The role of L2 exposure in L3A: A comparative study between third and fourth year secondary school students in the Netherlands

In this study, we test the L2 Status Factor hypothesis (Bardel & Falk, 2007, 2012), which claims that the L2 is the preferred background language over the L1 in L3 acquisition (henceforth L3A), and we investigate the effect of L2 English exposure on the role of the L1 and the L2 in L3A. We examine how increased developmental L2 exposure changes L1/L2 influence in L3A by comparing third- to fourth-year secondary school students in the Netherlands who are enrolled in either an immersion or a traditional ‘regular’ secondary school programme. We look at verb placement where French differs from English or from Dutch, reporting data from a grammaticality judgement task.