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Citizens of a Multilingual World: Key Issues

3. Listening to Students and Parents

This Section features two national research projects that provide information on students' attitudes and motivation in respect of languages. It also presents information from a survey of parents that the Action Group commissioned which provides insight into parents' understanding and perceptions of their children's language learning at school and highlights areas where they would benefit from further information.

The Action Group took the view that the key group to be served by languages education at school must be the students themselves. It would therefore be essential to take detailed account of their perceptions and those of their parents.

Students

Presentations were given on two research projects funded by the Scottish Executive Education Department that provided data on students' attitudes and motivation in respect of modern languages.

Assessment of Achievement Programme pilot survey

The 1999 AAP pilot survey of French and German at P7 and S2, though focusing primarily on students' attainments, also produced data on their attitudes. Generally, these were positive at P7 but by S2 a significant minority had 'switched off'. Some students had developed positive attitudes to languages, to language learning and to speakers of other languages, to the extent that this was positively affecting their self-image and self-confidence and in turn their performance. Those students on the other hand who had 'switched off' were not only unable to see any real point in languages but their self-image and self-confidence had been negatively affected, to the extent that for them learning and using another language was stressful and anxiety inducing. This in turn was negatively affecting their performance.

Foreign Languages in the Upper Secondary School (FLUSS)

The 1998 FLUSS research gathered attitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of students in S4 and S5 who were aiming for or who had achieved Credit in a modern language. By definition therefore these students were high-attainers in the national examinations. Their underlying attitudes were positive and they rejected the view that this is an English-speaking world. They saw languages as potentially valuable to them. However, many did not take their modern language to Higher level. There were two main reasons for this. First, they did not see a modern language as being of immediate benefit to them and (rightly or wrongly) saw languages as being a difficult Higher which did not offer good chances of a top grade. Second, although they were high attainers in the national examination at S4, many of them did not attach high value to their modern languages attainments. This was because languages were not doing for them what they wanted them to do. They wanted languages to do two things: to enable them to access other cultures in an intellectually satisfying way, and to communicate with their continental peers on a reasonably equal basis. These two aims were far from being fulfilled: they found languages to be intellectually un-challenging and they judged their own level of languages proficiency to be well below that of their continental counterparts in English. This contrast between their high attainment in the national examinations and their low valuation of what they could use languages for was fuelling a perception that languages were not of immediate benefit to them.

In addition to the above research data, the Action Group received direct informal views from students themselves, both at the seminar opened by the Minister (referred to in the Introduction) and at some of the open sessions during Action Group meetings. On these occasions, the Action Group were impressed by the articulate way in which these students expressed their views about languages. These tended to reflect the Foreign Languages in the Upper Secondary School research findings but also convinced the Action Group that young people can indeed benefit from learning languages. What seemed important was good support in learning to analyse the underlying structure of the languages they are learning and also opportunities to use it for real purposes in communication with real native speakers, particularly if this entails the use of modern ICT equipment.

Students' attitudes and motivation

We believe that attitudes and motivation are the most challenging problem of all facing languages. The Foreign Languages in the Upper Secondary School report which gathered data from over 100 secondary schools and which was completed before the HMI Standards and Quality report was published described the 'climate of negativity' that was affecting languages at school. Without positive attitudes and high motivation, none of the developments we recommend in this report will have much chance of success.

Students have been critical of the approach to language teaching in schools which, they claim, lacks relevance to their perceived needs as adult language users, and is not intellectually challenging. These views suggest that the nature of school-based provision should be reviewed. In this report we have focused on the importance of promoting opportunities for language use within schools, given that limited opportunities for young learners exist outwith schools. Students who learn languages but never have the opportunity to use them may well question the purpose of the task. We also point to the potential of ICT to support the learning and use of languages in ways which may stimulate students' confidence and enthusiasm. More broadly, we suggest that local authorities and their schools should build opportunities to link languages with other areas of the curriculum, with the aim of making clear to students how language skills may be applied in a wide range of educational and professional contexts.

