similar efforts to increase L2 contact times in Italian schools and kindergartens were again frustrated by the ruling SVP party (Scochi 2011: 53).

7.4 Contexts of diglossia A further hallmark of the South Tyrol context is its situation of diglossia. Diglossia relates to sociolinguistic contexts wherein different linguistic varieties (or dialects) serve different functions (Clyne 2007: 302). The concept of diglossia is widely associated with Ferguson (1971: 16 in Grosjean 2001: 130) who delineates the phenomenon as a relatively stable language situation in which, in addition to the primary dialects (which may include a standard or regional standards), there is a very divergent, highly codified (often grammatically more complex) superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of written literature, either of an earlier period or in another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal spoken purposes but is not used by any section of the community for ordinary conversation.

The diglossic context of South Tyrol is characterized by the co-existence of several German varieties, whereby Standard German, employed in formal contexts such as education and the media, is widely considered the high (H) variety, while its various dialect variants, as are used for everyday communicative purposes, are typically ascribed the status of lower (L) varieties. One consequence of South Tyrol’s diglossic situation is that upon entering the education system German-language pupils in the region find themselves having to learn a new ‘code’ with new grammar structures and morphology and a new lexicon, i.e., they need to be taught new elements of their (dialectal) mother tongue (cf. Yiakoumetti, Evans & Esch 2006: 254). The reality of diglossia is also sometimes cited as one of the factors contributing to the social division between Italian-speakers – who in school study Standard German and do not always command the local varieties – and German-speakers, who typically only use dialect in their day-to-day dealings and in so doing fail to accommodate their Italian interlocutors1 (Abel 2007: 5). While diglossia as a background variable is likely to be a significant influencing factor, the current research can, for practical reasons, only take stock of pupils’ proficiency in the standard variety. The German standard variety is the main language of instruction in all the schools participating in this study and it is the main working language during the 1 This is however only one side of the coin since there is also at the same time a strong tendency (and readiness) amongst German speakers to switch to Italian when conversing with speakers of Italian.

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phase of test administration. Dialect-tainted speech is found in the interview data but is not treated as a separate code. It might however be an interesting avenue for future research to investigate how the use of South Tyrolean dialect affects students’ development of standard German and/or additional language(s) learning (the interview analysis for the current research yields some interesting data on this matter; see discussion of qualitative findings, Section 8.3.1.6).

7.5 The role of English as additional language It has repeatedly been argued that the early introduction of English must be viewed in a differentiated way (Hélot 2008: 381) as it can be at the expense of other – smaller and/or locally spoken  – languages (cf. Henry  & Apelgren 2008: 608; Lasagabaster 2017: 584). With regard hereto, it is important to note that within an integrated pluralistic framework, English does not assume the role of domineering super-language. Rather, from a holistic multilingualism-informed perspective the languages in the multilingual system are on an equal footing and are accorded equal status. This naturally implicates a conception of English as contributing to the development of the entire multilingual system (Jessner 2006: 133) and as supportive of multilingual competence building (Manno 2005: 169). In early language education in particular, the role of English is to awaken and stimulate children’s curiosity about other languages and cultures, and to function as a gateway to multilingual learning and competence building. While expert recommendation is that in formal instructional contexts, English should be introduced after L2 in order not to forestall acquisition of a second language and go to the detriment of a broader multilingual competence, the dilemma of which L2 is to be introduced first in the curriculum does not subsist in South Tyrol because Italian L2 is legally mandatory in all German-language schools starting from 1st grade. English is therefore relegated to third language status and is in most schools introduced in 4th grade. Analogously, teaching hours for L3 English are reduced compared to those for L2 Italian (2 vs 5 hours per week).

7.6 Study design and procedures In the following I provide a detailed description of the methodological framework underpinning the current research and the study design employed. I begin with some terminological considerations which serve to clarify the use of different designations as employed in the remainder of the chapter. Next, I stake out the research objectives. This is followed by an outline of the research questions and hypotheses and a description of the single test procedures.

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7.6.1 Terminological considerations Since the current investigation was carried out in German-language schools in South Tyrol, a large majority of the study participants are (native) speakers of (South Tyrolean) German. German is their dominant (and chronologically first) language and the primary medium of instruction. As indicated, this research does not treat South Tyrolean dialect and standard German as distinct codes. Italian, which in German-language schools is taught as second language from grade 1, constitutes children’s L2. English as an additional language introduced in grade 4 (or earlier, as in the case of two schools with multilingual streams) is pupils’ L3. This said, the proposed labels are not applicable to all the participants in the study as not all children are native speakers of German. Some have other (multi-) language biographies with Italian, heritage, or mixed-language background. The designations L1, L2 and L3 are therefore placed in parentheses ((L1), (L2), (L3)). The term ‘German only’ background children will be employed to refer to children whose family background is monolingual German in the sense that only German (typically dialect) is spoken in the home and/or family. Pupils who come from families where other/additional languages are used, are referred to as children with otheror mixed-language (OLB/MxLB) background. Further specifications are given in the results section. Lastly, the denominations MLUs (multilingual learner-users) and YEMs (young emergent multilinguals), used interchangeably, apply to all the participants in the study, irrespective of their linguistic and/or cultural background, because all the children are emergent multilinguals and have (some) command of at least 3 languages.

7.6.2 Research interest Seeking to advance scholarly understanding of multilingual competences in emergent multilinguals at the primary level, this research pursues several aims. The first and overarching is to establish whether young MLUs are able to harness their vari-lingual and metacognitive resources and perform tasks that require them to carry out elaborate and abstract crosslinguistic operations (cf. Lasagabaster 2001: 325). Berthele (2011: 199) found age to be a critical factor with regards to test-takers’ ability to draw interlingual inferences (see also Ranta 2008: 206). Proceeding from this and taking into consideration the paucity of research into young learner-users’ multilingual competences, it is at this juncture not clear whether the 10-year-old study participants are at all able to attend to lexico-semantic and morpho-syntactic features across languages and whether they can perform the complex meta-linguis-

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tic procedures set by the multilingual competence test (see also Munoz 2013: 24 on the development of consciousness about language in YLs). A second important aim of the present research is to shine light on attitudes and strategy use in young MLUs. Strategy use is surveyed directly – through a questionnaire and individual interviews with a subsample of 42 pupils – and indirectly through so-called MV (multilingual verbalisation) tasks in the multi-competence test (MCT). Attitudes are elicited through a questionnaire and individual interviews. Finally, the study aims to ascertain whether different learning contexts (as determined by sociodemographic variables, geographical location and type of educational programme) affect participants’ overall multilingual performance and/or their attitudes or strategy use and whether population structure – i.e., the presence of (L2) Italian speakers in the immediate surroundings – impacts young learner-users’ multilingual competences (including their performance in (L1), (L2) and (L3)) and/or their language learning attitudes and use of strategies. If, as anticipated, multilingual competences are reflective of MLUs’ language learning experiences, then ‘more experienced’ learner-users should exhibit enhanced multilingual competences as reflected in their overall test performance and approach to languages (cf. Jackson 2014: 215).

7.6.3 Research questions and hypotheses Synthesising the foregoing, two broad foci can be identified for this research, one relating to the specific nature of multilingual competences in young learner-users, the other concerning the relationship between pupils’ accumulated multilingual knowledge and experience and their respective multilingual competences. With these in mind, the following research questions have been formulated: RQ1: Can young emergent multilinguals (YEM) in 5th grade of primary school, with limited formal second and third language instruction in (L2) Italian and (L3) English be considered multilingually competent, and if so, what special skills and abilities do they possess that qualify them as multilingually competent? RQ2: Is young emergent multilinguals’ (YEMs’) multilingual knowledge sufficiently developed, i.e., do YEMs have a sufficiently robust knowledge base in (L2) and/or (L3) in order for these languages to function as supporter languages in multilingual tasks? In other words, are (L2) and (L3) sufficiently stabilized to serve as reference/ source languages? RQ3: Are children’s performance in the multilingual competence test and proficiency in (L1), (L2) and/or (L3) correlated?

