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Teaching English as a Third Language

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Second Handbook of English Language Teaching

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

In many countries in the world, English is identified as a foreign language with no official status but is increasingly used as the language of wider communication. In a number of these countries, it is common that English is learned as a third language. Recent psycholinguistic research on third language acquisition and trilingualism has made clear that the acquisition of an L3 shares many characteristics with the acquisition of an L2 but it also presents differences. Accordingly, the educational aspects of teaching English as an L3 differ from those of teaching English as an L2 and have more implications concerning the starting age and level of proficiency in each of the languages. The teaching of English as a third language will be described in two European minority language contexts. In the Basque Country, there are two official languages, Basque and Spanish, and English is taught as a third language. In South Tyrol, English is taught as a third language with Italian and German.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. English Department, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Ulrike Jessner

  2. Department of Applied Linguistics, University of Pannonia, Veszprem, Hungary

    Ulrike Jessner

  3. Department of Research Methods in Education, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain

    Jasone Cenoz

Authors
  1. Ulrike Jessner
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  2. Jasone Cenoz
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Correspondence to Ulrike Jessner .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Xuesong Gao

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Jessner, U., Cenoz, J. (2019). Teaching English as a Third Language. In: Gao, X. (eds) Second Handbook of English Language Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02899-2_9

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