Title:
A REVIEW OF HANNAH NEUSER'S STUDY ON SOURCE LANGUAGE OF LEXICAL TRANSFER IN MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS.

Authors:
Claudia Molnár, Hungry

Abstract:
This paper reviews the doctoral thesis of Hanna Neuser's research of lexical transfer in multilingual learners. The primary focus of this mixed method study is to investigate how multilingual learners source the appropriate language of lexical transfer. The study is set within the framework of five main factors: proficiency, recency, psychotopology, L2 status and item- specific transferability. The main questions investigated were: the extent to which the combined factors predict the source language of transfer, the degree of impact of each individual factor in the prediction of source language in spoken and written production, the direction of the effect of each factor on the prediction of source language in written and spoken production and the extent each item-specific transfer contributes to the understanding of the prediction of source language selection in multilingual learners. The study took place in Luxemburg with 79 high school student participants, between the ages of 13-14, all multilingual Luxemburgish, German, French learners. The outcomes of the study offer a clear understanding of the transfer patterns of these learners and pave the way for more individualised research into the single factors investigated.

Keywords:
Source language, lexical transfer, multilingual learners, mixed method.

DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.37500/IJESSR.2020.3053