The idea of three languages or trilingualism is not one ... · Web viewThe mean for competence in...

Author: Laugharne, Janet

Title: Attitudes to Welsh, English and Modern Foreign Languages amongst first year students in education

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September 2005

Abstract: The focus of this article is on student teachers’ attitudes in Wales to Welsh, English and MFL (Modern Foreign Languages). The work reported is part of a larger study examining attitudes to three languages amongst education students in Europe. Here, many people are learning three or more languages in response to both regional and global needs (Cenoz, 2003), but in the UK as a whole, including Wales, there are decreasing numbers of pupils studying MFL (NAW 2002, CILT, 2002, Estyn 2005). An attitude questionnaire was administered to over 200 first year students in five education departments across Wales during 2004-5. The results showed that most students had a favourable attitude towards Welsh, irrespective of their own first language, and a less favourable attitude to MFL. Their attitude to English was neutral or favourable. Self reported competence was also analysed; generally and across the dimensions of speaking, reading, writing and listening in the three languages. For English there was an over 97% self reported level of good and very good general competence, which was perhaps to be expected. More unexpected was the reporting of good and very good competence for Welsh at 70% and MFL at 27%. The first demonstrates the buoyant nature of Welsh/English bilingual acquisition in the younger sections of the population. The second shows a higher than anticipated self reported competence in a MFL. Overall, the findings reflect the potential in Wales for further language learning and raise questions for future work about the relationship between the learning and teaching of Welsh and MFL.

© Janet Laugharne Cardiff School of Education, UWIC.

Attitudes to Welsh, English and Modern Foreign Languages amongst first year Students in Education

Dr Janet Laugharne, School of Education, University of Wales Institute Cardiff

Introduction

The idea of three languages, or trilingualism, is one that has not often been mentioned in the context

of the UK, apart from in discussion perhaps of community languages such as Punjabi, Urdu, and

Hindi where speakers are often at least trilingual. The idea of two languages, or bilingualism, is

more familiar, especially in terms of language policy in Wales, where the two languages are Welsh

and English. By the last census, in 2001, it was estimated that 1 in 5 children between the age of 5

and 15 was attending Welsh medium or bilingual education (Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg, 2004). In

practice there are no children in Wales in this age group who are not also able to speak English. The

polarity between English and Welsh, which arose with the focus on Welsh language survival over

the last fifty years, has shifted with the increased use of Welsh in many domains to an approach to

language in Wales that encourages bilingualism, rather than Welsh or English.

Devolution and the introduction of the National Assembly for Wales, in 1999, have focused further

the agenda for bilingual language planning into the twenty first century. The policy document Iaith

Pawb (Everyone’s Language) (NAfW, 2003) aims for an increase of 5% in the numbers of Welsh

speakers by 2011, the next census. This would bring the numbers to around 26% of the population.

Alongside this increase in numbers of Welsh speakers, there is recognition of the central importance

of English, and hence of bilingualism, to people in Wales.

So does this mean that bilingualism is established in Wales? No, is the answer. Firstly, Welsh is still

a minority language spoken by a small number of people (1.2 million) and even though its history

has in the last half of the 20th century been one of revival, as Aitchison and Carter (2004) Jenkins

and Williams, (2000) Colin Williams (2000) Baker (2003) have shown, the detail of language gains

and losses is a complex pattern. The twenty first century will see accelerated language change, since

so many of the increased numbers of Welsh speakers are in the 5-25 year old group and the majority

are essentially first generation speakers, often having learnt Welsh as a second language through

school, rather than at home. Perhaps this does not matter, since a language under threat has been

rescued by its speakers and community. But others point to language loss on a global level, and to


the threats and instability that remain where reverse language shift has occurred (Crystal, 2000;

Fishman, 1991, 2001; Baker, 2003). The companion language to Welsh is English in Wales. Since

this language has particular power through its use in a global context (Crystal, 1997;Brutt-Griffler,

2002) the threat that was posed to Welsh as a minority language by English as an imperial language

in the nineteenth century has not fundamentally changed.

