Die Rolle der Sprachenfolge und des interlingualen Einflusses in der Entwicklung fremdsprachlicher Textproduktion

The study reported in this paper derives from a project about the cross-linguistic influence on text writing in German and English as foreign languages by Italian students at B1 level. The research questions of the whole project are: - What role does the first foreign language play (L2) on the second FL (L3) at B1 level? - Does the first language or mother tongue (L1) still influence the writing in L2/L3 at B1 level? The study links current German and English writing research with respect to the fact that different language and culture systems generate different texts and that the different tradition in second language learning influences text production as well. Yet the focus of the article is on empirical investigation of learners’ writing of a corpus of 100 texts (50 + 50) in both foreign languages, German and English. The results show that: i. the learners’ text writing in English and German is still influenced by the mother tongue; ii. the sequence of languages, i.e. English or German as the first foreign language, is a relevant factor for the development of text competence in other languages.