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RQ4: Is metalinguistic awareness (as measured by means of MAT-2 through so-called MLquestions) correlated with multilingual awareness, or more specifically pupils’ ability to generate metalinguistic cross-lingual reflections (as elicited through MVquestions in the MCT)? RQ5: Does multilingual awareness (as measured through MVs in the MCT) correlate with pupils’ multilingual agency (MLX), or more specifically with the ability to carry out concrete multilingual operations? RQ6: Do children whose L1 is not German perform differently on the multicompetence test and on the German, Italian and English measure? RQ7: What is the relationship between attitudes/motivation and overall level of multilingual competence and proficiency in (L1), (L2), and (L3)? RQ8: Are there any correlations between use of language learning strategies and performance on the MCT and on the tests of (L1), (L2) and (L3)? RQ9: Does type of educational programme (i.e., traditional vs multilingual education) have an effect on pupils’ performance in the MCT and in (L1), (L2) and (L3)? RQ10: Does population distribution, i.e., the presence or absence of (L2) Italian in the immediate surroundings affect degree of multilingual competence and competence in (L1) (L2), and (L3)? RQ11: Are there any correlations between parents’ educational and/or socioeconomic background and pupils’ multilingual competence including their (L1), (L2) and (L3)? RQ12: Does increased exposure to (L2) (and/or other languages in or outside the classroom) have negative effects on children’s competence in (L1)? Do pupils in more multilingual settings have lower levels of competence in (L1) German? On the basis of the itemized research questions and taking account of the pertinent literature, it is hypothesised that H1: YEMs in 5th grade primary school, with limited formal second and third language instruction in (L2) Italian and (L3) English, can be considered multi-competent on the grounds that they possess a range of skills and abilities which are constitutive of multilingual competence; H2: YEMs’ multilingual knowledge is sufficiently developed and their knowledge base in (L2) and/or (L3) is robust enough for these languages to function as supporter languages in multilingual tasks;

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H3: Performance in the multilingual competence test and proficiency in (L1) (L&ML), (L2) and/or (L3) are correlated; H4: Metalinguistic awareness (measured through so-called MLquestions in the MAT-2) is correlated with the ability to generate metalinguistic cross-lingual reflections as elicited through MVquestions in the MCT; H5: Multilingual awareness (measured through MVs in the MCT) is correlated with multilingual agency (MLX), i.e., the ability to carry out concrete multilingual operations; H6: Language background affects degree of multicompetence and performance in German, Italian and English: children with Italian or heritage language background perform differently on some, possibly all measures. H7: Attitudes/motivation and level of multilingual competence (including performance in (L1), (L2) or (L3)) are correlated; H8: Correlations also exist between use of language learning strategies and pupils’ performance in the multilingual competence test and in (L1), (L2) and (L3); H9: Type of educational programme impacts on pupils’ performance in the multilingual competence test and in (L1), (L2) and (L3); H10: Population distribution, i.e., the presence or absence of (L2) Italian in the immediate surroundings affects degree of multilingual competence including competence in (L2), (L3), and (L1); H11: Parents’ educational and/or socio-economic background and children’s performance in the single languages and in the MCT are correlated; H12: Increased exposure to (L2) (and/or other languages in or outside the classroom) does not have detrimental effects on competence in (L1).

7.6.4 Data collection Six months before the study got underway, school principals were contacted via email and telephone. The intent was to enlist the cooperation of schools in both, (relatively monolingual) rural and (more multilingual/Italophone) urban areas in order that comparisons could be drawn with regards to young learner-users’ multilingual competences in different sociolinguistic settings and with differing levels of exposure to (L2)/Ln. The search for schools was not without problems. The extensive research design caused some principals to express concern regarding the pro-

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longed testing period (4 written tests and 2 questionnaires, each to be carried out on a separate day so as not to overexert the children). Fearing unnecessary disruption to learning, several schools politely declined the invitation to join in the project. Of those principals who did agree to participate, some needed discrete persuasion, while others were enthusiastic from the beginning. In advance of the testing phase, parents’ written consent was obtained. Families were informed about the purpose of the research and reassured that the data collected would be treated with confidentiality. Only a handful of parents chose to withhold their consent. Prior to test administration the multilingual competence test (MCT) was piloted among sameaged pupils in a German-language school to ascertain that the test procedure was not too difficult for the given age group. The pilot group do not form part of the test population. Their results are therefore not considered further.

7.6.5 Participants A total of 209 children drawn from ten German-language primary schools participated in the research. The children were in their 5th and final year and ten years old on average. Located in different geographical areas in South Tyrol, the schools accommodate varying proportions of Italian- and heritage-language speakers. Settings therefore differ substantively in terms of the given sociolinguistic and educational realities with some children living (and going to school) in remote periphery locations where they hardly ever encounter (L2) Italian (or other languages for that matter) outside of the school context, and others living in larger, centrally located towns with a high concentration of (L2) Italian and/or other-language speakers (cf. Schober 2006: 135). Equally, classroom composition differs considerably from school to school (see Tables 7.2 and 7.3 below) with some year groups being relatively homogeneous (i.e., monoglossic German-speaking) and others decidedly heterogenous (and heteroglossic). Figure 7.1 below zooms in on the sociolinguistic and sociocultural contexts in which the schools are nested (Census 2011). It shows that while some schools are located in areas with a mere 2% of Italian speakers (this being the case mostly in small peripheral villages), others (in or near the larger towns) boast a percentage of over 70% of Italian speakers. The percentages provided in the graph reflect the number of Italian, German and Ladin speakers in the respective villages or towns in which the given schools are situated. The graph is meant to be read from top to bottom with the (relatively) monolingual contexts at the top end and the (more) multilingual settings at the bottom.

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Relatively monolingual sociolinguistic context ( i.e., low concentration of L2 speakers and therefore limited opportunities to engage with L2 outside of school); 2011 Census School 1: School 2: School 3: Schools 4+5:

2.18% Italian speakers, 97,82% German speakers, 0% Ladin speakers 3.37% Italian speakers, 96,51 % German speakers, 0,12 % Ladin speakers 4.58% Italian speakers, 95,42 % German speakers, 0 % Ladin speakers 7.91 % Italian speakers, 91,80% German speakers, 0,29% Ladin speakers

School 6:

14.91% Italian speakers, 83,14% German speakers, 1,95% Ladin speakers

School 7: Schools 8+9:

70.42% Italian speakers, 29,07% German speakers, 0,51% Ladin speakers 73.00% Italian speakers, 26, 29% German speakers, 0,71% Ladin speakers

School 10:

73.00% Italian speakers, 26, 29% German speakers, 0,71% Ladin speakers

Highly multilingual sociolinguistic context ( i.e., high concentration of L2 speakers and resulting ample opportunities for children to engage with L2 outside of school)

Fig. 7.1: Continuum of sociolinguistic and sociocultural contexts.

Based on the specific learning-related and socio-demographic contexts and assumed degrees of multilingualism as determined by their specific life realities, participants were grouped into 5 cohorts. Degree of multilingualism is here cast as resulting from the (relative) amount of contact or interaction with (L2)/Ln based on the given educational/in-class and sociolinguistic/out-of-class setting and is represented on a continuum (Fig. 7.2 Continuum of learning/educational context). Amount of contact and interaction time with (L2)/Ln are higher at the multilingual end of the continuum and lower at the monolingual end. Figure 7.2 gives an overview of the different learning/educational contexts. Again, the graph is meant to be read from top to bottom with the (relatively) monolingual setting at the top and the (more) multilingual contexts at the bottom end. Least multilingual learning/educational contexts Group 1: Learners in traditional educational programmes and in relatively monolingual year groups and sociolinguistic contexts (schools 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 above) Group 2: Learners in traditional educational programmes in a relatively monolingual classroom but with relatively strong presence of (L2) outside of school (school 8 above) Group 3: Learners in traditional educational programmes but high levels of contact with (L2) Italian in and outside the classroom (school 7, 9 above) Group 4: Learners in a multilingual programme Germanophone) sociolinguistic context (school 6 above)

but relatively monolingual (i.e.,

Group 5: Learners in a multilingual programme with highly multilingual classroom composition and multilingual sociolinguistic contexts (school 10 above) Most multilingual learning/educational contexts

Fig. 7.2: Continuum of learning/educational contexts.

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The following provides a sketch of each of the five groups: Group 1 (n=101) at the monolingual end, comprises 5 schools, all providing subject matter teaching in (L1) German and offering 1 hour of (L2) Italian in grade 1, 4–5 hours of (L2) Italian from grade 2, and (L3) English for 2 hours per week from grade 4. Pupils in group 1 live and study in relatively monolingual surroundings in more or less remote villages, which is to say that both, the language constellation in the classrooms and the wider sociolinguistic environment are relatively homogeneous, viz., Germanophone. As we move further down the continuum, contexts become increasingly more multilingual. Though also attending mainstream programmes, groups 2 (n=19) and 3 (n=55) are immersed in surroundings with a larger concentration of (L2) Italian and/or other-language speakers. This is particularly the case for group 3 whose classroom composition and everyday life reality are highly multilingual. Classroom and out-of-school context are more Germanophone in the case of group 2 than in the case of group 3 (see Table 7.2). Both, groups 2 and 3, are located in or in close proximity of the capital. Further down still, pupils in group 4 (n=19) live in comparatively monolingual surroundings in a small town (see Fig. 2 above). However, classroom composition for this group is relatively multilingual (see Table 7.2). In addition, their school (Bachlechner primary) takes special provisions to promote multilingual cross-language and awareness-focused learning through regular multilingual learning sessions (amounting to 2x2 hours per week) with a focus on meta- and crosslinguistic awareness raising (https://gsd-bruneck.it/schulstellen/bruneck/sprachenklassen/). The aim is to promote pupils’ multilingual awareness and agency by engaging them in cross-lingual metacognitive activities. Italian and English are introduced in first grade. While there is no coordinated multilingual alphabetization (as in the Langer primary described next), children are nevertheless taught to read and write in all three languages from the beginning. Finally, group 5 (n=15) constitute the most multilingual cohort. Children in this group study in a distinctly multilingual classroom (both, in terms of the linguistic diversity of its student population and in terms of the teaching approach) and operate in a decidedly multi-cultural environment in the capital, where (L2) Italian (and other languages) are heard and spoken on a regular, day-to-day basis. Like Bachlechner primary, the (Langer primary) school has an explicit policy of promoting multilingualism and multiliteracy which, according to Cenoz (2009: 32), qualifies them as a multilingual school. As indicated, Langer primary (see Fig. 7.2; https://www.ssp-bozeneuropa.com/ index.php/de/grundschule-a-langer/schwerpunkte-der-sprachen-und-hermeneutik-klassen) is the only German-language primary school in South Tyrol to provide for coordinated bilingual German-Italian literacy instruction, and for content teaching in 3 languages (German, Italian, and English) from grade 1. Children are simultaneously

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alphabetized in German and Italian. Bilingual literacy instruction is delivered once or twice a week for 1 to 2 hours, during which time both, the German and Italian teacher are present and work together in the classroom. A special initial sound table purposely devised for the multilingual context of South Tyrol introduces pupils to the sound and letter systems of the German and Italian language. (L2) Italian serves as vehicular language for a number of subjects (physical education in grades 1 and 2, biology from grade 3). (L3) English is used in German/English team-teaching sessions in the music and art/handicraft lessons twice a week from grade 1. The school shares the building with an Italian-language primary school which allows for extensive exchange between pupils and teachers. In contrast to the distinct multilingual policies adopted by the Bachlechner and Langer primary schools, traditional educational models in South Tyrol do not (generally or overtly) aim at multilingualism. Rather, efforts typically go into boosting children’s competency in (L1) German. Table 7.1 below summarises the respective group profiles based on instructional programme and sociolinguistic environment and gives an indication of (assumed) degree of multilingualism. Table 7.1: group profiles. Group

n

1

101

n HL German only (of 190 valid cases)

% of group with HL Germanonly (of 190)

73

78%

Educ. Programme

Linguistic environment (=population distribution)

Assumed degree of multilingualism

traditional

monolingual German

less multilingual

2

19

12

71%

traditional

+Italian speakers

less multilingual

3

55

14

29%

traditional

+Italian speakers

more multilingual

4

19

11

69%

multilingual

monolingual German

more multilingual

5

15

1

7%

multilingual

+Italian speakers

more multilingual

209

111

As explicated, while all the children in the study (n=209) speak German, not all of them speak it as their L1. A total of 62 children has German-Italian bilingual background, and several pupils speak one of the following heritage languages: Ladin (n=1), Swiss Romansh (n=1), Russian (n=2), Slovak (n=2), Serbio-Croatian (n=2), Albanian (n=7), Arabic (n=2), Portuguese (n=1), Urdu (n=2), and Punjabi/Urdu (n=1).

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The distribution of children’s home languages (for each of the 5 groups) is rendered in the subsequent graphs (see Tables 7.2 and 7.3 below). Table 7.2: Number of home languages per group (1–5) (German/Italian dialect and standard counted as one). Group

No of children

HL Info missing

1 2 3 4 5

101 19 55 19 15

7 2 6 3 1

Total

209

19

M

SD

1.18 1.29 1.71 1.5 1.93

0.439 0.588 0.645 0.894 0.267

1 HL

2 HL

3 HL

4 HL

5 HL

79 13 18 11 1

13 3 28 3 13

2 1 2 1 0

0 0 1 1 0

0 0 0 0 0

122

60

6

2

0

Table 7.2 reports the means and standard deviations for number of languages spoken in the home as elicited through the background questionnaire. With a mean value of M=1.93, home language use is most diverse for group 5, followed by group 3 (M=2.71). 28 (out of 55) children in group 3 and 13 (out of 15) children in group 5 report using two home languages. The mean value for the other groups ranges between 1.18 (group 1) and 1.5 (group 4). As can be gauged from Table 7.3, 111 out of the 209 children under study speak only German at home, while 62 speak German and Italian at home (and two children speak a combination of German, Italian and (an)other language(s)). 15 children do not speak any German at home, and 9 report not using any German or Italian, but only their heritage language.

101 19 55 19 15

209

1 2 3 4 5

Total

19

7 2 6 3 1

175

87 16 43 16 13 111

73 12 14 11 1

15 5 32 3 13 68

78% 71% 29% 69% 7% 58% 62

14 4 29 3 12 64

14 4 29 5 12 22

9 1 7 4 1

15

7 1 6 0 1

9

6 0 3 0 0

Group No of HL Info HL German HL % of group HL Italian HL German AND HL German + HL other no German no German children missing (dialect or German German (dialect or Italian (dialect italian and/or (not German used at OR Italian in group standard) only only standard) or standard) other / Italian) home used at home

Table 7.3: Combination of home languages by group (1–5).

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Summing up, all the children in the study engage in multilingual routines on a (more or less) daily basis, but they do so to varying degrees depending on the specific sociolinguistic and sociocultural contexts in which they function.

7.6.6 The continua of multilingual competence and the intertwining of inner and outer contexts In order to do justice to the complexities emerging from these diverse sociolinguistic and educational ecologies, the Continua of Multilingual Competence model (hereafter CMC) – for which Cenoz’ Continua of Multilingual Education (2009) and Hornberger’s Continua of Biliteracy (2004) serve as blueprint – is proposed here. The CMC visualizes the intersectionality of micro- and macro-level events and the combined impact of psycho- and sociolinguistic, educational, and politico-ideological factors on the multilingual system. Aimed at elucidating the dynamic interplay between contextual factors as itemized in the CFMC, the CMC throws into relief the spatiotemporal continuity and interconnectedness of learner-users’ experiences and practices (Hornberger 2004: 156) positing the dynamic confluence and interaction of inner and outer contexts, together with emic and etic perspectives in the emergence and development of multilingual competence. Contextual factors are arranged on continua (see Fig. 7.3). Arrangement of the single continua is non-hierarchical, which is to say that no one factor is, in purely objective terms, more important than another. Factors will however carry (very) different meanings and implications for different learner-users. In consonance with complexity thinking, the single continua do not operate autonomously but coexist with/in each other, their relationship being one of mutual and complex interdependencies and interactions (both, local-to-global, and global-to-local; cf. Larsen-Freeman 2017: 27). Change on one level triggers change on other levels. As indicated, change can obtain across different spatial and temporal dimensions with past experiences impacting current and future developments. Spatiotemporal embeddedness and dynamic interactivity are therefore core assumptions underlying the CMC. The CMC is construed as an open model and as such expandable to suit different settings and circumstances. Consistent with Complexity Thinking, the CMC can zoom in on specific and ever smaller dimensions or fractals. At each such level new continua can be added to satisfy the specific situational requirements and accommodate the framework conditions presented by a given context. In this sense the Continua of Sociolinguistic/Sociocultural context and Learning/Educational context introduced in the foregoing (Figs. 7.1 and 7.2) are integral (fractal) dimensions of the larger construct of the Continua of Multilingual Competence (CMC) outlined in this section.

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Fig. 7.3: Continua of multilingual competence (or the continua of outer and inner context).