But, in considering this issue of bilingualism, why are we so hung up in the UK over two languages,

since in many communities and in many countries the question is not of two language but three of

more? As Baker and Price Jones (1998), Cenoz (2003), Lasagabaster (2003) and others

demonstrate, many education systems in the world are addressing complex linguistic models and

language choices. It is true that in the UK, recently, the importance of learning other European

languages, such as French, Spanish and German, has been increasingly recognised (NAfW/CILT,

2002; Dfes, 2004). Primary schools are introducing Modern Foreign Languages (MFL), usually

toward the end of Key Stage Two when children are 9 or 10 years old. Evaluations of NAfW

funded pilots in Wales teaching MFL in primary schools were found to be strongly supported by

parents, teachers and pupils (CILT, 2005a). This has not yet, though, turned the tide of decreasing

numbers of pupils choosing to study GCSE and A level languages.

A new term being used, particularly in some Secondary schools in Wales, is ‘triple literacy’ (CILT,

2005b). Here what is being utilised is the potential gain in understanding of language per se,

metalinguistic knowledge (Hamers and Blanc, 2000; Bialystock, 2001) in comparing vocabulary

and grammatical structures in English, Welsh and MFL (usually French). The focus is exciting,

bringing together language departments in Secondary schools which might not have coordinated

their work in the past. However, the triple literacy approach is mainly about academic work; it

focuses on single words or grammatical forms in three languages and particularly the written form.

In triple literacy the focus is on writing and reading as much as spoken language. While valuable,

this approach is not one that the UNESCO model advocates for developing plurilingualism in

education, where the emphasis is much more on oral language (Marti, Ortega, Idiazabal, 2005).

And what do we mean by bilingual and trilingual? There might be the idea of general competence,

or of the sub strands of a language: reading, writing, speaking and listening as reflected in the

National Curriculum model, (ACCAC, 2000). Again, the idea of domains of use, or competence, for

various languages for different purposes is another way of examining the concept (Ferguson, 1959;

Fishman, 1976).


Allied to that, it is worth noting that in recent NAfW documents, the terms ‘Welsh medium’

education or ‘immersion’ schools are being described as ‘Welsh speaking’ schools (NAfW,2005).

This subtly changes the meaning, making it less about education and ‘immersion.’ It also gives a

stronger focus on speaking, which is very interesting, since one of the challenges is to get more

Welsh spoken in the community; particularly by the young people. They have, in many cases, learnt

Welsh mainly in the school context, but have a competence to the point where they successfully

undertake their studies up to A level in that language. Yet there is evidence that they do not use this

competence in many domains according to the work of Gruffudd (2000) and Coupland, Bishop,

Williams, Evans and Garrett (2005).

So what is the competence of young people in English Welsh and a MFL? The great majority of

pupils in Wales have English as their first or equal second language. Some will have spoken Welsh

at home as their first language. The concentration of these pupils will be in areas where there has

traditionally been more naturally occurring Welsh in the community (Aitchison and Carter, 1994).

All pupils will have studied a MFL for three or four years from the age of 11. In English speaking

schools, all pupils will have around ten years learning Welsh as a non core subject. In Welsh

speaking schools, pupils will have had equivalent number of years, where Welsh is the medium of

education.

With regard to attitude, this has been widely reconsidered as closely linked to competence, but in

complex ways, as the influential work of Baker (1988, 1992), which is of particular interest to this

study shows The context in which the languages operate is a vital component of both attitude and

competence. In Wales over the last five years, attitude to Welsh has been investigated by Coupland,

Bishop, Williams, Evans and Garrett (2005) and Gruffudd (2000) in relation to pupils in Secondary

schools. These studies have shown that there is a generally high level of positive attitude towards

Welsh, but that actual language use was much more varied, often in a few narrow domains. This

highlights again the gap between competence, attitude and language use.

