Assessing knowledge of English verb placement and subject-verb agreement among multilingual students in grades 5-7 in Norway

Abstract

This study investigates knowledge of English verbal morphosyntax among multilingual students and their L1 Norwegian peers in grades 5–7 in Norway. L1 Norwegian speakers have previously shown transfer from Norwegian to verb placement or subject-verb agreement in L2 English, but their multilingual peers may have an advantage in acquiring these properties in L3 English due to their knowledge of other languages. A written test examining verb placement in verb-second (V2) contexts and subject-verb agreement was used to compare L1 Norwegian students with their multilingual peers, who spoke a variety of different L1s in the home. The results showed that the difference in mean scores alone was not significant between the L1 Norwegian group and the multilingual group, but when grade level and academic achievement were controlled for, linguistic group membership did significantly predict better performance by the multilingual group for some, but not all, grammatical conditions examined.