The Effect of Bilingualism on Third Language Acquisition

The acquisition of English as a third language is a complex process that can be affected by many factors. As Baker (2000), states the advantages of bilingualism have beenidentified by research projects around the world. Third language learning also raises issues such as the contextual and linguistic factors. According to Cenoz (2000) we need to consider the contextual setting where those languages are learned and used also thelinguistic typology and socio cultural statue of the language involvement. The present study aims at comparing the general Persian proficiency as second language and general Englishproficiency as a third language of bilingual and monolingual students. The results of the data analyses showed that bilingualism doesn’t significant effect on general English proficiency.