How does having a Russian mother tongue and living in Hungary influence learning English?

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Other, grade: sehr gut, Eoetvoes Lorand Tudomanyegytem, language: English, abstract: Nowadays, in a globalized world where cross-cultural relationships are of key importance, multilingualism becomes more and more common, as well as families of mixed nations using more than one language. As a result of these, more and more children are growing up as bilingual or even as trilingual. It is interesting how these children can acquire two or more languages on a native-like level in their early childhood and how they learn foreign languages later at school. The aim of this paper is to explore this field using a case study of a Russian-Hungarian bilingual woman in Hungary. The purpose of the research is to find out what influences the bilingual background could have on the person’s foreign language learning, especially on learning English. The main question to be answered in this paper is: How does having a Russian-Hungarian mother tongue influence learning English? The hypothesized result is that the bilingual research participant experiences many positive factors because she already speaks two languages which is a cognitive advantage for her.