Young learners’ language attitudes in a multilingual school

Abstract

A renewed interest has arisen 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, the research on young learners’ attitudes towards languages in English-based schools is scarce. The present paper focuses 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. Many studies have been conducted within the framework of language attitudes across ages. However, as far as we know, no studies have accounted for young learners’ attitudes in an English immersion context, such as international schools. Therefore, the present study aims at filling in this research gap by analysing children’s language attitudes in an English immersion school context. The aims of this paper are twofold: in the first place, to analyse the language attitudes towards the three languages under investigation (Spanish, English and Valencian) of multilingual children attending an English immersion school. And, in the second place, to investigate the effect of age on language attitudes. The findings derived from the present study confirm the impact of age on young learners’ language attitudes. However, the school context does not present a determining role in young learners’ attitudes.