Abstract
This study draws on the notions of investment and consumption to interpret beliefs about learning languages other than English (LOTEs) among learners in Chinese universities. By interviewing 23 Chinese university students learning French or Spanish in a master’s program, we found that most participants questioned the usefulness of LOTEs for their professional career and viewed learning LOTEs as part of leisure and consumption rather than investment. Only a small number of participants related their language skill development to career aspirations and were motivated to continue learning LOTEs after the end of their LOTE classes. To further explain the different language beliefs about LOTE learning, we examined the identities of these LOTE learners. The analysis identified four patterns of ‘imagined identity’, indicating that the difficulty experienced by individual learners in anticipating the usefulness of LOTEs in their ‘imagined identity’ in the future, especially in their professional career, led to their belief about LOTEs as consumption and leisure rather than investment. This paper concludes with some implications for language policy planners in sustaining multilingual learning in Chinese higher education.
Highlights
Defined as one’s understandings or propositions about the world that they perceive to be true [1], the notion of belief is used in studies in various fields including the field of second or foreign language learning where language learning beliefs profoundly mediate language learning practices at multiple levels in a given context [2]
The results of this study revealed that the majority (16 out of 23) of languages other than English (LOTEs) learners exclusively considered LOTE learning as leisure and consumption, while a small number exclusively viewed language learning as an investment
Drawing on notions of investment and consumption, this study examined the language beliefs of LOTEs held by individual learners in Chinese higher education in the shifting context of language planning and policies
Summary
Defined as one’s understandings or propositions about the world that they perceive to be true [1], the notion of belief is used in studies in various fields including the field of second or foreign language learning where language learning beliefs profoundly mediate language learning practices at multiple levels in a given context [2]. As one of the most important components of language policy [6], language learning beliefs have attracted research attention in language education research, but the majority of recent research has focused on English as an international language [7,8,9,10]. Insufficient attention has been paid to the investigation of beliefs regarding learning languages other than English (LOTEs). This neglect of LOTE education is related to the long-term domination of English education in tertiary institutions in most educational contexts [11,12]. Research has argued that the expansion of English has inevitably narrowed the space for the learning and teaching of LOTEs [13,14,15,16], and undermines the maintenance of minority languages [17]
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