Reconciling group tendencies and individual variation in the acquisition of L2 and L3

Abstract

Considerable research on the acquisition of English in Finland has found strong and consistent inter-group differences in the success of native speakers of Finnish and native speakers of Swedish, with speakers of the former language often experiencing much more difficulty with English articles and prepositions. The current study corroborates such findings on group differences but also looks closely at individual variation in regard to how the study of a second language may or may not facilitate the acquisition of a third. Inter-group differences between speakers of L1 Finnish and L1 Swedish were indeed prominent in the omission of English articles, yet there was also a wide range of individual variation among L1 Finnish speakers. Furthermore, the range of variation among Finnish speakers who had studied L2 Swedish for 6 years was similar to that found in a group of Finns who had never studied Swedish—that is, despite 6 years of L2 Swedish, some individuals showed omission rates comparable to those of learners who had had no L2 Swedish. In contrast, there was much less variation involving English prepositions among the learners with 6 years of Swedish; although there were individuals in this group who omitted articles in all obligatory environments, there were none who frequently omitted prepositions, a fact which argues for an especially strong and helpful influence of the Swedish prepositional system. Yet despite this positive transfer involving L2 Swedish, L1 Finnish did remain in competition with the L2 prepositional system for such influence, at least among some individuals.