Multilinguals’ and monolinguals’ use of awareness-raising activities: A study on reflective/impulsive learners

Research findings have confirmed that multilingual acquisition differs essentially from second language acquisition, and that multilingual learners have advantages over monolingual learners when learning a new language. These advantages are attributed to metalinguistic awareness, highly developed learning strategies and communicative sensitivity. This paper reports on research examining the extent to which multilingual and monolingual participants benefit from awareness-raising activities on listening skills, based on 252 female participants. Additionally, participants with two different learning styles – reflective/impulsive – are compared. For data analysis, a three-way ANOVA analysis with post hoc test was conducted. Results showed that being multilingual has significant effects on the use of awareness-raising activities. Similarly, it was revealed that being reflective/impulsive has a significant effect on multilingual speakers’ listening enhancement. Results also indicated that the interaction between being multilingual/monolingual and being reflective/impulsive is statistically significant. The results obtained give some insights on the effect of individual factors, especially cognitive styles, on the language development of multilinguals, and shed some light on models developed for multilingualism, especially the Dynamic Multilingual Model. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed in detail.