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In the CMC multilingual competence construction understood as dynamically growing multilingual expertise and agency is framed in terms of continuities of skills and knowledge acquisition and is taken to eventuate on the basis of complex multidirectional interactions at multiple levels and across continua. Interactions are modulated by the influence of varyingly strong attractor forces, effects of emergence, autopoietic non-linear dynamics and self-organisation, differential factor weights, hidden factors and the stimulus impact factor (SIF), as affect learner-users’ motion patterns across the various continua (see Fig. 7.3). With contextual variables positioned along continua a given demographic context, for instance, can be more monolingual or more multilingual. Exposure to languages, institutional support, or affordance provision can be lower or higher; classroom approaches can be more reductive or more holistic, and educational policies can be more monolingually-oriented or multilingually-oriented. As variables relating to ‘outer context’ interact with those relating to’ inner context’, exposure or contact time will be higher or lower depending on the given demographics, the home language environment, etc. As noted, interactions are multi-relational and multidirectional, i.e., variables can interact horizontally (inner with outer contextual variables, and vice versa) and vertically (outer with outer contextual, and inner with inner contextual factors). Learner-users’ self-concept for example, can be expected to strongly correlate with educational policies and institutional support, which in turn are closely linked to affordance provision, and so on. Positionings on the continua can be assigned to individual learner-users on the basis of their respective initial conditions and can easily be adapted to accommodate students’ developmental progression. Positionings may in some cases be relatively stable and stationary but can in others be highly dynamic and subject to fluctuations. Moreover, positionings may diverge as a function of who assigns positions: self-positionings may be at odds with other-positionings and result in a situation wherein learner-users’ perception of their learning progression and/or overall MLC is in contradiction to their teacher’s evaluation of themselves.

7.6.7 Test procedure and instruments This research aspires to work within a framework that satisfies the holistic requirements put forward by current CT-inspired scholarship (Aronin  & Jessner 2014, 2015; Larsen-Freeman & Cameron 2008). As specified, commitment to a CT paradigm implicates explicit endorsement of complex, cross-level and reciprocal relations, and due consideration of the principles of dynamism, co-adaptation, self-organisation, emergence, variability, etc. Based thereupon, the approach adopted

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is a method I choose to call dynamic triangulation where data are viewed in relational terms, that is, in terms of their (dynamic) interrelatedness. The attribute dynamic serves the dual purpose of underscoring the CDST foundation of the current approach and highlighting the inherent dynamism of the multilingual phenomena under study. (Dynamic) Triangulation sits well with the complexity view because it implicates the adoption of multiple perspectives relative to the object(s) under investigation and, in comparison with single-method approaches, allows for the provision of a more comprehensive portrayal of the phenomena studied. In the present research, triangulation is achieved through data and methodological triangulation, i.e., through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods (see also Grenfell & Harris 2015: 3) and the inclusion of more than one source of data (the pupils, their parents, and the teachers). The study uses different data collection methods including written test formats, questionnaires, and individual interviews (albeit only with a small subsample). In this sense, the data collated are complementary to each other in so far as they highlight different but connected foci of the research and supplement the respective single results (see Heale & Forbes 2013: 1 for the method of triangulation). The statistical data obtained from the evaluation of participants’ performance in the single language tests (L1/MAT-2, L2, L3) and the multilingual procedure (MCT) are complemented by questionnaires, the first of which elicits important information on children’s linguistic and sociocultural background. This questionnaire is completed by the parents and thus constitutes the ‘parent source’. End of term grades for (L1), (L2) and (L3) are also gathered through this procedure. They constitute the ‘teacher source’ since they reflect the teachers’ evaluation of the individual pupils’ level of proficiency in (L1), (L2) and (L3) (a limitation hereof is that this information is provided by the parents in the background questionnaire, rather than the teachers themselves, which means that in theory the supplied data could have been corrected upward). A second questionnaire elicits information on children’s language learning motivation and attitudes and their perceptions of themselves as language learner-users, i.e., “categories of experience which the participants themselves consider to be important” (Radwanska-Williams 2009: 116). A third and final questionnaire provides insight into pupils’ use of language learning strategies. In addition, semi-structured individual interviews conducted with a small subsample of children at each school were included with the twofold aim to 1) receive confirmation of the data elicited through the questionnaires and 2) garner additional information that might go undetected in non-dialogic approaches. The inclusion of these interviews adds depth to the findings and increases the explanatory power and validity of the results. I should like to re-iterate that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to control for the totality of variables implicated in the development of complex

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(multilingual) systems. One must therefore invariably start from the premise that completeness as an objective is not likely within the realistic means of any empirical investigation (cf. Cummins 1976 in Lasagabaster 1998: 69). This in mind, the current study guards itself against making any claims to that effect. Instead, this research considers the likelihood that the findings yielded are but small pieces of a larger puzzle which may change in a completely unexpected, ‘Wizard Chess’-like fashion whenever new pieces are put in place or ‘new players’ join in the game. The big unknown is of course whether we will ever be in a position to bring the puzzle to completion (cf. Kibler & Valdés 2016: 110). The subsequent table (Table 7.4) gives an overview of the test procedures employed in the present research. Table 7.4: Test procedures employed. Test administered

What it elicits/measures

Background questionnaire (filled in by the pupils’ parents)

Information about children’s home languages, their preferred and/or dominant language(s); languages spoken by the parents; parents’ country of origin and educational and professional background; presence of books in the home, etc.

Single language tests for (L1) German/MAT-2 (Metalinguistic ability test) (L2) Italian, (L3) English (duration: 1 hr each)

Single language proficiency (in G, I, E); the German/MAT-2 test additionally assesses children’s metalinguistic abilities in (L1) German

Multilingual competence test (MCT) (duration: approx. 2 hours)

Applied and reflective dimensions of multilingual competence (tasks include inferring meaning, translating, grammatical adequacy judgements, cross-language contrastive analysis; verbal reports of students’ meta-and cross-linguistic reflections)

Questionnaire on attitudes/motivation (20–30 min. completed in class under the supervision of the class teacher)

MLUs’ motivation and attitudes towards language(s) learning in general, and (L2) and (L3) in particular

Questionnaire on language(s) learning strategies (20–30 min. completed in class under the supervision of the class teacher)

MLU’s use of language(s) learning strategies

Semi-structured individual interviews with 42 participants (duration: ca. 10 min. each)

MLUs’ attitudes towards languages and their use of strategies, learner-user beliefs, individual approaches to the MCT

End-of-term grades in the curricular languages.

Proficiency levels in German (L1), Italian (L2), and English (L3) as assigned by the teachers.

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7.6.8 Test administration All the tests and questionnaires were administered in written form to the entire class. Pupils who were absent on the day of testing, were given the option to write the test on another day. As children did not always take up this opportunity, some values are missing for individual pupils. Great care was taken to ensure that test conditions were the same for all the participants. As indicated earlier, the single tests were each administered on a different day. The MCT and German MAT-2 were administered by the present author. The (L2) Italian and (L3) English tests were administered by the respective language teachers at each school. Teachers were briefed in advance and were explicitly told to not provide any help if children asked for it. Pupils were given two hours to complete the items on the MCT and one hour for the MAT-2/German test, the (L2) Italian and (L3) English test respectively. Prior to test administration the children were introduced to the single tasks. Extensive explanations and sample answers were provided to make sure they understood what the requirements were. Administration and completion of the attitudes and strategies questionnaires were overseen by the teachers at each school.

