Publications

Publication details [#63100]

Huguet, Àngel, Cecilio Lapresta, Judit Janés and Maria Adelina Ianos. 2017. Can language attitudes be improved? A longitudinal study of immigrant students in Catalonia (Spain). International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 20 (3) : 331–345.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
Routledge

Annotation

This inquiry examines changes in attitudes towards Catalan, Spanish, and English over a 2-year period, on the part of secondary education students of immigrant origin living in Catalonia. It tries to supply new data by adopting a longitudinal design and by focusing on the immigrant population, which has raised new challenges for the Catalan society and education system. Data were gathered from 72 secondary education students who answered a language attitudes questionnaire twice, at a 2-year interval. The instrument chosen has been successfully used in the area formerly. The findings displayed that attitudes towards Catalan ameliorated, while attitudes towards Spanish and English remained stable, based on which the strength of language attitudes in this particular context is debated. Furthermore, the socio-demographic and affective variables traditionally explored as determinants of language attitudes were not found to affect the processes of attitude change.