Benefits bilingual children should have when learning English as a Third language

Abstract

The use of English as a lingua franca in Europe has increased the importance of language learning processes in modern education. Since an early age, English is introduced in the educational programmes. This research is focused in Betxí, a town from the Valencian Community, and a bilingual area where Valencian and Spanish are used daily. Since pre-school, children from this place have a plurilingual education, because they learn Valencian and Spanish as their mother tongues, plus English as a Third Language (L3). Some European research has demonstrated that being bilingual has some benefits over being monolingual when acquiring English as a L3. Thus, the main point of this research is to establish the benefits bilingual children from Betxí should have when acquiring English as a L3. However, this research deals with the following hypothesis: Did previous research really prove the benefits bilinguals should have when learning a L3? In this particular bilingual area, Valencian should be promoted, as well as every minority language in Europe. This study wants to show the benefits bilinguals have for promoting the use of minority languages in those bilingual places where other languages, such as Spanish in this case, play a primary role in society.