7.6.9 Operationalising multilingual competence On the understanding that competences relate to a person’s ability to solve a problem or carry out an action in a given domain (CEFR, Council of Europe 2001: 101 ff.; see also Llurda 2000: 87ff. on notional considerations relating to competences), young emergent multilinguals are here construed as multilingually competent providing they are capable of mobilizing and applying the knowledge, strategies and resources necessary for the resolution of the multilingual cross-language tasks in the MCT (see also Forbes 2018a: 152, Martinez 2015: 10). In other words, multilingual competence is operationalized as the capacity to flexibly operate across languages as manifested in the overall percentage of correctly completed tasks in the MCT. For this study, we have set the threshold at which a child’s performance on the MCT can be considered as indicating that they qualify as multilingually competent at ≥60% of points attainable (cf. Gooskens et al. 2018 for a much lower threshold in their study of more mature respondents). This threshold value is reflective of general school practice where the passing score is typically 60%. Performance above the 60% benchmark is also graded in attunement with conventional school practice and ranges from sufficient to excellent (with intermittent attainment levels of satisfactory, good, and very good). The higher participants score on the MCT in relation to the 100% benchmark, the more multilingually competent

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they are taken to be. Accordingly, participants who do not attain the 60% threshold are taken to have somewhat poorly developed multilingual competences. ≤60% less multilingually competent

≥60% more multilingually competent

7.6.10 The Multilingual Competence Test (MCT) Drawn up for the purpose of the present study, the Multilingual Competence Test, short MCT, is targeted to a very specific multilingual cohort with their own distinctive language constellation, i.e., young learner-users with a solid understanding of German (though not necessarily as L1 speakers) and various proficiencies in (L2) Italian and (L3) English. The test focuses on German, Italian and English as the three curricular languages taught in all primary schools in South Tyrol, and on a range of additional, typologically related (Romance and Germanic) languages, which do not form part of the canon of languages taught at this level (Hofer & Jessner 2019, 2019a). The MCT focuses on children’s ability to carry out elaborate multilingual operations across languages with tasks covering a broad range of cross-linguistic functions (including contrastive cross-language analysis, inferencing abilities, transfer skills, cross-lingual error detection, word, sentence, and text translation, as well as some target language text production). An additional metacognitive component elicits pupils’ meta- and cross-linguistic cognitions through written verbalised reflections. Featuring MLX (multilingual crosslinguistic) and MV (multilingual verbalization) tasks, the MCT taps into different dimensions of multilingual competence, an applied and a metacognitive/reflective one (cf. Hofer & Jessner 2019: 20; Woll 2017: 79) whereby the former represents the functional dimension of multilingual competence, and the latter constitutes the metacognitive component. Performance on both measures presupposes high levels of focused analysis, as well as the ability to activate prior knowledge and establish cross-language associations. Disambiguation of MV tasks additionally requires respondents to produce explicit metalinguistic verbalisations relative to their crosslingual operations. Tracking how children set about cross-lingual task resolution, MV tasks provide insights that are not generally afforded by traditional procedures. As pupils articulate their meta- and crosslinguistic cognitions, important verbal data regarding their subjective interlingual associations and the ways they deploy their prior linguistic knowledge and language learning experience(s) are made available.

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7.6.10.1 Structure The MCT consists of two main parts and altogether 12 test-sections. Part I (comprising 4 test-sections) assesses how pupils cope in mixed-language tasks involving their 3 curricular languages German, Italian and English. Part II widens the scope and looks at how children perform when new languages (Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, French and Ladin) are added. Part II consists of 8 test sections. The MCT is a paper and pencil test and can easily be group-administered. In the following I supply sample items from each task with a description of the respective task requirements. The examples are rendered in English (but note that in the original test instrument German is the working language; also note that the recent book-length publication MehrSprachigKompetent MSK 9−12, Hofer & Jessner 2019, differs somewhat from the procedure used in the present research). MCT – Part I Task 1 (part I) Task 1 consists of 21 items (or word fragments), 6 of which are English, 5 are German and 10 are Italian lexemes. In order to successfully complete the task, test takers need to 1) establish whether a given word fragment is an English, German or Italian word, 2) complete the word fragment with the missing letter(s) and 3) add a suitable (definite or indefinite) article. To facilitate the letter search, a picture featuring the alphabet is appended for support (all pictures in the MCT found on pixabay.com). Participants get 1 point for each correct item. If no article is supplied, testees receive only half a point. Task 1 is one of the few tasks in the MCT which does not include a metalinguistic verbalization task (MV). Two sample items are reproduced here below. Example 1: MLX task: Complete the following English, Italian and German word fragments with the missing letters and add the correct article: Task: ____ ___ree (Solution: the/a tree) Task: ____ ____ach (Solution: das/ein Dach = the/a roof)

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Task 2 (part I) Task 2 consists of 3 items, each of which comprises 3 sentences (one in German, one in English and one in Italian). Pupils first need to identify the 2 sentences with the same meaning and pinpoint the ‚odd one out’. Then, in a second step, they are required to provide a verbalisation of their metalinguistic reflections (MV) and explain in as much detail as possible how they have arrived at the given solution. The following item serves as an example. Example 2: MLX task: Two of the following 3 sentences have the same meaning. Find (and tick) them. □ Il bambino sta leggendo un libro. □ The boy is reading a book. □ Der Junge hat gerade ein Buch gelesen. MV task: I think that the two sentences have the same meaning because:

Task 3 (part I) Task 3 comprises 5 items each consisting of one sentence in either German, Italian or English. In each sentence there is one mistake which the children need to find and correct. After that they are asked to provide a verbalisation of their metalinguistic reflections and explain how they arrived at the given solution. A sample item is reproduced in the following: Example 3: MLX task: Oops! There’s a mistake in this sentence! Find and correct it. Lui hanno un cane. What is wrong here? Correct the mistake.

MV task: Why is the above sentence wrong? Explain.

Task 4 (part I) Task 4 consists of 2 items: a translation from English into German and 6 questions concerning the content of the English text to be answered in Italian. Pupils are

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asked to produce a ‘smooth’ but faithful translation (in the sense of it being close to the original), and they are made aware that in a good translation one may need to change sentence components around instead of just translating word for word. In the second part of task 4, children are required to answer questions in Italian. The difficulty of this specific task consists in answering – in writing – questions in (L2) Italian about a text that the children have read in (L3) English. What is more, writing long texts may not come easily to children at this age as writing skills are still being developed. No metalinguistic verbalisation is required for these 2 items because the tasks of translating and producing texts in a language other than L1 present in themselves a demanding linguistic and metacognitive challenge (see Hofer & Jessner 2019: 26–27 for more). As both, the translation and (L2) production task, require high levels of linguistic and metacognitive manipulation, multilingual awareness and skill are taken to manifest in the quality of the transposition from source to target language (Gibson & Hufeisen 2003: 91). Item 4a and two sample questions from item 4b are adduced below. Example 4: MLX task: 4a) Please translate the following text into German: This is Peter. He is seven years old. He has a sister who is younger than him. She is only five years old, and her name is Anne. Peter and his sister live in England with their mother and father. Peter’s father and mother are teachers. They all live in a big house with a beautiful garden. In the garden there is an old tree and there are many flowers. In his free time Peter likes to play football with his friends. Anne’s hobbies are listening to music and collecting stickers. German translation:

4b) Answer the following questions about the above text in Italian: Come si chiama la sorella di Peter? (What is Peter’s sister’s name?) Chi è piú vecchio, Peter o Anne? (Who is older? Peter or Anne?)

MCT – Part II While the focus in part I of the MCT is on the 3 curricular languages, it widens in part II due to the addition of 6 new languages, including Ladin, French, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Danish.

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Task 5 (part II) Task 5 consists of 3 sentences (one in Spanish, one in Ladin and one in French) all with the same meaning. Children need to extrapolate from these sentences, produce a meaningful translation thereof and provide a (possibly comprehensive) metacognitive argumentation of how they arrived at the solution. Example 5: MLX task: The following 3 sentences all have the same meaning. Please provide the German translation. Con mi familia hablo italiano. Cun mia familia bai talians.

Translation:

Avec ma famille je parle italien. MV task: I can understand what these sentences say because:

Tasks 6 and 7 (part II) Tasks 6 and 7 are very similar, which is why only task 6 is presented here. Both tasks require test takers to first translate short dialogues from Dutch into German (pictures found on pixabay.com) and then provide a comprehensive verbal description of their underlying metacognitive reasoning. Example 6:  MLX task: What are the two Dutch girls saying to each other? Translate the text in the speech bubbles into German. Goedendag! Hoe heet jij?

Goedendag! Ik heet Petra!

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MV task: I can understand what the girls are saying because:

Task 8 (part II) Task 8 consists of 10 items. Task completion requires pupils to match Danish and Swedish words with their German equivalent and provide an explicit argumentation of their metalinguistic reflections. Example 7: MLX task: Please match the German words in the bubbles with their equivalent in Danish or Swedish: koffie boek

Fahrrad

hus med

Haus mit Speisekarte

Buch

syster

Schwester

cykel

Kaffee

kØkken kat spejl

Küche

Spiegel Katze

spisekort MV task: I am able to match the words because:

Task 9 (part II) Task 9 comprises 4 Danish sentences which pupils need to link with their German translation. Once they have completed this step, they again proceed to provide a verbalisation of their metalinguistic reflections and explain how they went about disambiguating the task.

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Example 8: MLX task: Match the following Danish sentences with their German equivalent. Fisken lugter dårligt.

Das Ei schmeckt verdorben.

Kaffen lugter godt.

Die Suppe schmeckt versalzen.

Suppen smager for saltet.

