DOI: 10.17632/xfxnssythy.1
title: Dataset for the research article "Acquisition of L3 English past perfect, present progressive, and present perfect tenses by L1 Kirundi-L2 French bilinguals"

description: The present data were used to through the LPM the effect of CLI in the acquisition of L3 English past perfect, present progressive, and present perfect tenses by L1 Kirundi-L2 French bilinguals.  The subtractive language groups design was used: One trilingual (L1 Kirundi-L2 French-L3 English learners) group was compared to two bilingual (L1 Kirundi-L2 English and L1 French-L2 English learners) groups in order to derive which previously acquired language was driving CLI among L3 learners. Each language group had 30 learners distributed in four proficiency groups, namely the pre-intermediate group (6 participants), lower-intermediate group (7 participants), upper-intermediate group (11 participants), and advanced group (6 participants). Therefore, there were two independent variables (language group and proficiency group) and three continuous dependent variables which were the participants' scores on the three target structures, namely the past perfect, present progressive, and present perfect tenses.

The data were used to test the following predictions:

1. With regard to the past perfect tense (L1=L2=L3), learners of L3 English with a background knowledge in L1 Kirundi and L2 French are likely to have no difficulty in the acquisition of the said tense in English regardless of their English proficiency level; i.e. even lower proficiency learners will perform well on that tense. However, higher proficiency learners may make most correct use of this tense. 

2. With regard to the present progressive tense (L1≠L3≠L2), we can predict that all the three language groups, i.e. L1 Kirundi, L1 French and L3 groups, will face difficulties in their performance on this tense. In other words, none of the previously acquired languages (neither L1 Kirundi, nor L2 French) is expected to significantly affect the performance of L3ers on the said tense. Lower proficiency learners are predicted to face most difficulty on the tense.

3. With regard to the present perfect tense (L3=L2≠L1), we can predict that the L3 group will perform similarly as the L1 French group, while the two groups are likely to outperform the L1 Kirundi group. This implies that facilitative CLI is expected from L2 French in the L3 group.

4. Considering the present research scenarios for the past perfect (L1=L2=L3), present perfect (L1=L3≠L2), and present progressive (L1≠L2≠L3) tenses, we predict CLI where L3 learners are expected to acquire the past perfect earlier than the present perfect, and the present perfect earlier than the present progressive. In other words, their performance on the past perfect tense should be significantly higher than that on the present perfect while their score on the present perfect is expected to be significantly higher than that on the present progressive. 

Data were elicited through the grammaticality judgment task, and the raw data analyzed in the SPSS software using descriptive statistics, MANOVA, post-hoc comparisons, and independent samples t-tests.