Reserve interlanguage transfer : the effects of L3 Italian & L3 French on L2 English pronoun use

This study focuses on the reverse interlanguage transfer by examining the effects of the L3 Italian and L3 French on the L2 English subject pronoun use as well as the effects of referentiality. The participants were 60 tertiary level students studying at Ankara University English Preparation School, Italian Language and Literature Department and French Language and Literature Department. There was one control group that includes native speakers of Turkish with intermediate level L2 English and two experimental groups that includes native speakers of Turkish with intermediate level L2 English and advanced level Italian or French. Firstly, an English proficiency test was administered to make sure that all the participants have the same level of English proficiency. Secondly, a Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT), in which the participants were expected to read each sentence and judge its grammaticality in terms of subject pronoun use, was conducted in all the three groups. Lastly, the three groups’ mean scores and scores in referentiality contexts were compared. The findings of overall mean scores indicated that Italian language group, which is one of the experimental groups, scored lower than both the other experimental group (French) and the control group (English). This finding suggests that there is an L3 Italian influence on the participants’ use of L2 English subject pronouns. However, the mean score difference within each language group is not statistically significant in terms of referentiality although there is a statistically significant difference between the language groups in the same and different subject pronoun contexts. Considering that forward transfer is the norm in the language transfer area, this study has filled the gap in the literature on reverse interlanguage transfer, specifically focusing on transfer from L3 to L2. Lastly, the present study offers some pedagogical implications that can benefit especially EFL and any language teachers so that they can teach multilinguals accordingly.