The role of multilingual environment in second-language acquisition

DOI 10.51955/23121327_2022_2_167

Ekaterina Yu. Fatyushina

Abstract. The article deals with the speech activity of artificial bilingual individuals depending on the environment (monolingual or multilingual) in which a new language has been studied. According to the hypothesis, a person mastering a new language in a group, where some students have already been bilingual by the time of learning, demonstrates more readiness to switch the language code and a richer range of functions when using this language compared to those who have acquired it in a monolingual group. The results of the survey showed that the willingness to code switching didn’t correlate significantly with the environment of learning a foreign language. Another part of the hypothesis was confirmed – those who have studied a new language in a multilingual environment more often use it as an instrument of social interaction and a means of expressing attitudes. Bilingual individuals who have learned a new language in a monolingual environment are more likely to use it only for exchanging information and expressing thoughts.

Keywords: monolingual individual, bilingual individual, multilingual individual, monolingual environment (group), multilingual environment (group), code switching.

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