Aspects of multilingual storage, processing and retrieval

Abstract

The reason for my long-term interest in multilinguality derives from the fact that, as I explain in Chapter One, a large proportion of language users and learners in the world are no longer monolingual, nor even bilingual, but rather multilingual. The spread of English as a lingua franca also contributed to thedevelopment of multilinguality around the world. The spread of multilinguality does not only relate to the natural setting of multilingual societies and mixed-marriages, but also to formal instruction contexts, where the introduction of at least two foreign languages has become an educational norm. Consequently, as teachers of EFL we are often faced with learners who are also acquiring/learning another foreign language and this is clearly reflected in the cross-linguistic influences we can observe in their language production, in terms of both positive/facilitative effects and interference. Shouldn’t their increased learning experience be harnessed in our teaching and in their learning practices?