Problems and Prospects in Third Language Acquisition Research

Abstract

This paper is a review of important literature on third language acquisition. "Third language acquisition" in this paper is defined as the acquisition of a language beyond the second language or the first foreign language. First, several major problems in third language acquisition research are discussed: the lack of a clear definition of third language acquisition; problems in research methodology; and the lack of a strong theoretical base in much L3 acquisition research. Second, the accomplishments of third language acquisition research are reviewed from the perspective of how they contribute to developing a research agenda in third language acquisition research. The accomplishments include research on the facilitating role of perceived language distance and of previous language learning experience in learning a third language. Finally, this paper concludes with a proposed agenda for L3 acquisition research and with a brief discussion of how this research agenda may help answer questions about L3 acquisition in Korea.