Migrant students’ attitudes towards languages in bilingual regions of Spain

Abstract

In our current globalised and multilingual society, people often migrate to other countries and face the handicap of learning a different language other than their mother tongue. This is the situation for many families in bilingual regions such as Catalonia and the Valencian region, in which newcomers not only have to learn a majority language (Spanish) and a minority language (Catalan), but also the lingua franca (English) at school. In order to appreciate the three languages of the study, learners should be given the possibility of being in contact with them in different domains such as the educational context of school, local businesses and official institutions as well as in informal contexts such as the family home, social relationships and the use of media. Not only should they learn their linguistic code but also its culture so as to develop positive linguistic attitudes. This study tries to analyse the relation of language use in formal and informal contexts with linguistic attitudes of migrant primary school students towards the three languages of instruction at school and also the effect of age and origin. The results showed that all participants are aware of the importance of languages although 41.18% held negative attitudes towards English considering it a difficult language. Only 17.65% showed negative attitudes towards Catalan and 11.76% towards Spanish. All participants claimed to have contact with the three languages in the formal context of school. Contact with the minority language in the informal context of family home and friends in the street was expressed by far more participants than with the majority language. On the contrary, minor contact with English in the home context was shown although a great presence of this language in the media with 70% of participants who claimed to have contact in that domain.