Factors associated with low languages morale among students

From the research available to us and from our own diverse experience, we can identify factors that are associated with low languages morale. We are of course not suggesting that all of these apply to all students. Some students have positive attitudes and high motivation, but in the case of those who do not, they may be influenced by any one or any combination from the list below:

Factors relating to society

• Feeling that society in general and business in particular do not really value languages.

• Lack of opportunity to use the language for real with real native speakers.

Factors relating to schools

• Feeling that senior management and guidance staff do not know or care much about languages.

• Feeling that the timetable and administration make languages choices difficult.

• Feeling that languages are not prioritised for use of ICT.

• Feeling that languages do not really connect with anything else and therefore do not deliver transferable skills.

Factors relating to teaching, learning, assessment and examining

• Feeling that high grades in languages examinations are difficult to obtain.

• Lack of perceived challenge in the languages curriculum.

• Lack of clear and helpful feedback about learning and progress in the language.

• Lack of grasp of the underlying structure of the language.

• Feeling that languages teachers are not 'marketing' languages positively and effectively for all levels of pupil.

Factors relating to self as individual learner and user of another language

• Feeling of being unable to communicate adequately with continental peers, despite possibly high examination attainments.

• Negative self-image, low self-confidence and high anxiety as language-learner and -user.

• Feeling that language learning requires considerable perseverance.

• Lack of clear understanding of why languages are important in the modern world.

The way in which these factors impact on individual students depends among other things on their individual personality, learning style, aptitude, personal and peer-group values, learning context and levels of support available to them. It also depends on the type of motivational orientation to which individual students are disposed.

Types of motivation associated with learning and using languages

International research identifies three main types of motivational orientation among language learners and -users: an instrumental orientation (e.g. 'Learning a language will gain me an entry qualification, or will be good for my CV or for getting a job'); an intrinsic orientation (e.g. 'I find language and language-learning to be fun, interesting, intellectually stimulating') and an integrative orientation (e.g. 'I'm interested in other cultures. I'd like to visit and belong to the communities that speak this other language that I am learning'). Individual learners differ from each other in the extent to which they are influenced by each of these three orientations. With young learners, intrinsic motivation tends to develop first, with integrative and/or instrumental motivation beginning to appear in early adolescence.

The research and everyday evidence available to us suggests strongly that at present in Scotland:

• the languages curriculum is perceived by students as intrinsically motivating to begin with through association with interesting and pleasurable activities at primary school but that intrinsic motivation declines at secondary school when students begin to perceive in it a lack of intellectual stimulation and a lack of deep engagement with their real and emerging adolescent interests;

• society and its schools are providing little instrumental motivation for learning languages;

• there is insufficient real contact with real speakers of the other language for a strong integrative motivation to develop, an aspect made worse through the withdrawal by some local authorities of the foreign language assistant scheme.

The challenge facing the Action Group then is to address the factors in society, in schools and in departments so that all three types of motivation may be supported, thereby allowing individual learners to find more than at present that corresponds to the particular motivational orientation that they have.

This analysis demonstrates clearly that, although individual teachers and departments do achieve outstanding successes, the problems of attitudes and motivation for languages in Scottish schools cannot be solved at the levels of teacher and departments alone. A clear, coherent and concerted plan will be necessary that operates at national, local authority and school levels.

We believe that much can be done in order to promote all three types of motivation, and that ICT has a major role to play in this regard, an aspect that is discussed in a subsequent section of our report. In addition to these different types of motivation to which pupils may be disposed, there are of course many motivational and de-motivational factors that arise directly from classroom interaction. In this respect we are encouraged to note that through the SCOTLANG project based at Scottish CILT two research projects¹ are currently being undertaken that are investigating the factors affecting motivation at school in Scottish modern languages classrooms.

Parents

Scottish CILT was commissioned to conduct a survey of parents' views, and this was achieved through a postal survey and telephone interviews.² An important issue emerging was the need for more accessible and more detailed information and guidance relating to languages provision in schools. Specific needs varied depending on the age of the student.

