SURVEY ABOUT MULTILINGUALISM IN SCHOOLS
In order to gain further insights about multilingualism in schools and if it can be effective, I conducted a survey among high school students and young people, using the survey tool on Google Forms. To access the whole survey, click on the right.
SURVEY DATA
The survey was accessible in German for several weeks, mostly during the month of September, without a password or entering personal data. All results presented on this page are made on the data of 31 participants. The survey was shared through social media (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp).
SIDE NOTE I chose Google Forms because I had previously used the premium version of Survey Monkey for a different survey and was not satisfied with the tool's performance. Google Forms offered me a free and functional tool without any expenses that I used for the first time and found it very handy and easy to use.
PARTICIPANTS
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Moreover, there seems to have been a mistake when entering the participants' ages that I cannot find the source of anmyore. I must have changed the categories after a few answers had already been in which resulted in two categories describing approximately the same age: 26-30 and 26 or older.
Hence, the results have to be seen in relation to the above mentioned limitations. I think, however, that within the lines of this very small-scale survey, the conclusions drawn can still be representative to a certain extent. The full answers of the survey can be obtained by request. I will present the ones I find the most relevant, in the following. |
THE PARTICIPANTS IN NUMBERS |
age 6-9: 0 age 10-15: 7 age 16-19: 7 age 20-25: 7 age 26-30: 4 age 26 or older: 4 age 30 or older: 2 of which 45,2 % still go to school |
Twi, however, a language spoken by approximately 3,4 million people, mostly in Ghana[1], came as a surprise to me and is an appreciated sign for the relevance of this project: multilingualism includes all languages from all over the globe, not only the ones spoken in Europe.
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The answers to the question about the participants' mother tongues is dominated by German which was expected under the survey's conditions. However, Turkish, Dutch and even Twi were other mentioned answers. Dutch probably stems back to the region close to the Netherlands in Northrhine-Westfalia. I can say this because my 15-year-old cousin, who lives right next to the German-Dutch border, shared this survey with her friends.
I would have expected more Turkish, maybe even Arabic as a mother tongue due to migration in the past decades. Then again, the number of participants is not high enough to paint a representative picture. Moreover, the question does not ask for second languages, only the mother tongue. |
THE PARTICIPANTS' SECOND LANGUAGES
When talking about second or foreign language acquisition, this chart is especially interesting because it shows us that out of our 31 participants many learned or at least aimed at learning other languages than their mother tongues during their time in school. Keeping in mind that all participants answered that they go to school in Germany, Japanese is rather suprising. Plattdeutsch probably stems back from more regionalized parts Schleswig-Holstein. Other than that, English (96,8%), French, Spanish and Latin aren't surprising. With 35,5 % of participants going to school in Schleswig-Holstein, however, one could have expected Finnish and Danish to come up.
The second chart in this section shows how many foreign languages have been learned at the same time. It would have been better to have added "in school" to the question because one can learn 3-5 foreign languages at the same time in their life. 3-5 foreign languages in high school, however, is probably rather ambitious and hard to achieve within the school system. |
Another interesting chart is the one in which I asked, whether German was their only mother tongue or family language. Whereas 77,4% only learned German at home, 22,5% learned how to speak (an)other language(s) at home. This is almost a quarter of all participants that learned another language at home, not even in school. Looking back now at all those languages the formerly monolingual Germans from this chart learned in school, we see the sentence multilingiusm is the norm fulfilled.
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In order to find out whether easy multilingual approaches like incorporating different languages within the school building, I asked if there were signs in other languages than German (100% of answers said No) and how the participants would feel if they were. The majority was at least curious about the idea.
In my interpretation of the results, the written answers gave more insight to value systems of the participants. Instead of understanding the scenario the way it was meant, i.e. one sign in several languages, many of the answers seem like it has been assumed that signs would change entirely. Answers like "I already don't like all the English words in the German language" and "Some don't even know how to speak German right. You are probably aiming at children with a non-German origin as well as children with migration backgorund. Better to learn the language correctly, first" show that the potential for all walking past these signs to learn something new, is not considered. Nonetheless, other answers do consider the potential for all language learners as well as the possible help to those who don't know Germany, yet or well. They also point out that this would enable subconscious learning as well as "on the go". |
FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS
The selected charts about foreign language class show that within the example of English class, the majority mostly use English as the classroom language, which many didactics define as the right choice. It does also not stand in the way with mutlilingualism, after all, a language must be spoken to be learned. Also, the amount of spoken foreign language in class varies with the grade: an English senior class is able to conduct the whole lesson in English whereas young English learners still need more support from their mother tongue.
More significant to the multilingual purpose is thus the chart in the upper right corner. It seems to be a fitting representation of what this research project and the podcast have established so far: the status quo of multilingualism in foreign language teaching shows that some approaches to less monolingual language class have already been made - 12,9 % say that comparisons with other languages are often made. The vast majority, however, either does not profit from other languages, or at least not in a frequent manner. 29 % of the participants already had bilingual classes, more importantly however, 74,2% are open-minded towards having other subjects in different languages which is a clear sign that multilingual interest is there. |
MOTIVATION TO LEARN FOREIGN LANGUAGES
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This interest is also represented in the answers to the question, why the participants learn new languages. It can be seen that social factors play their role in the motivation for foreign language learning. Four people mention friends who speak other languages as a motivation, eight people state that they would like to live abroad one day. 38,7 % specified "fun" as a reason for learning new languages and 77,4 % said that speaking several languages will be important for their later profession, taking the economic factor of language into account.
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Seven people answered that German is not the only language they learned at home. 71,4 % of them have been asked by their teacher to explain something in their other languages, a sign that some teachers use students as "experts" from time and therefore acknowledging their other languages. It would have been interesting, however, to see which languages were referred to and if the problem of prestige, as explained in the podcast, is at play here.
Interestingly, 6 out of the 7 said they were unsure how this made them feel. This could either be an argument against the "students as experts" classroom situation, or it says that the circumstances were not preferable. Students are of course no linguists and have limited capabilities of taking over the expert role. Moreover, not every student likes to be exemplified. Teachers have to be sensitive aout all of the above. Again, 6 out of 7 said that they feel speaking another language is an advantage. The explanations said that it helps them in different life circumstances, creates a feeling of belonging, is diverse, is an advantage in Dutch class and helps learning other languages, makes the learning process more passive and easier. Another answer reads "It's just nice to speak another language as well as having many possibilities to speak your mind." One person answered in another question that they sometimes feel like they have to hide their other language from the public. Again, it would be interesting to know which language that is. In light of the "prestige problem" one could argue that it is likely to be Twi or Turkish. Two other answers to the same questions said "Can you even hide a language" and "I am who I am and I don't have to hide anything" which are confident, positive answers. The first one, however, does not seem to take into account that people do in fact hide their languages if they feel like they are socially unaccepted which shows, again, the importance of language awareness and intercultural learning, as well as a critical view on society. |
Coming to the last three presented charts of this survey, we take a look at the education in the students' mother tongues and family languages. 4 out of the 7 had or have language classes in their non-German language. When asked if they wanted to have classes in that language, 6 out of 7 answered Yes. That leaves us with at least two students who never had classes in their other language and would like to have them.
4 out of the 7 stated that they would like to use their other languages more often in school. Unfortunately there was not an option to justify that answer, thus we are left in the dark on the exact reasons. It is also questionable how the question was interpreted and how using the language in school differentiates from having classes in that language in school, which, as was just mentioned, almost all would appreciate. |