The last decade has witnessed a rapid increase in interest in multilingualism. Whereas a number of scholars in language acquisition research still base their work on the monolingual native speaker norm, others have developed more realistic viewpoints. This article provides an overview of international research on third language learning and teaching, including examples mainly from a European background. It describes sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and educational aspects of multilingual teaching and emphasizes current research trends in this fairly young area of language teaching. The challenging ways which have been suggested to achieve multilingualism for all necessarily have to address learners, teachers, educators and policy makers. It will be argued that multilingual education can only be successful if language teaching in general is restructured and oriented towards multilingual norms.

This paper suggests that a dynamic systems theory (DST) provides an adequate conceptual metaphor for discussing multilingual development. Multilingual acquisition is a nonlinear and complex dynamic process depending on a number of interacting factors. Variability plays a crucial role in the multilingual system as it changes over time (Herdina & Jessner, 2002). A number of studies on multilingualism have shown that there are qualitative differences between second and third language learning and that these can be related to an increased level of metalinguistic awareness. From a DST-perspective, metalinguistic knowledge and awareness of this knowledge play a crucial role in the development of individual multilingualism.Language development is a complex and dynamic process. Although this statement can be regarded as common knowledge for many researchers in the field of applied linguistics, most studies on language acquisition are nevertheless still placed within a theoretical framework working with static or linear presuppositions. With an increase in the number of languages involved in multilingual development, the dynamics, that is, the changes and the complexity of language learning, become even more evident. Consequently, a number of researchers have argued that language development only can be adequately researched by applying a multilingual norm to linguistic research; in other words, it is only by investigating multilingual development that we can evaluate language development (e.g.

The development of competence in two or more languages can result in higher levels of metalinguisticawareness.These facilitatethe acquisition of language by exploiting the cognitive mechanisms underlying these processes of transfer and enhancement. In this paper, the role of metalinguistic awareness in multilinguals is discussed within the framework of a systems-theoretic approach to multilingual proficiency as taken in the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism. Selective data from trilingual adults (bilingual Italian/German learners of English) on their use of certain problem-solving behaviour in think-aloud protocols during the process of academic writing are shown to provide evidence of certain processes taking place while performing in a third language. At the same time, this study of metalinguisticthinking is used to point to applied perspectives of research on third language acquisition, going beyond second language research. It is argued that prior language knowledge should be reactivated in the language classroom and that consequently multilingual education should also focus on the similarities between languages in order to increase metalinguistic awareness in both teachers and students.

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