CHAPTER TWO LEARNERS OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: THE FACTOR OF THEIR HERITAGE LANGUAGE AND LITERACY. FOTINI ANASTASSIOU, GEORGIA ANDREOU AND JULIE BASEKI 1. Introduction Multilingualism is nowadays perceived both by the general public and the scholars as a quality that needs to be preserved and built on. In fact, monolinguals are in today’s world more of a rare case and there is a continuous interest of people to learn as many languages as possible. Over the past decades, there has been an increasing migration and mobility of populations which has led to cultural diversity among the people and accordingly, as a result, to the phenomenon of multilingualism (cf. Cruz-Ferreira 2006 and works cited within). Also, families whose members come from different ethnic and/or national backgrounds are globally increasing (Cruz-Ferreira 2006, Tokuhama-Espinoza, 2001). Children growing up in multinational families are often in contact with more than one language through their parents, and in some cases these heritage languages are supported by the linguistic system of the wider community’s language. Multilingualism has been something natural in several societies. However, there are still many societies that only recently has multilingualism been acknowledged and therefore has become the focus of more research. This latter observation applies for Greece too, since the vast and rapid advent of immigrants has now created a versatile linguistic environment within public schools. There are nowadays a great number of children who are being raised as bilinguals (they speak their heritage language and Greek which is the official language of the community they grow up in) and they begin being taught their third language, English, as a foreign language when they are around the age of seven years old. Therefore, these children are more experienced in terms of language learning compared to their classmates who only speak Greek and are being taught their second language, English, with a foreign language learning methodology. In Greece there is one official language, Greek, and the languages of migrants and minorities that exist in the country are confined within the family environment as well as the specific language community. The status of the language is perceived by its own speakers as a lower one, especially in view of their integration in their host country. Moreover, children growing up in a multilingual family own unique qualities and diverse needs, which have been the focus of literature (Cruz-Ferreira 2006; Tokuhama-Espinoza, 2001, inter alia). Moreover, Hoffman (2001) has clarified the difference between transient and recurrent trilingualism. Transient trilingualism occurs after less usage of one of the three languages until it is eventually forgotten, absorbed by the other two languages or even never completely acquired, so that eventually the speaker turns to a bilingual or monolingual with a background in trilingualism. This quite common phenomenon is more likely to happen in childhood trilingualism, in instances that one of the languages becomes functionally unimportant so that in time the child looses the contact with the linguistic input as well as contact with the heritage language in a different country. Furthermore, it is most usual to encounter “recurrent trilingualism,” in which each of the three languages has its own functions and relates to a specific domain, and thus each one is preserved and developed by the individual to a greater or lesser extent. However, the three languages are unlikely to be equally developed in every area of communication. One or even two of the three, although firmly established, is likely to be used less than the other two or the most dominant one, as shown in Hoffman (2001) and Cruz-Ferreira (2006). It is expected that one of the three languages will outperform the other two, as a natural result of the education being occurred in the most socially accepted language. According to Fishman et al (1971), the possibility of balanced bilingual speakers is considered to be rare: “Bilinguals who are equally fluent in both languages (as measured by their facility and general correctness) are rarely equally fluent in both languages about all possible topics; this phenomenon is a reflection of the fact that societal allocation of functions is normally imbalanced and in complementary distribution rather than