The Impact Of L1 And L2 Proficiency Upon L3 Vocabulary Acquisition Of Xibe Minority Learners In Xinjiang

The research on the third language acquisition has become a new branch at home and abroad. The domestic researches are mostly conducted in three different language families which are Altaic, Sino-Tibetan and Indo-European while foreign researchers mainly focus on the issues of Indo-european language family. Therefore, the minority learners in China confront more complex challenges and obstacles in third language learning. However, little empirical researches have investigated current status of third language acquisition for research at home. Therefore, by adopting a mixed method, this research explored the impact of L1(Xibe language) and L2(Chinese) proficiency upon L3(English) vocabulary acquisition, trying to find out the answer to the questions:(i) What kind of impact does Xibe language and Chinese language exert for the English vocabulary acquisition of Xibe-Chinese-English trilingual learners;(ii) What are the possible reasons for the impact of Xibe and Chinese profociency upon English vocabulary acquisition of Xibe-Chinese-English trilingual learners. Besides, the abbreviation should be explained in this thesis that L1 refers to Xibe language, L2 Chinese, and L3 English.The research was administrated by seven steps:(i) the conclusion of TLA and vocabulary acquisition at home and abroad was concluded then the research of bilingual and trilingual education in Qapqal nationality autonomous country primary school of Xinjiang was summarized by combing the literature;(ii) questionnaires of Xibe learners’ English study and English teacher in Qapqal primary school were written on the basis of literature review and the test for English vocabualry size was developed base on the English language textbook in grade three of EPE edition;(iii) a survey was conducted to 242 third grade Xibe learners, another one was administrated 10 local English teachers, besides, an interview to 2 teachers by investigating the question of English vocabualry acquisition to Xibe learners;(iv) randomly selected 30 subjects in grade three for the English vocabualry size test;(vi) for the purpose of assuring the validity and reliability of research, the author collected data from the final examination papers of English, Chinese and Xibe language;(vii) the collected data was processed with SPSS 16.0 with descriptive statistic analysis, independent samples t-test, and correlation; and(viii) the contents from the interview was reported and analyzed by qualitative research method.The main findings were summarized as follows:(i) L2(Chinese) and L3(English) were positively correlated, the learners with high L2 proficiency had more meaning-based lexical transfer than the learners with low L2 proficiency;(ii) Xibe learners mainly took Chinese as assist language when they learn English vocabulary.(iii) the difference between LI and L2 had very little impact on the vocabulary learning in L3.Considering all the perspectives mentioned above and results from the study, the researcher believes that the third language acquisition should be regarded as a complex phenomenon involving certain features, namely those of language transfer, Linguistic distance, language proficiency of L2 and the attitude towards the different cultures. Therefore, English teacher is supposed to apply some theories of language transfer and vocabulary acquisition and try to find more effective ways to develop the quality of English vocabulary teaching.