The Study

The present study is part of a larger one which took place at the same time across seven other

regions in Europe, lead by David Lasagabaster from the University of the Basque Country. This

study is based on a large scale attitude questionnaire, undertaken simultaneously across areas of

Europe where a minority language is taught and where there are also at least two other languages in


the education system. Its aim was to find out more about both competence and attitudes in relation

to the three languages taught in the education system. The subjects were all university students who

were studying education. The initial findings point to very interesting patterns and trends, such as

favourable attitude to the minority language by minority language speakers in various regions. The

study also highlights considerable differences, particularly in attitude to and competence in English,

linked to geographical context. Further, in some regions it was found there was particular

complexity in deciding which were ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ languages in the school system. The

study overall highlights the complexity of the interrelationship between competence, attitude and,

vitally, language use. The scale and timing of the research, involving around 900 students at the

same point in their education studies training, provides an extremely valuable data set.

In the case of this study, in Wales, the three languages under consideration were marked by the

strong impact of English as a world language, together with the influence of Welsh as the national

minority language in Wales. MFL, as expected, proved overall to be the least developed language,

with regard to competence and attitude, of the three. This is not surprising, since other European

languages are not spoken naturally in the community and generally have only been taught in the

secondary school after the age of 11.

This article presents the findings in two sections relative to the Welsh data. Firstly, students’ self

reported competence generally and across each literacy dimension for each of the three languages is

discussed. Secondly, the students’ overall attitudes to Welsh, English and MFL are presented for

each language and to the three languages taken together, trilingually.

Methodology

Data were collected at the beginning of one academic year from over 200 education or education

related students in five HEIs across Wales. The method used for data collection was a

questionnaire, which, as has been said, was used in several European contexts where minority

languages exist, including Spain, Ireland, Belgium and Friesland. It was designed by Lasagabaster

and Huguet and developed from the attitude questionnaire created by Baker (1992). All the students

were in the same discipline area, education, and at the beginning of their training.

The sample in Wales was examined to find out their overall profile across several factors, such as

training course, socioeconomic groups, gender, country of origin and first language. The majority of

the students (77%) were training for primary education (5-11 years) with 19% training for


secondary education (11-18 years) and a small number studying other aspects of education. In terms

of socioeconomic groups, 60.3% came from higher, 29.4% from middle and 9.8% from lower

groups. This strongly underlines the economic factors that affect students’ ability to take up

university places. Although all students were in their first year of training, there was a wide span of

ages. The youngest was 18 and the oldest was 47. 72% of the sample was in the age range 18-24

and, within this group, the average age was 20 years. As for gender, the great majority were women

(83.7%) with a much smaller group of men (16.3%). Interestingly, unlike the general tendency for

more men to be in Secondary education than Primary, the men in the sample were spread fairly

evenly across each of the training courses under scrutiny.

The great majority of the sample (92.2%) came from Wales. 4.9% came from England and 0.5 from

Ireland. None came from Scotland and 2.5% came from another country. Most (77.6 %) came from

a hometown of less than 100,000 inhabitants, while 22.1% came from larger towns. 6.4% did not

respond, perhaps because they came from a rural community. 65.2% of the sample came from

mainly English speaking and 30.9% from mainly Welsh speaking hometowns.

The first language spoken by the students can be seen in Figure 1. 46.6% said English was their first

language. 25% said they had Welsh as their first language and 26% said they had both Welsh and

English as first languages. 3% had a language other than English or Welsh as their mother tongue.

Figure 1. The students’ L1.

25%

46.60%

26%

2.90%

Welsh English Both Other

These figures are higher than analysis of 2001 census returns (Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg, 2004) and

also the figure of 35.4% for those in their first year of teaching returned in a survey in 2004 by the

General Teaching Council for Wales (GTCW, 2005). If this figure is added to those who say they

have Welsh and English together as their mother tongue, this figure rises to 51%, which is a

significant finding and one which will be returned to in the discussion later in the article. It also

underlines the earlier discussion about the growing trend of people considering themselves to be


Welsh and English speaking, rather than making an absolute choice between one and the other

language.

