Cognate Recognition and L3 Vocabulary Acquisition
Cognate Recognition and L3 Vocabulary Acquisition

Summary/Abstract: One of the new trends in applied linguistics is concerned with third or multilingual language acquisition. Several linguists suggest that prior language knowledge should be taken into consideration and relied on in third language (L3) vocabulary teaching. Starting from these suggestions, the present study aims to verify the positive effect of cognate recognition and cognate-based instruction in the process of third language acquisition. For this purpose, an English vocabulary test was carried out among Hungarian high school students with Romanian as a second language (L2) and learning English as an L3. Before the test, the study group was presented with the structural similarities between the L2 and L3 lexical items. The results show that the study group obtained slightly higher scores on the vocabulary test than the control group. Following instruction on cognate target words, the difference between the two groups became more accentuated. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between the L2 proficiency and the L3 vocabulary test scores. The results of this study confirm the expectations that cognate-based instruction can positively in fluence third language acquisition for which a necessary prerequisite is a good command of the previously learnt languages.

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