‘Having a decent understanding of more than one language’: exploring multilingualism with secondary school students in England

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examined the linguistic lives, as well as beliefs about multilingualism, of 422 secondary school students (ages 11–16) in Lincolnshire, England. The data were collected using questionnaires, replicating Haukås et al.’s (Haukås, Å, A. Storto, and I. Tiurikova. 2021. “Developing and Validating a Questionnaire on Young Learners’ Multilingualism and Multilingual Identity.” The Language Learning Journal 49 (4): 404–419; Haukås, Å, A. Storto, and I. Tiurikova. 2022. “School Students’ Beliefs About the Benefits of Multilingualism.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, doi:10.1080/01434632.2022.2075001.) work. Whilst the sample was predominantly monolingual by typical, often binary, categorisations of language use (e.g. first language), we also found many other instances of language use that contributed to their linguistic identity. The students held divergent views about multilingualism, as in Haukås et al.'s (Haukås, Å, A. Storto, and I. Tiurikova. 2022. “School Students’ Beliefs About the Benefits of Multilingualism.” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, doi:10.1080/01434632.2022.2075001.) study, yet these were less positive than in the original study. Predominantly, the students did not identify as multilingual despite studying a language at school, and felt this implied a linguistic proficiency beyond their own. Statistical analysis of group differences found that where they had exposure to languages in their personal lives (e.g. friends and family) they were more likely to feel positively about the benefits of multilingualism and its role in their future lives. The study demonstrates that even seemingly ‘monolingual’ students are exposed to a number of languages in, sometimes small, varied, ways and we propose that schools hold great, often untapped, potential as sites of exposure to language(s) and the development of multilingual identities.