Analysis

The questionnaire used a four point scale for competence with ratings of ‘very good,’ ‘good,’ ‘a

little’ or ‘none’ as a basis for self evaluation. Students reported on their competence generally and

then for speaking, listening, reading and writing in each of the three languages. For attitude, a five

point scale was used with degrees of agreement or disagreement about statements on the three

languages from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. This scale was used for a set of the same 10

questions for each language and for a set of 24 questions on trilingualism, looking at all three

languages together.

Each element on the questionnaire was coded and entered into SPSS (Statistical Package for the

Social Sciences) version 12 as a variable. The scores for each of the three languages based on total

score for sub sets of 10 were recoded into three equally divided groups for attitudes of favourable,

neutral and unfavourable. The further set of 24 questions examining attitude to the three languages

taken together was also recoded by total score in this way.

Research into languages has increasingly begun to question measuring languages separately and

thus against monolingual norms (Cook, 1995; Grosjean, 2000, Bialystock, 2001, Herdina and

Jessner, 2002). Attitudes to trilingualism and towards each of the three languages was examined to

see if there were any particular trends to be seen in looking at languages separately and more

holistically. General competence in English, Welsh and MFL was tested against attitude to Welsh,

English, MFL and all three languages together to see if there was evidence of any significance

relationships related to the individual languages and trilingually.

At a micro level, analysis of the same four questions which were asked about English, Welsh and

MFL and trilingualism was undertaken, using a one way ANOVA test. The aim of this investigation

was to see whether there was a significance value at the micro level in examining the students’

views on all three languages taken together, when related to their views about the same issue for the

three languages separately. The items from the questionnaire were:

1. It is important to be able to speak English/ Welsh/ MFL/ all three languages.

2. All schools should teach English/ Welsh/ MFL/ all three languages.


3. Speaking English/ Welsh/ MFL/ all three languages is not difficult.

4. If I have children I would wish them to speak English/ Welsh/ MFL/ all three languages.

Other elements such as mother tongue, language of hometown and the media, which might also

have an effect on attitudes, are not examined in this article.

Findings

Competence

The students overall confidence in the three languages is shown in Figure 2. In the good and very

good category, the greatest confidence is in English (96.7%) and the least in the third language,

MFL (9%). This is not surprising in the general context discussed above. What is most striking is

that 42% of the sample said their Welsh was very good and a further 27% said it was good.

Figure 2. Level of self reported general competence in the three languages.

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Welsh English MFL

Good or very good None or a little

This figure is much higher than 2001 census figures for the general population and even those for

the 5-15 year old group which were 40.8% (Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg, 2004). It is also interesting to

compare this with the students who said that Welsh or Welsh and English together were their first

language. This figure was 51%. Therefore, 18% of those who said English or another language was

their first language consider they have good or very good Welsh.


Regarding the third language, while there are 71.6% who said they had little or no knowledge of

MFL, 26.5% students reported good or very good competence. This is again a surprising figure, and

may relate to the benefits of bilingualism in helping to create confidence in learning subsequent

languages. It might also relate to ideas of multicompetence Cook(1995), metalinguistic knowledge

(Grosjean, 2000; Bialystock, 2001) and dynamic multilingualism of bilingual speakers, discussed

by Herdina and Jessner (2002) and others. These suggest that relatively little is known, even now,

about bilingual speakers and that in the past they have been measured, unfairly, in relation to

monolingual norms for individual languages, rather than holistically across the spectrum of

languages they speak.

For Welsh, it is a striking finding that self-reported good or very good competence in listening,

speaking and reading are all over 70%, with writing being at 68.5%. The proportion of the students

at this level of competence in Welsh is notable. Those who had little or no Welsh were around 27%,

with writing being again the least strong element.

Figure 3 Self Reported Competence in Welsh across Reading, Writing Speaking and Listening

010203040

50607080

Welshreading

Welshwriting

Welshspeaking

Welshlistening


For English, there is an extremely high level of self-reported competence, over 99%, reported

across all four strands of literacy. Less than 0.5% of the students said they had little or no English

skills. In one sense this is not surprising, given the importance of English in the higher education

system in Wales and as a world language. However, it is interesting to see the detail of these

figures, reported by the students, which confirm this point.


