Abstract
This paper reports on the qualitative part of a project investigating parental educational aspirations as manifested by enrolling their children (aged 3-6) into very early L2 instruction. The concept of educational aspirations is widely studied in educational psychology as well as in sociology and pedagogy. In SLA, these aspirations can fit in the new framework of imagery and creating visions as they are a part of an ideal L2 self. Data analysis concludes that parental visions towards their children’s achievement reflect self-efficacy beliefs; in other words, those parents who were unsuccessful foreign language (FL) learners themselves hoped that by starting early their children would learn lingua franca English well and this would help them achieve educational and vocational success, which indicates an instrumental motive. By contrast, those parents who were successful language learners were positive about their children’s future plurilingual attainment, not necessarily voicing the necessity of “an early start.” They believe languages contribute to overall emotional and cognitive growth, which shows more intrinsic and integrative motives. These findings suggest that the differences in ultimate FL attainment may start very early and are rooted in the socia (family) context.
Highlights
The pursuit of very early learning of foreign languages is extremely prevalent in monolingual settings where foreign language (FL) knowledge is regarded as a gateway to better occupational opportunities, and better life prospects
The goal of this paper is to look at the issue of early foreign language learning (FLL) from the psychological perspective and to explicate how it can fit in the L2 motivational selfsystem (Dörnyei, 2005)
The study revealed that differences in educational opportunities and parental aspirations can be observed in the early stages of the child’s life, which may account, at least partially, for differences in subsequent achievement
Summary
The pursuit of very early learning of foreign languages is extremely prevalent in monolingual settings where foreign language (FL) knowledge is regarded as a gateway to better occupational opportunities, and better life prospects. It is notable in countries which are largely monolingual, and where a language of rather small international recognition is spoken, such as Central European (cf Mihaljevic Djigunovic & Medved Krajnovic, 2015; Nikolov, 2009) or East Asian countries (cf Park & Abelmann, 2004). Starting to learn foreign languages early may be seen as an important investment towards achieving this goal
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