Young learners’ language attitudes in a multilingual international school

Abstract

A renewed interest has arose on the importance of language attitudes in the acquisition of an additional language. Variables, such as age, gender, mother tongue, and the sociolinguistic context have been taken into consideration when exploring language attitudes. However, scarce research on young learners’ attitudes towards languages in English-based schools can be found. The present MA thesis focus on young learners’ language attitudes in a high English immersion context in the province of Castelló de la Plana, in the Valencian Community, where two official languages coexist, Spanish as the majority language, and Valencian as the minority language. However, English is the leading language of instruction in this international school context. Hence, the aim of the present study is to investigate what the language attitudes of young learners towards these three languages (Spanish, Valencian and English) in an English-based school context are and determine whether the age variable also plays a role in this type of setting. The findings derived from the present study confirm the effect of age towards young learners’ language attitudes. However, the school context does not present a determining role in young learners’ attitudes.