Figure 4 Self Reported Competence in English across Reading, Writing Speaking and Listening

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Englishreading

Englishwriting

Englishspeaking

Englishlistening


Around 75% of the students reported little or no competence in MFL. In the good or very good

category, the strongest element was speaking, followed by listening. The weakest element was

writing at 19.7%.

Figure 5 Self Reported Competence in MFL across Reading, Writing Speaking and Listening

0102030405060708090

MFL reading MFL writing MFLspeaking

MFLlistening


Generally, the distribution across the four sub strands matches the overall picture for each language,

with English being reported at 90% in the good or very good category, Welsh over 70% and MFL

around 25% across the four areas of literacy. The main finding is the high level of self reported


competence in Welsh and higher than expected findings for MFL. It is also worth noting the

extremely high confidence in English language skills.

Interestingly, writing appears across all thee languages to be perceived by the students as their least

competent element. Also, under the ‘very good’ section for Welsh and MFL a similar pattern

emerges of the receptive skills of listening and reading coming before the productive skills of

speaking and writing. This pattern is not evident for English.

Attitude

The attitudes toward the three languages, taken individually, are demonstrated in Figure 6. From

this it can be seen that the most favourable attitudes are towards Welsh (62.4%), with English and

MFL together (50.9%) not equalling the degree of positive attitude shown towards it. The most

neutral attitude is shown towards MFL at 68.2%, followed by English (58.5%) and Welsh (35%).

The least unfavourable attitudes are towards Welsh (3.1%) and the most unfavourable are towards

MFL (14.0%), with English being closer to the percentage of Welsh (4.6%). This indicates that in

the group as a whole there are strongly favourable attitudes shown towards Welsh, with only a

small percentage of students who are neutral or unfavourable. This reflects similar trends found in

other research in Wales (Central Office of Information/WLB 1995, Baker 1985, 1988, 1992,

Williams and Morris, 2000 and Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg, 2001, Gruffudd, 2000).

Figure 6 Attitudes towards Welsh, English and MFL.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Welsh English MFL

Unfavourable Neutral Favourable


These figures must be seen in the context of self reporting and of a questionnaire about Welsh and

English to which many respondents would be sensitised in considering the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’

response. However, it highlights the relative lack of positive attitude toward MFL quite starkly.

Interestingly, it contrasts with the 26.5% of students discussed above who said they had good or

very good competence in MFL and this is a point that will be returned to later.

Attitudes for all three languages together, or trilingualism, are represented in Figure 7. The greatest

proportion of responses is in the neutral area (56.3%), followed by favourable attitudes (42.9%).

There is less than 1% unfavourable attitude scores to three languages taken together. If this is

compared with the results above for each language individually, the main difference in profile is

that the unfavourable score is reduced below even that for Welsh, which was around 3%. The score

for favourable attitude (42.9%) moves up relative to English and MFL, although below that for

Welsh (62.4%).This finding seems to indicate that when addressing all three languages together

attitudes becomes more favourable than when examining two of the languages separately, English

and MFL. It does not, though, outweigh the strongly positive response towards Welsh.

Figure 7 Attitudes towards Three Languages together i.e. Trilingualism

0

10

20

30

40

50

60



Competence in English Welsh and MFL was then examined to see what this offered in significance

values for attitudes to the languages individually and trilingually. The results of this test can be seen

in Table 1.


Table 1 One way ANOVA test for competence in each language and attitude for each language and trilingually

Welsh Attitude

English Attitude

MFL Attitude

TrilingualAttitude

Comment

WelshCompetence

[F.(3,182)=50.226, p=0.000]

[F (3,183) = 16.538, p =.0.000]

[F (3,166)=6.361, p = 0.000]

[F (2,120) = 2.939, p =0.057]

Significance values for E,W and MFL

EnglishCompetence

[F (3,187) = 0.651, p =0.583]

[F (3,188) = 3.743, p = 0.012]

[F (3,171) = 2.059, p = 0.108]

[F (2,122) =0.045,p =0.956]

