ABSTRACT
Chapter 11 summarizes the main ideas and major findings of the current investigation. Based on previous research, this study aimed to provide evidence that bilingual learners show differences from monolingual foreign language learners. However, the analysis of tense and aspect in English returned no statistically significant differences between the unbalanced bilingual heritage speakers and their monolingual German peers related to language background alone. Instead, differences were better explained by additional social variables like school type or socio-economic status, at times interacting with language background. Overall, the acquisition process was shown to be comparable across the learners growing up in Germany irrespective of previously acquired languages. Moreover, the current study argued that the heritage bilinguals considered do not have an advantage in additional foreign language acquisition, because they are not more metalinguistically aware than their monolingual peers. Several explanations were offered, one of which is that certain conditions are needed so that the additional language resources of bilingual heritage speakers can have a positive effect on further language acquisition. These, however, are currently not satisfactorily incorporated into the English language classroom in Germany. Finally, some directions for future research endeavors are proposed.