Der Fisch riecht schlecht.

AEgget smager råddent.

Der Kaffee riecht gut.

MV task: I can match the sentences and understand some words because (please list all the words you can understand):

Task 10 (part II) Task 10 consists of 3 items, i.e., three short Spanish sentences each reproduced in a speech bubble. Children are required to generate a translation for each sentence and indicate how they went about decoding the Spanish text. Example 9: MLX task: The sentences below are rendered in Spanish. Please translate them into German. Cómo es tu número de telefono?

MV task: I can understand and translate this sentence because:

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Task 11 (part II) Task 11 consists of 5 Spanish sentences which pupils need to match with their German equivalent. Once they have done this, they then proceed to the MV task which elicits a justification of the answer given in the MLX task. Example 10:  MLX task: Please match the following (Spanish) sentences with their correct German translation: A qué hora?

Wir sind Italiener.

Es muy fácil.

Antonio ist in der Küche.

Antonio es el padre de mi amiga.

Um wie viel Uhr?

Antonio está en la cocina.

Es ist ganz einfach.

Somos italianos.

Antonio ist der Vater meiner Freundin.

MV task: I can match the sentences and understand some words because:

Task 12 (part II) Task 12 consists of 6 Ladin words which pupils are required to translate (into German) and assign to one of 6 pictures. Thereafter, they again articulate their metalinguistic reflections tracing the mental route they followed in completing this task. Example 11: MLX task: Please match the following Ladin words with the right pictures and translate the words into German:

cësa

rehl

pan

furchëta

stuel

cian

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MV task: I can match and translate the words because:

7.6.10.2 Scoring procedure Scoring is carried out separately for MLX (multilingual cross-language) and MV (metalinguistic verbalization) tasks. For each correctly answered MLX item children receive 1 point. For task 4a (the translation from English into German) the maximal score is 4 points. With the exception of task 1 and tasks 4a and 4b (all in part I), all the tasks include an MV item which, as indicated, requires respondents to verbalise their meta- and cross-linguistic reasoning. MV items are evaluated on the basis of qualitative criteria. The codification procedure is based on a three-level scale ranging from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 2 points. Participants are given 0, 1 or 2 points depending on how elaborate and sophisticated their MVs are (see MSK 9–12 Hofer & Jessner 2019: 45ff. for a detailed description): Level 0 answers typically testify to an inadequate or incorrect elaboration of the item. They may include statements such as “That’s what is says here.”, or “I just know.”, or “I think so.” Level 1 answers attest to a pertinent but somewhat incomplete analysis of an item. Level 1 responses may include statements such as “It reminds me of Italian.” or “It sounds like English.” In neither case is it made clear which word or sentence constituent or structure bears similarity with the said language. Level 2 answers are indicative of a sound understanding of cross-lingual associations. At level 2 test takers provide an exhaustive and pertinent analysis of the links between the languages in a given item. There may be (extensive) use of metalanguage, but metalanguage use does not represent a precondition for attaining the maximum score. As explicated, a focus on metalanguage as the sole manifestation of metalinguistic knowledge would constitute a reductive (binary) interpretation of pupils’ understanding of language(s) and would obscure (other) important dimensions of multilingual expertise, just as it would constitute a denial of degrees of multilingual knowledge and ability.

7.6.11 Metalinguistic abilities test-2 (MAT-2) An abbreviated version of the German edition of the MAT-2 (Metalinguistic Abilities Test 2) was administered to measure participants’ metalinguistic awareness

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in (L1) German. Since the test format is described in detail in Hofer (2015) and Jessner, Hofer  & Pinto (2015), I provide but a brief delineation of the procedure here. A paper-and-pencil test, the MAT-2 measures metalinguistic awareness and skill in children aged 9–13 based on their verbalized reasoning abilities (Pinto et al. 1999). Drawing on Piaget’s distinction between epi- and meta-processes, the MAT-2 employs two distinct sets of questions and answers, referred to as L (linguistic) and ML (metalinguistic). While the former measure general knowledge of rules of language use, the latter elicit metalinguistic reflections relative to language use and language rules (see Hofer 2015: 154ff). The abridged version employed in this study consists of 4 sections including synonymy, acceptability, ambiguity, and grammatical functions (26 items altogether). The synonymy, acceptability and ambiguity sections comprise 3 items and include an L and ML question each. The grammatical functions part (again consisting of L and ML questions) encompasses 4 items. In the following I consider each section of the MAT-2 (as modified for the current research) in turn. The synonymy part comprises 3 sentence couples for which testees need to 1) determine whether they are synonymous in meaning or not (L question), and 2) explain why they think that this is so (ML question). To resolve the problem posed, respondents must pay close attention to the specific lexico- and morphosyntactic features in the respective sentence constructions. The subsequent example serves to exemplify this: Sentence A: “Die alte Frau steht dem Kind gegenüber.” (The old woman is facing the child.) Sentence B: “Das Kind steht vor der alten Frau.” (The child is standing in front of the old woman.) LQuestion:

Do these sentences mean the same thing?

MLQuestion: What makes you sure that this is so?

The acceptability section consists of 3 items comprising a variety of anomalous or erroneous sentences. The anomalies are either 1) of a semantic nature and derive from lexical incompatibility relating to animate-inanimate opposites or from ambiguous meanings, or 2) of a morphosyntactic nature in which case a given sentence is unacceptable from a grammatical point of view. The following example is adduced by way of illustration: Sentence A: “Das Kätzchen zog an der Schnur.” (The kitten was pulling at the string.) LQuestion:

Can this be said?

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Sentence B: “Die Schnur zog am Kätzchen.” (The string was pulling at the kitten.) LQuestion:

Can this be said?

MLQuestion: What makes you sure that this is so?

In the ambiguity part the focus is on semantic ambiguity (stemming from the polysemy of single lexemes) or on structural ambiguity (due to a particular syntactic idiosyncracy). The following example is cited for clarity: Sentence A: “Johann ist nicht leicht zu beeindrucken.” (John is not easily impressed.) LQuestion:

Does this sentence mean that it is not easy to impress John, or does it mean that John cannot easily impress others?

MLQuestion: What makes you sure that this is so?

Finally, the grammatical functions section measures respondents’ understanding of the grammatical functions of subject, verb, and object, and of adverbial phrases and subordinate clauses. The following example is given for illustrative purposes: Sentence A: “Jakob hat das Glas zerbrochen.” (Jacob has broken the glass.) LQuestion:

What has been broken?

MLQuestion: What makes you think that this is so?

7.6.11.1 Scoring procedure Pupils receive one point for each correctly answered L (linguistic) question and a maximum of 2 points for ML (metalinguistic) questions. Scores for LQs are awarded on the basis of a dichotomic right-wrong procedure (1 point for correct answers, 0 points for wrong answers). ML questions are evaluated according to a threelevel scoring system based on psycholinguistic criteria as proposed by Pinto et al. (1999, 2003). The catalogue of scoring criteria comprises three levels: level 0, level 1 and level 2. At level 0, the pre-analytical level, test takers fail to demonstrate the required minimum level of metalinguistic knowledge and the ability to articulate this knowledge and are therefore not given any points. At level 1, test takers disambiguate the problem posed in the LQ and provide a pertinent but still (somewhat) insufficient analysis thereof. For level 1 answers, the score is 1 point. At level 2, test takers show that they are capable of taking a focused and systematic approach in their metalinguistic analysis. Level 2 answers implicate a sound grasp of the

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relevant semantic and grammatical indices. Task resolution is sophisticated and exhaustive (see Hofer 2015; Jessner, Hofer & Pinto 2015). Level 2 answers earn test takers 2 points. The total score for both LQs and MLQs is obtained by adding up the single L and ML scores.

