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eign language learners majoring in English as well as elementary andmiddle school students, of which few is exclusively concerned with third languages ofminority learners, particularly there is almost no significant achievement having beenmade with respect to Mongolian students. The phenomenon of fewer studiesspecifically on third language acquisition of minority groups is unfavorable todevelop their cognition styles, let alone to carry forward culture of minority groupswithout considering distinctive and complex linguistic characteristics of locallanguages. Fourth, when it comes to the content, researchers abroad are not contentwith describing linguistic features arise in the acquisition of third language learners byapplying linguistic theories, but illustrating the process of third language acquisition,however, the primary concern of scholars in China is the discussion of the theory ofTLA, introduction and interpretation of studies overseas. Last, the empirical researchat home in this field is relatively scarce, which necessitates more and more studiesthat are based on empirical surveys. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that someempirical studies have laid a solid foundation and provided us with references forfurther investigations to some extent, but the study of TLA still has a long way to goregarding the terminology, scope, depth, and research methodology. So far researchtoward TLA is still in its infancy and it is not systematic and holistic at all in China.Therefore, there is a need to carry out an empirical study which regards Mongolianlearners as participants to provide insight into the theoretical development of thirdlanguage acquisition and English teaching in the Mongolian district.
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Chapter Two Literature Review and Theoretical Foundation

Generally speaking, the research on third language acquisition has a short historycompared to that on second language acquisition to some extent, but some scholarshave gained a greater success in this field. In the last twenty years, TLA research hasdeveloped rapidly from the perspectives of sociolinguistics, language education anduniversal grammar, and so on. It focused on complex phenomena of various areas oflanguage acquisition. Among them, research foci that have enjoyed more attention arethe influence of first language and second language on TLA, differences betweensecond language acquisition and TLA, distinctions between TLA of children andadults, cross-linguistic influence and interaction in TLA, and pragmatic generationand pragmatic awareness of TLA. The following section will centre upon keyconcepts as well as previous relevant studies regarding cross-linguistic influence inthird language acquisition and theories applied in this paper.

2.1 Cross-linguistic Influence (CLI)
As far as cross-linguistic influence is concerned, it plays a very important part inexplaining effects that background languages have on the process of acquisition of athird language or an additional language. Therefore, it is necessary to familiarize withsome key terms and related studies within the field of cross-linguistic influence inthird language acquisition and multilingualism since this study seeks to examinecross-linguistic influence of L2 proficiency on written productions of L3.In the past, studies are primarily used to focus on cross-linguistic influence of afirst language on second language acquisition, but more and more researchers hav