There is significance value for English

MFL Competence

[F (4,172) = 13.583, p =0.129

[F (4,187) = 3.763, p =0.012]

[F (4,172) = 15.583, p =0.000]

[F (2,121) = 0.660 p=0.519

There is significance value for English and MFL

Welsh competence offers significance value for each language and is close to a significance value

for trilingualism. MFL offers significance value for English and MFL and English offers

significance value for English only. Interestingly, there is not, as one might have expected, a pattern

of bilingual competence corresponding to more favourable attitudes towards trilingualism. For

example, examination of the interaction effect for MFL showed, that the greater the competence the

less favourable the attitude, while for Welsh the reverse was true and the greater the competence the

more positive the attitude. It is worth noting is that there is a significance value for attitude towards

English for each language, underlining its influence as a world language. The mean for competence

in English relative to attitude to trilingualism showed very little movement, on a horizontal line of

very good competence.

Finally, an examination was conducted, at a micro level, in order to see if there was a significance

value for attitudes to the same question when asked separately for each language and for the

languages together, trilingually. The findings are presented in Table 2.


Table 2: A one way ANOVA test to compare responses to items for three languages together (trilingualism) against the same/similar statement for each language individually.

Question on trilingualism

Welsh English MFL Comment

1. Important to speak W, E and MFL

[F.(4,192)=3.980, p=0.004]

[F (4,193) = .820, p = 0.514]

[F (4, 173) =.607, p = 0.658]

There is significance value for Welsh

2. All schools should teach W,E and MFL

[F (4,196) = 1.266, p =0.285]

[F (4,196) = .059, p = 0.994]

[F (4,179) = 9.764, p = 0.000]

There is significance value for MFL

3. Learning W,E and MFL is not difficult

[F (4,194) = 2.923, p =0.022]

[F (4,194) = 1.121,p =0.384]

[F (4,177) = 3.228, p =0.014]

There is significance value for Welsh and MFL

4. If I have children I would wish them to speak W, E and MFL

[F (4,192) = 5.068, p = 0.001]

[F (4,193) = .462, p = 0.763]

[F (4, 176) = 7.321,p = 0.000]

There is significance value for Welsh and MFL

The results of this investigation show that there is no significance value for English on any of the

four items in relation to trilingualism. This is probably, again, an indication of the power of English

as a world language, so that it is taken for granted that English will be important in each of the four

items under consideration. There is significance value for Welsh and MFL for item 3 and 4. This

might suggest that bilingual speakers feel that it is not difficult to learn several languages and also

that it is a valuable skill for their children to gain.

This is significance value for item 1 for Welsh and for item 2 for MFL. It is not surprising perhaps

that there is a significance value for Welsh for item 1, regarding the importance of speaking Welsh

and other languages, but it is a little surprising that there is only a significance value for MFL for

item 2 regarding the teaching of languages in schools. This may relate to the relative fragility of

MFL in the current education climate in the UK and the strength of Welsh in Wales.

Conclusion

Through examining issues of competence and attitude to Welsh, English, MFL and the idea of

trilingualism amongst university students in Wales it seems that the following effects are in

operation. Competence shows some noteworthy facets. Firstly, there is a higher general level of self


reported competence in all three languages than one might have expected, particularly in the ‘good’

and ‘very good’ categories. For Welsh 69% stated they had good or very good competence in

Welsh, which is a much higher figure than the general population, even in the 5-15 group of

greatest growth reported through analysis of the 2001 census (Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg,2000). Since

51% said they had Welsh /Welsh and English as their mother tongue, there is a group of 18% who

have achieved this level of self reported competence, presumably entirely through their education.

This is a significant finding and of particular note in that all the students were studying education. It

reveals a situation of healthy growth in Welsh. This is matched by very high level of self reported

good and very good competence in English, (96.7%). Taken together, the signs for a highly

competent bilingual teaching force of the future are very positive. Some of the sample (16.2%) said

they had no knowledge of MFL, despite in most cases a minimum of three years’ study in the

secondary school. This underlines the finding regarding negative attitude to MFL which was noted

in Figure 6. Yet good and very good competence in MFL was found to be more buoyant than

expected, at 26%. This might indicate the benefits of bilingual education and policy, which has been

in operation over several decades in Wales. It is a further example of the gap that might exist

between attitude and competence mentioned earlier.

