The influence of L2 English on L₃ French acquisition in bilingual education

In the present paper, we compare L2 English influence on French third language acquisition (L₃A) in first-year and third-year bilingual stream secondary school students and in third-year mainstream secondary school students by means of a gap-filling task. We found that the influence of L2 English on French L₃A increases from first- to third-year bilingual students, which is not the case in the mainstream group. This raises the question if L2 influence on L₃A in bilingual education is the result of the increased L2 exposure or of a higher L2 proficiency, factors that both have been claimed to play a role in L₃A-research (Hammarberg, 2001; Tremblay, 2006; Jaensch, 2009). The results of this study show that there is no individual correlation between L2 English proficiency and influence of English in L₃ French learning. Therefore, we suggest that it is L2 exposure rather than L2 proficiency that leads to more influence of the L2 in L₃ French.