7.6.12 The Italian and English test In addition to the MCT and abridged MAT-2, participants also performed an (L2) Italian and (L3) English test. The tests match the corresponding age-appropriate contents covered in 5th grade in terms of lexicon, grammatical structures, and overall degree of difficulty. Consultation of course books for the age group under study and feedback from the teachers helped with the construction of the test design. The tests probe children’s knowledge of a broad range of lexico-structural regularities/features in (L3) English and (L2) Italian. They are similarly structured so as to confer some degree of systematicity. The level of difficulty is set purposely high for both measures. Sample items from both protocols are reproduced below. The (L2) Italian test (consisting of 7 tasks and a total of 48 items), includes a listening/reading comprehension with 6 right/wrong answers, 3 sentence completion tasks: one on verb forms with the items to fill in provided in a box above the task, one on prepositions, again with the items to fill in provided, and a gap-fill task with only the initial letter of the target word given. In addition, there is a sentence-fragment-matching task (with 12 sentence halves to match), an error-correction task (consisting of 6 items) which requires participants to both identify and correct the error, and a word order task (consisting of 5 items). Sample items from tasks 2a and 5 are adduced here below: Task 2a: Vervollständige die folgenden Sätze: (Complete the following sentences with a suitable word from the box) suona

festeggiato

abita

regalato

prepara

crescono

piace

compiti

La nonna ____________ la cena. Nel giardino _______________ tanti fiori. Task 5: Füge die fehlenden Buchstaben ein: (Fill in the gaps) Il latte è n______ frigo. Scusi, mi sa d________ dove si trova la scuola primaria?

The (L3) English test comprises 9 tasks and a total of 55 items. It includes a listening/reading comprehension with 10 right/wrong answers, and 6 gap-fill (i.e., sentence completion) tasks. For all except two of these tasks (see below), the items to

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be filled in are provided in a box. Tasks focus on auxiliaries, prepositions, nouns and question words respectively. One of the gap-fill tasks is a mixed-item task with verbs and pronouns. In analogy to the earlier delineated task in the Italian test protocol, task 7 is a word completion task. There are also, as in the Italian measure, a sentence-fragment-matching task (with 10 sentence halves to match) and a word order task (consisting of 5 items). Sample items from tasks 7 and 8 are instanced next. Task 7: Ergänze die fehlenden Buchstaben: (Fill in the missing letters) Can I h 

a glass of 

What’s the t 

, p 

? It’s seven o’ 

? .

Task 8: Bringe die Wörter in die richtige Reihenfolge: (Put the words in the correct order) the a living In room red there is sofa. day Tina up at past gets every half seven.

7.6.12.1 Scoring procedure The final scores for the Italian and English test are calculated by adding up the single points (1 point for each correctly solved item). Next, a description of the questionnaire on learner attitudes and motivation is provided.

7.6.13 Attitudes and motivation questionnaire The attitudes and motivation questionnaire designed for this study comprises a total of 26 items and is divided into three sections, one focusing on language learning in general, one on learning (L2) Italian and one on learning (L3) English. The questionnaire probes into YEMs’ attitudes towards their (L2) and (L3), their perceptions of themselves as learner-users, and their language learning experiences in and outside of school. In addition, the procedure elicits data on children’s language learning motivation and their beliefs about the importance of learning (L2) Italian and (L3) English. The three final questions extract information relative to families/ pupils’ reading habits. For all but 2 questions (see below), participants indicate on a 4-point Likert-like scale whether they agree or disagree (‘no’, ‘a bit’, ‘yes’, ‘a lot’) with statements such as

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I like learning Italian/English I think I am good at learning Italian/English Learning languages comes easy to me I am afraid of making mistakes I like learning about other languages and cultures When I am older, I want to learn more languages I would like to be able to speak Italian/English really well one day

Questions 22  & 23 follow a different format in that they are open questions and require participants to explain in their own words what they like best about language(s) learning (Q22) and why they think learning Italian and English respectively is important (Q23). As indicated, the final 3 questions elicit information regarding family reading habits and amounts of books in the home. Given that socioeconomic background is (for obvious reasons) difficult to establish, amounts of books (together with reading habits) as an indication of parents’ educational background and availability of literacy resources (cf. Duarte, Gogolin, Klinger & Schnoor 2014: 68) is here surveyed as a pertinent related value (Bos et al. 2007: 30; Haenni Hoti et al. 2011: 109; Maluch & Kempert 2017: 6). Number of books have previously been identified as an important indicator of home literacy environment and as predictive of language development (Rydland & Grøver 2020: 3). With that said, I am fully aware that in today’s digital age the indexicality of books as a reliable indicator of socioeducational status may be limited.

7.6.14 Strategy use questionnaire A second self-report questionnaire was used to gather information about participants’ use of strategies. The aim was to gain a deeper understanding of how strategy use relates to early multilingual awareness and young learner-users’ overall multilingual competency. The motivation for investigating strategies is grounded in the dual understanding that strategy use is linked to better learning abilities (Le Pichon et al. 2013) and that strategies are key for pupils to take charge of their own learning and become independent learners (Griva, Kamaroudis & Geladari 2009: 23; see also Huang & Benson 2013: 10). The strategy use questionnaire comprises 14 items and uses a four-point Likert-type scale with answer options ranging from ‘never’ to ‘almost always’. Loosely based on Oxford’s (1990) strategy inventory, the questionnaire elicits information regarding children’s approach to languages and language(s) learning. It specifically targets their use of cognitive strategies (such as practicing, analysing, reasoning), crosslingual strategies (looking for cross-language analogies), memory strategies

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 115

(reviewing well, creating mental links, applying images), metacognitive strategies (planning one’s learning, seeking out learning opportunities, e.g., listening to music, watching films, or reading) and social strategies (asking for clarification or verification, asking for help). Due to its brevity and strong focus on cognitive and metacognitive strategies (motivated by the research interest and specific nature of the respective test procedures), the questionnaire can but give a glimpse of children’s language learning and language processing behaviours. This said, the decision to not include a greater number of items was well-considered. With the overall test battery already being very comprehensive, it was deemed expedient to desist from overstretching pupils’ attention threshold and teachers’ obligingness.

7.6.15 Oral interviews Individual interviews were conducted with a subsample of 42 pupils recruited from (all) the schools under study. Participation in the interview was voluntary. The working language was German. Interviews were carried out in a separate part (corridor or empty classroom) in the respective schools. Interviews were semi-structured and lasted on average 10 minutes. Participants were asked questions relative to their own language(s) learning experiences, their beliefs about the utility and the advantages of knowing multiple languages, and about how they had gone about solving the multilingual tasks in the MCT. The reasons for conducting individual interviews were twofold. First, the aim was to gain insight into the mental processes mediating participants’ multilingual operations. An introspective tool for the collection of data, verbal reports lend themselves well to eliciting information to this effect. They have the advantage of making cognitive procedures accessible for inspection and afford us a good glimpse of the complex ‘cognitive routines’ underpinning (meta- and cross-)linguistic processing in children. In addition, they supply valuable indications regarding the different factor(bundle)s that contribute towards early multilingual competence building, and the attractor forces that YEMs travel towards on their developmental trajectories, and thus align well with recent methodological approaches committed to a holistic heuristic. A second important aim was, as explained earlier, to triangulate the quantitative and qualitative data for the purpose of cross-verification and increased validity (Turner & Turner 2009). As part of the interview pupils were asked to indicate with a smiling or stern face whether and how much they liked or disliked learning languages and explain how their drawings were to be interpreted (see pictures shown in Fig. 7.4 below). Interviews were digitally (audio-)recorded and transcribed.

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Fig. 7.4: Children’s pictorial representations of their subjective perception of languages (learning).

The inclusion of a pictorial mode of expression constitutes a multimodal-plurisemiotic approach (Melo-Pfeifer 2015: 2) and as such transcends purely verbo-centric focalisations (Ibrahim 2016: 87). Next, Chapter 8 presents an analysis and discussion of the quantitative findings yielded by the statistical evaluation together with the qualitative data obtained from the interviews.

Chapter 8  Results In the following the quantitative and qualitative results yielded by the present investigation are set forth.