Within the sub strands of literacy, writing is perceived as the least strong element for all three

languages. It is also interesting to note that for Welsh and MFL the receptive skills of listening and

reading are reported as stronger than the productive skills of speaking and writing. One might

wonder if this is because for these languages many speakers are learners rather than native speakers.

This issue certainly warrants further investigation.

Findings for attitude, looking at the languages separately, showed those toward Welsh being most

positive and those towards English and MFL being less positive. When all three languages were

looked at together, trilingually, the unfavourable attitudes decreased to less than 1% and there was

an increase in favourable attitude 42.9% relative to MFL (14%) and English (37%). However, this

figure (43%) was still considerably less than the (62%) favourable attitude for Welsh, which is a

phenomenon that has been well documented (Central Office of Information/WLB 1995, Baker

1985, 1988, 1992, Williams and Morris, 2000 and Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg, 2001, Gruffudd, 2000)

and which remained in this situation of examining attitudes not only to Welsh and English but also

MFL.


It was noticeable, at the micro level investigation, that English did not offer a significance value for

the four items on learning languages, while Welsh and MFL did. This underscores both the effect of

English as a dominant world language and also perhaps the differences between monolingual and

bilingual conceptual frameworks towards language.

The findings that those who are bilingual are likely to perceive that it is both easy to learn other

languages and important to do so, shown in Table 2, is important in terms of the NAfW policy on

learning MFL, Languages Count (2002). It also supports the work currently being undertaken by

CILT on triple literacy.

Overall, then, some final comments can be made about competence and attitude in this study of first

year university education students in Wales. As expected, these data show that attitude and

competence do not correspond in any simple way for the languages individually or together,

trilingually. With regard to the latter, for example, it was not the case that the greater the

competence in languages the more positive the attitude towards trilingualism. Indeed, there was no

significance value offered between competence in any of the three languages and attitude to

trilingualism; and, as research in Wales has shown, the connection between competence and attitude

is far from straightforward for bilingualism(Coupland et al, 2005; Gruffudd, 2000), even before

considering a third language.

In some ways these data show that attitude towards language per se can be more positive than

attitude towards what a language represents and thus does not necessarily conflict with issues of

culture and identity. People can learn languages without losing sight of ‘their’ language. This is

supported by the number of times bilingual competence and attitude, particularly for Welsh, offered

significance value. A usefulness model, rather than an ideological one, is a goal that seems

achievable in the light of the findings presented, where competence in all three languages is higher

than expected and where competence is more positively reported than attitude. This harmonises

well with trilingualism, or even plurilingualism. For, as is stated at the beginning of Words and

Worlds (Marti, Ortega, Idiazabal, x, 2005),

Languages are humanity’s most valuable cultural heritage. They are fundamental to understanding. Each language provides a system of concepts which helps us to interpret reality. The complexity of reality is easier to understand thanks to the diversity of languages.


References

Aitchison, J. and Carter, H. (1994) A Geography of the Welsh Language. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Aitchison, J. and Carter, H. (2000) Language, Economy and Society: The Changing Fortunes of the Welsh Language in the twentieth Century. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Aitchison, J. and Carter, H. (2004) Spreading the Word: The Welsh Language 2001. Talybont:Y Lolfa.

Assessment and Curriculum Council for Wales (2000) English in the National Curriculum. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government.

