The effects of learning a second language on the first: The case of increased metalinguistic awareness

Abstract

The present study aims to test if Turkish L2 users of English judge the grammaticality of generic/habitual realconditionals in Turkish differently compared to Turkish monolinguals. Bassetti and Cook (2011) and Bialystok(2001) claim that one of the outcomes of being a bilingual is an increase in metalinguistic awareness.Accordingly, this study investigates if Turkish L2 users have an increased metalinguistic awareness. 20grammaticality judgment tasks are analysed in data analysis. The participants are university-graduate 15 Turkishmonolinguals and 15 Turkish L2 users of English. The responses are evaluated via both descriptive statistics andalso SPSS. The analysis indicates that the difference between the monolinguals and L2 users in the judgement ofTurkish conditionals is a statistically significant one. This result suggests that learning an L2 has an effect on theL1 of L2 users. This implies that L2 users are a distinctive group of people with regard to their languageknowledge.