Information needs of parents of pupils in primary schools

Support for the introduction of languages in the primary school was high, and most parents of primary students who were learning languages were positive about their children's experiences. However, it was clear that the information they had received about the aims and goals of the provision available was, in many cases, limited. Parents wanted to know more about languages, including:

• what kinds of language learning activities were taking place in the classroom;

• how children's learning of other languages connects with their learning of English;

• what kind of support they could provide for their children's language learning at home;

• what opportunities there were for children to use their languages;

• how their primary experiences would be developed when they transferred to secondary school;

• more generally, what the aims of the MLPS programme were, and to what extent their school or their local authority supported these aims.

Information needs of secondary school students and their parents

For many students, enthusiasm about language learning declines during the course of their secondary education, for a variety of reasons. High levels of enthusiasm among younger learners and their parents may be connected with the novelty of the subject in primary schools. At secondary school, as the expected levels of linguistic competence increase and examinations loom, students may perceive languages as requiring more 'hard work' than they did at the outset.

In this context, an important finding from the parents' survey was that, while parents of pupils in P7 had the most positive view of their children's attitudes towards language learning, parents of students in S4 were the most likely to report that their children had a good grasp of the language they had been studying. Over 80% of parents whose children were in S4 at the time of the survey said that they were very or quite satisfied with provision in their children's schools. The findings suggested that parents were aware of their children's progress in languages from the time they began learning a language until the time they were approaching Standard Grade examinations, and that many felt that this level of achievement was a good 'baseline' from which to develop higher levels of competence in the future.

However, there is a similar need for more detailed and accessible information relating to language provision in secondary schools, bearing in mind particularly that students may be learning a language which parents themselves do not speak, and that it is therefore difficult for parents to arrive at an independent assessment of their children's progress.

Parents of secondary school students wanted to know:

• more about current approaches to language learning and teaching (on the assumption that things had changed since their own time at school);

• more about teachers' expectations of their children's progress and potential attainment;

• what goals were set for each year of their children's course and for the whole course up to Standard Grade and then up to Higher;

• likely outcomes for their children, in terms of examination success but also in terms of what they would be able to do with their languages;

• more about opportunities for studying and using languages after school.

Information needs of parents of children with learning difficulties

The survey was sent to a random sample of parents and therefore did not target parents of children with learning difficulties specifically. However, a few of the parents who participated identified their children as having learning difficulties. These parents were keen for their children to have the experience of learning a language, although in some cases these experiences had turned out not to be particularly positive. They thought that teachers needed to be more aware of the kinds of difficulties their children were likely to experience and that they should have training in alternative approaches to teaching languages which would enable them to support the children's efforts.

In addition to the kinds of information which all parents sought, parents of children with learning difficulties wanted to know:

• whether schools had policies relating to language learning for students with learning difficulties and what their children's entitlements were;

• whether information about their children's difficulties and about successful ways of working with them was passed on to their language teachers;

• what outcomes teachers expected their children would achieve, and how they would be supported in order to do so;

• what training languages teachers had to work with children with learning difficulties.

Potential role of parents

At present, parents of students learning modern languages play a role that is very much less prominent than that played by parents of children receiving Gaelic-medium primary education. Gaelic-medium parents offer substantial moral and other support to this form of education.

In the course of the work of the Action Group we encountered publications by a Canadian parents' organisation, Parents for French, which has undertaken a range of activities to publicise and explain French language programmes in ways which are accessible to parents and which respond to their needs and concerns. We consider this material and general approach to be exemplary.

Implications for action

The data available to us on students and their parents lead us to believe that:

• local authorities and schools should prioritise 'student motivation' as a topic for development work. This should include strategies for:
  

  ensuring that guidance and senior management staff are well-briefed on why languages are important;

  collecting views from students concerning what they find to be motivating and de-motivating in modern languages, and responding to these views;

  appealing to different types of motivation highlighted in this section; and

'marketing' and promoting languages;

• local authorities that have abandoned the foreign language assistant scheme should review their decision, since this is depriving students not only of real access to the language but also of a major source of motivation;
• schools should ensure that their timetables make languages as accessible as possible;

• ways should be found of providing parents with more and better information concerning their children's progress and potential in languages;

• parents' organisations in Scotland might wish to consider setting up a Parents for Modern Languages section, with the intention of addressing the lack of parent-oriented material on modern languages education.

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