Baker, C. (1985) Aspects of Bilingualism in Wales. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Baker, C. (1988) Key issues in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Baker, C. (1992) Attitudes and Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Baker, C. and Prys Jones, S. (1998) Encyclopaedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Baker, C. (2003) Language planning: A grounded approach. In J-M. Dewaele, A. Housen and Li Wei (eds) Bilingualism: Beyond Basic Principles (pp 88-111). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Bialystock, E. (2001) Bilingualism in Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002) World English: A Study of its Development. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg (2001) The Use of the Welsh Language 2000 Welsh. Cardiff, The Welsh Language Board. <http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk.>

Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg (2004) Census 2001: Main Statistics about Welsh Cardiff: Cardiff, The Welsh Language Board. <http://www.bwrdd-yr-iaith.org.uk.>

Cenoz, J. (2003) Teaching English as a third language: The effect of attitudes and motivation. In C. Hoffmann and J. Ytsma (eds.) Trilingualism in Family, School and Community (pp.202-218). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Central Office of Information and the Welsh Language Board (1995) Public Attitudes to the Welsh Language: A Research Report prepared by NOP Social and Political for the Central Office of Information and the Welsh Language Board. London: NOP Social and Political.

Centre for Information on Languages Teaching in Wales (2005a) Interim Report on Teaching MFL in Primary Schools in Wales<http://www.ciltcymru.org.uk.>


Centre for Information on Languages Teaching in Wales (2005b) Triple Literacy: Why do we need to ‘make the link’?<http://www.ciltcymru.org.uk.>

Cooke, V. (1995) Multi-competence and the learning of many languages. Language, Culture and Curriculum 8, 93-98.

Coupland, N., Bishop, H., Williams, A., Evans, B. and Garrett, P. (2005) Affiliation, Engagement, Language Use and Vitality: Secondary School Students’ Subjective Orientations to Welsh and Welshness. In International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 8,1, 1-24.

Crystal, D. (1997) English in a Global Age Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, D. (2000) Language Death Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Department of Education and Skills (2004) Languages Work. London: DfES.

Ferguson, C.A (1959) Disglossia Word 15, p.125-40

Fishman, J. (1976) Bilingual Education Mass. Newbury House.

Fishman, J.A. (1991) Reversing Language Shift. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Fishman, J.A.(ed.) (2001) Can threatened Languages be Saved? Reversing Language Shift, revisited: A 21st Century Perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

General Teaching Council for Wales (GTCW) (2005) Wales’ first inductees. Teaching Council for Wales 7, 8-9.

Grosjean, F. (2000) The bilingual’s language modes. In J.L. Nichol (ed.) Language Processing in the Bilingual (pp9-30) Oxford: Blackwell.

Gruffudd, H. (2000) Planning for the Use of Welsh by Young People. In Colin H. Williams (ed.) Language Revitalization: Policy and Planning in Wales (pp173.207). Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Hamers, J.F. and Blanc, M. (2000) Bilinguality and Bilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Herdina, P. and Jessner, U. (2002) A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism: Perspectives of Change in Psycholinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Jenkins, G. H. and Williams, M. A. (eds.) (2000) "Let's do our best for the ancient tongue”: The Welsh Language in the Twentieth Century Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Lasagabaster, D. (2003) Trilinguismo en la ensenanza . Lleida: Editorial Milenio.

Marti, F., Ortega P., Idiazabal,I., Barrena, A., Juaristi, P., Junyent, C., Uranga, B. and Amorrortu, E. (2005) Words and Worlds: World Languages Review. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.


The National Assembly for Wales /Centre for Languages Teaching and Research (CILT) Cymru

(2002) Languages Count. Cardiff: National Assembly for Wales.

The National Assembly for Wales (2003) Iaith Pawb: A National Action Plan for a Bilingual Wales. Cardiff: National Assembly for Wales

The National Assembly for Wales /Centre for Languages Teaching and Research (CILT) Cymru (2002) Languages Count. Cardiff: National Assembly for Wales.

Welsh Office (2000) The National Curriculum in Wales. Cardiff :Welsh Office.

Williams, C.H. (ed.) (2000) Language Revitalization: Policy and Planning in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Williams, G. and Morris, D. (2000) Language Planning and Language Use: Welsh in a Global Age. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.


The idea of three languages or trilingualism is not one ... · Web viewThe mean for competence in...

Documents

Transcript of The idea of three languages or trilingualism is not one ... · Web viewThe mean for competence in...