Multilingual teachers, plurilingual approach and L3 acquisition: Interviews with multilingual teachers and their L3/L3+ students

The article reports a study on plurilingual approaches (PA) of three multilingual teachers in three foreign language classrooms (English, German and Russian) at a Turkish state university. The qualitative study explored the attitudes of multilingual teachers to PA and the response of their L3/L3+ students ($N=5$) to the plurilingual practices in class. The perceptions of participants were investigated from the holistic paradigm in multilingualism. Data were collected through interviews and graphic elicitation tasks. Data were analyzed through content and visual-based analysis. The results indicated three main themes based on participants' perceptions of PA:

(1) implementation, (2) benefits to learning and (3) the role of multilingual teachers in L3 Acquisition. Both teachers and students displayed positive attitudes in findings (1) and (2). However, participants’ perceptions were not homogeneous in finding (3), which revealed some issues. The overall findings suggest that multilingual teachers should play a crucial role in plurilingual and L3 classrooms in a Turkish context.