Alastair McLauchlan: The Negative L2 Climate: Understanding Attrition Among Second Language Students.

Abstract

The United Kingdom is a multilingual country. Indigenous languages and generations of migration have built up a complex pattern of language use. Yet the public perception, shaped and reflected by the media, is of a monolingual, monocultural society whose standardised English, universally spoken across the United Kingdom, has proved so attractive to outsiders across the world that Britons have no need to explore other languages. In such a context, it is an uphill task to motivate secondary school students to continue studying a foreign language, once it is no longer compulsory. A generation of quantitative and qualitative studies (reviewed in Coleman et al. 2007, cf. Macaro 2008) have shown that secondary school pupils generally regard the learning of foreign languages as difficult, boring, and—perhaps surprisingly for a nation which travels so extensively—of little practical use. New Zealand faces a very similar scenario. And despite its generic title and subtitle, it is actually in the context of New Zealand that this book explores language learner motivation in secondary education. Christchurch is New Zealand's second city and in most respects representative of the country's entire school population. McLauchlan's study traces a cohort of pupils in all Greater Christchurch's schools across the three final years of secondary schooling. The study begins in year 11. At this point, students may choose to take an examination in one or more foreign languages. This opt-in may be followed by two further years of school study, or by an opt-out at the end of year 11 or of year 12. The survey is set in its national socio-political context, and the author makes comparisons with the situation in the United Kingdom and Australia. The study focuses on six languages: French, German, and Japanese are traditional target languages now in decline; Spanish and Chinese are growing from a low base; Russian has gone, Samoan is too recent to figure, and McLauchlan also includes Latin, although the profile of learners is distinctive and some overall results are skewed as a consequence.