8.1 Quantitative findings This section presents the findings from the statistical analysis of participants’ questionnaire responses and their performance on the various tests used in this study. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 18. A large part of the data gathered in this study (such as the participant/parent responses on the questionnaire) is ordinally scaled. Among the numerically scaled data (such as participants’ scores on various test tasks), normal distribution was not always given in the total population or within certain subgroups of participants being analysed; nor were the other assumptions for parametric tests such as ANOVA or the t-test always met. Therefore, the non-parametric alternatives to these statistical tests (including the Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney Test, and Spearman Rank Order Correlations) were used throughout. Results were considered statistically significant at an alpha level of 0.05. Where the results of a between-group comparison involving three or more groups (Kruskal-Wallis Test) were significant, post-hoc pairwise comparisons (Mann-Whitney U-test) were run between selected groups with Bonferroni adjustment to the alpha levels. Effect sizes for Mann-Whitney U-tests are reported as r, using Cohen’s benchmarks (1988, cited in Pallant 2013: 238): small (r = .1) medium (r = .3) and large (r = .5). Correlation strength for the nonparametric Spearman’s rho is also interpreted using the guidelines provided by Cohen (1988: 79–81 cited in Pallant 2013: 139): small (rho  =  .10 to .29), medium (rho=  .30 to .49) and large (rho= .50 to 1). Findings are organised by research question; in some cases, the results of more than one research question are grouped together (as in the case of RQs 1 and 2). The section also includes additional findings which, though perhaps not immediately pertinent to the original RQs, are nevertheless of interest to the current research context. Descriptive statistics and visual representations summarise the findings for each research question. Discrepancies regarding participant numbers are due to missing values of individual pupils (valid/invalid cases). Valid cases in each instance are those children who fully completed or at least attempted the majority of items on the test in question; individual items left blank on a test that was otherwise completed were scored as 0 points. Invalid cases, inversely, are those of https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111106601-009

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the 209 children who did not take a particular test at all, usually because they were absent on the day of testing (see Table 8.1 below). Table 8.1: Number of valid cases for each test. Test

Valid cases out of N = 209 children

MCT Part I MCT Part II German English Italian

199 199 200 193 197

8.1.1 Research questions 1 & 2 RQ1: Can young emergent multilinguals (YEM) in 5th grade of primary school, with limited formal second and third language instruction in (L2) Italian and (L3) English, be considered multilingually competent, and if so, what special skills and abilities do they possess that qualify them to be called multilingually competent? RQ2: Is YEMs’ (young emergent multilinguals’) multilingual awareness sufficiently developed, i.e., do YEMs have a sufficiently robust knowledge base in (L2) and/or (L3) in order for these languages to function as supporter languages in multilingual tasks? In other words, are (L2) and (L3) sufficiently stabilized for them to serve as reference/source language? Research questions 1 and 2 examine whether primary schoolers in their final year (= year group 5; approx. age = 10) are multilingually competent. Multilingual competence is operationalised as a score of ≥60% of the maximum possible points on the multilingual competence test (MCT). In order to answer RQ1 and RQ2, we first calculated how many children out of the 209 reached the ≥60% benchmark on their overall MCT score. The results are presented in Table 8.2, which also shows how many children scored above the threshold on the MCT’s subparts Parts I, II, MLX (multilingual crosslingual) items and MV (multilingual verbalisations) items. As explained, MLX items require pupils to carry out concrete cross-language operations such as translating, L2 text production, matching German and OL (other language) equivalents, crosslingual error correction and word completion, etc. They constitute the applied dimension of multilingual competence as understood here. In contrast, MV items as the metacognitive dimension, require children to articulate their metalinguistic reflections (in German, the main language of instruction in all the schools). Apart from a metalinguistic understanding of language structures and

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functions, MV items therefore presuppose some minimum degree of proficiency in (L1) German. Table 8.2: MCT scores above threshold (≥60%) among all participants (N = 209). Test (sub)score

n valid (out of 209)

Children with score >=60%

Children with score >=60% (percent of valid cases)

MCT Total Score MCT Part I MCT Part II

MCT MLX items MCT Part I – MLX items MCT Part II – MLX items

199 199 199

199 199 199

156 131 177 176 153 192

78% 66% 89%

88% 78% 96%

MCT MV items MCT Part I – MV items MCT Part II – MV items

199 199 199

78 63 94

39% 32% 47%

Note. MLX = multilingual crosslinguistic items; MV = multilingual verbalisation items.

As can be seen from Table 8.2, 78% (n = 156) of all children (n = 199) reached or exceeded the ≥60% threshold on the overall score of the MCT. 22% (n  =  43) of respondents failed to obtain the minimum score. Interestingly, fewer children performed successfully on Part I of the MCT than on Part II (66% vs. 89%): 34% (n = 68) of children failed to attain the ≥60% threshold for Part I, but only 11% (n = 22) failed to reach the ≥60% mark for Part II. On the whole, participants did better on the MLX (multilingual crosslinguistic) items than on the MV (multilingual verbalisation) items (88% vs. 39% above threshold). 8.1.1.1 Between-group differences ≥60% threshold MCT Next, we calculated the number and percentage of children who had achieved the benchmark score of ≥60% on each subsection of the MCT for each of the 5 groups. These values are reported in Table 8.3. Table 8.3: MCT scores above threshold (≥60%) by group. Test (sub)score

Group

MCT Total Score MCT Total Score MCT Total Score MCT Total Score MCT Total Score

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

Valid cases

Children with score >=60%

Children with score >=60% (percent of valid cases)

96 17 54 17 15

70 14 42 15 15

73% 82% 78% 88% 100%

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Table 8.3 (continued) Test (sub)score

Group

Valid cases

Children with score >=60%

Children with score >=60% (percent of valid cases)

MCT Part I MCT Part I MCT Part I MCT Part I MCT Part I

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

56 12 36 13 14

58% 71% 67% 76% 93%

MCT Part II MCT Part II MCT Part II MCT Part II MCT Part II

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

85 15 46 17 14

89% 88% 85% 100% 93%

MCT MLX items MCT MLX items MCT MLX items MCT MLX items MCT MLX items

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

84 14 47 16 15

88% 82% 87% 94% 100%

MCT MV items MCT MV items MCT MV items MCT MV items MCT MV items

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

42 6 13 9 8

44% 35% 24% 53% 53%

As can be gleaned from Table 8.3, groups 4 and 5 (the groups at the multilingual end of the continuum) outperform their ‘less multilingually experienced’ counterparts on the MCT overall as well as on each of the tests subscores: Part I, Part II, MLX (multilingual crosslinguistic) items and MV (multilingual verbalisation) items. Descriptive statistics for each group’s scores on the MCT and its subtests were also calculated; they can be found in Table 8.4. Table 8.4: MCT scores (descriptive statistics) by group. n valid

Min

Max

Mdn

M

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

23 51 28 59 73

109 106 109 108 103

80.75 84 80.5 98 92

78.2 81.5 79.2 89.0 89.2

69% 17.38 72% 16.58 70% 17.88 79% 16.25 79% 11.49

61 group 1 61 group 2 61 group 3

96 17 54

5 19 15

36.8 40.6 41.0

60% 11.23 67% 10.95 67% 11.07

Test (sub)score

Max score

MCT Total Score MCT Total Score MCT Total Score MCT Total Score MCT Total Score

113 113 113 113 113

MCT Part I MCT Part I MCT Part I

Group

57 38 57 43 58 43

M (%)

SD

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Table 8.4 (continued) Test (sub)score

Max score

Group

n valid

Min

Max

Mdn

M

M (%)

SD

MCT Part I MCT Part I

61 61

group 4 group 5

17 15

20 35

61 55

52 47

45.8 47.0

75% 77%

12.23 6.40

MCT Part II MCT Part II MCT Part II MCT Part II MCT Part II

52 52 52 52 52

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

18 27 13 33 30

52 49 51 51 49

44 40 39.5 44 45

41.5 40.9 38.2 43.2 42.2

80% 79% 73% 83% 81%

7.72 6.47 8.77 4.88 5.82

MCT MLX items MCT MLX items MCT MLX items MCT MLX items MCT MLX items

81 group 1 81 group 2 81 group 3 81 group 4 81 group 5

96 17 54 17 15

23 45 26 44 62

80 79 80 81 79

64 69 68 75 72

61.7 65.6 64.6 69.3 71.1

76% 11.42 81% 10.71 80% 12.81 86% 11.50 88% 6.10

MCT MV items MCT MV items MCT MV items MCT MV items MCT MV items

32 32 32 32 32

96 17 54 17 15

0 4 1 6 6

16.5 15.9 14.6 19.7 18.1

52% 50% 45% 62% 56%

group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 group 5

29 17 27 16 30 14.5 28 21 26 20

7.27 6.46 6.77 6.14 6.39

Note. MLX = multilingual crosslinguistic items; MV = multilingual verbalisation items. Max. score = highest number of points achievable on (sub)test in question. M(%) = Mean score by group given as percent of maximum possible score on (sub)test.

To find out whether these differences are statistically significant, a Kruskal-Wallis test was carried out. It revealed significant between-group differences on the MCT Total score, and more specifically on the subscores for Part I and MLX items, though not for Part II or MV items. Post-hoc Mann-Whitney U-tests found these differences to be significant only between the lowest scoring group (group 1) and the two highest scoring groups (group 4, group 5) (see Table 8.5). Table 8.5: Significant differences between groups on MCT scores. Test (sub)score

Kruskall Wallis significant

chi-square

df

MCT Total Score

p

Mann Whitney post-hoc (p