IN-SERVICE TEACHERS’ LANGUAGE ATTITUDES IN THE VALENCIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

What is it about?

The study of teachers’ attitudes towards languages has received some attention, as multilingualism has become one of the main educational targets for European school systems. The present preliminary study explores 21 in-service teachers’ language attitudes by means of a written questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. In so doing, data were collected in multilingual schools adopting three different school language programmes, namely those of a Catalan-based, a Spanish-based and an English-based language programme. The latter has been a context that has been omitted in previous research. The findings have confirmed the influence of the language programme on in-service teachers’ language attitudes as well as the paramount role of the L1 in the formation of language attitudes. Finally, our findings have pointed out that language attitudes and teaching practices do not always match since some monolingual views are found inside the classroom. Our study concludes that more teacher training is needed on the «Focus on Multilingualism» approach proposed by Cenoz and Gorter (2013).

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Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash