8592

8592

The Relationship between Trilingualism and Attention Span

MASTER OF ARTS IN

TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

2011

2011

Dr. Shahin Vaez

Dr. Esmaeel Abdollah Zadeh

iv Abstract In recent decade's multilingualism as an essential social and cultural norm has been provided extensive interest and attention all over the world. A significant number of experts have investigated multilingual individuals and societies from different perspectives to find out how multilingualism impacts people's ability. On the contrary, multilingualism has been neglected in Iran in spite of the linguistic diversity that exists. This research study in which 468 randomly selected monolingual and trilingual subjects participated was an attempt to enter a new arena in multilinguals' abilities and an investigation of the effect of knowing three languages on attention span. Additionally, it aims to test out the attention span of mono and trilingual male and female participants in case of being a significant difference. Data has been collected from two independent groups through the use of demographic and self reported attention span questionnaires. The results of this study, based on the independent t test and the comparison of the means of two groups, indicate that there is a significant difference between tri and monolinguals attention span. In other words, trilingual participants outperformed monolinguals in the self reported attention span test. On the other hand, regarding gender, it was concluded that