The Impact of Linguality on Foreign Language Learning

In surveys of third language acquisition (L3A) research, mixed results and findings demonstrate that there is no consensus among the researchers regarding theadvantages and/or disadvantages of bilinguality on L3A. The main concern of the present study was, thus, to probe the probable differences between Iranian bilingual/monolinguallearners of English regarding their syntactic knowledge. It was an attempt to investigate whether bilingual and monolingual learners of English differ significantly in learning embedded question, preposition stranding and pied piping knowledge. To carry out thisstudy, a total of 399 male and female subjects at seven pre-university centers in Arak, Iran were randomly selected from among two groups of Turkish-Persian bilinguals andPersian monolinguals. A general English proficiency test, a questionnaire, and a syntacticstructure test were administered to both groups. Statistical analyses including ANOVA, ttest and descriptive statistics revealed the following outcomes:1- Monolingual and bilingual learners did not differ in acquiring syntactic structure, 2- No significant difference was observed between gender of monolinguals and bilinguals’ performances in acquiring syntactic structure.