The present study examines crosslinguistic influence (CLI) from L1 and L2s in two groups of multilingual learners of L3 Italian. The two groups share their L1, which is Dutch, and an elementary proficiency in French and German, but they differ regarding other L2s: one group has high proficiency in English and Spanish, while the other group has low intermediate proficiency in English and no knowledge of Spanish. Earlier research has shown that typological proximity and proficiency level are the most important factors explaining the source of CLI, together with the L2 status factor. The results of our study confirm that learners with the same L1 can behave in a substantially divergent way, when learning an L3, if their linguistic background is different. This is especially true when typologically close L2s in which learners have a high proficiency level, such as Spanish in the present study, are involved. In this paper we will discuss the outcomes of our experiment and highlight didactic consequencesEen colloquium over universitair taalvaardigheidsonderwijs Universiteit Leiden, 2 december 2016, the complete issue can be found at http://hdl.handle.net/1887/57204Wetensch. publicati
