̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Linda Fisher

Want more students to learn languages? Win over the parents, research suggests

tdk25 — Tue, 03 May 2022 15:21:56 +0000

Children’s attitudes towards learning languages and their willingness to see themselves as ‘multilingual’ are influenced far more by the views of their parents than by their teachers or friends, new research indicates.

̽��ֱ��finding implies that parents may have an important part to play in reversing the national decline in language-learning. ̽��ֱ��authors of the study, which was led by researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, say that efforts to increase uptake in these subjects would benefit from involving families, as well as schools.

Entry rates for modern languages have declined steadily, at both GCSE and A-Level, since the early 2000s. GCSE entry data, for example, show that the combined total number of pupils taking French, German, Spanish and other Modern Languages last year was almost half that of 2001.

̽��ֱ��new study surveyed more than 1,300 Year 8 students, aged 12-13, to understand what makes them self-identify as ‘multilingual’: as capable learners and users of other languages. ̽��ֱ��responses revealed that their parents’ beliefs about languages had almost twice as much influence as the opinions of their teachers, and were also significantly more influential than the views of their peers.

Specifically, parental attitudes help students who are still forming a view about languages work out whether these subjects matter personally to them. In general, the study shows that they are more likely to consider themselves ‘multilingual’ if they identify with languages at this personal level and see them as relevant to their own lives. Simply learning languages at school and being told that they are useful appears to make less difference.

Professor Linda Fisher, from the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Students’ personal commitment to languages is determined by their experiences, their beliefs, and their emotional response to speaking or using them. Slightly surprisingly, the people who feed into that most appear to be their parents.”

“This can be a positive or negative influence depending on the parents’ own views. Its importance underlines the fact that if we want more young people to learn languages, we need to pay attention to wider social and cultural attitudes to languages beyond the classroom. Waning interest in these subjects is a public communication challenge; it’s not just about what happens in schools.”

Some language-learning specialists argue that most people are fundamentally 'multilingual'. Even if they do not speak another language fluently, they may know assorted words and phrases, or another kind of ‘language’: such as a dialect, sign language, or computer code.

Recognising that they have this multilingual capability appears to strengthen students’ self-belief when they encounter modern languages at school. There is also evidence that students who self-identify as multilingual perform better across the school curriculum, including in non-language subjects.

̽��ֱ��study explored what leads students to see themselves in these terms, and whether this varies between different groups – for example, those who have ‘English as an Additional Language’ (EAL), and typically speak another language at home.

In the survey, students were asked to state how strongly they agreed or disagreed with various statements, such as: 'Learning other languages is pointless because everyone speaks English', and: 'My parents think that it’s cool to be able to speak other languages.' They were also asked about their own experience with languages, and how multilingual they considered themselves to be. ̽��ֱ��researchers then developed a model showing the relative importance of different potential influences on their self-identification as language-learners.

Although some influences – such as that of peers – differed for EAL and non-EAL students, that of parents was consistently strong. Across the board, the relative impact of parents’ attitudes on students’ willingness to see themselves as multilingual was found to be about 1.4 times greater than that of their friends, and almost double that of their teachers.

̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that encouraging more parents to recognise their own multilingual capabilities would positively affect their children’s own language-learning. “In an ideal world we should be encouraging adults, as well as children, to see themselves as having a repertoire of communicative resources,” Fisher said. “It’s remarkable how quickly attitudes change once you start asking: ‘What words do you already know, what dialect do you speak; can you sign?’”

More broadly, the study found that young people are more likely to see themselves in these terms if they are exposed to meaningful experiences that involve other languages – for example by hearing and using them in their communities, or while travelling abroad. This, along with their personal and emotional response to the idea of languages, informs the degree to which they self-describe as multilingual.

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that this raises questions about recent Government reforms to language GCSEs, which are meant to help students 'grow in confidence and motivation'. ̽��ֱ��new measures focus narrowly on so-called linguistic 'building blocks': for example, requiring students to learn 1,700 common words in the target language. Head teachers’ bodies have already criticised them as “prescriptive and grinding” and liable to alienate pupils further.

̽��ֱ��new study similarly indicates that encouraging more young people to learn languages requires a broader-minded approach.

“There’s no evidence that if you just focus on the mechanics – phonics, grammar and so on – you’re going to motivate students or, for that matter, teachers,” Fisher said. “Students need to discover what languages mean to them, which means they also need to learn about culture, identity and self-expression. Simply drilling verb forms into them will only persuade a swathe of the school population that these subjects are not for them. That is especially likely if their parents don’t value languages either.”

̽��ֱ��research is published in the International Journal of Multilingualism.

Parents influence children’s attitudes to languages far more than their teachers or friends, research finds. This implies that efforts to reverse the national decline in language-learning need to target families as well as schools, researchers say.

Waning interest in these subjects is a public communication challenge; it’s not just about what happens in schools

Linda Fisher

Ben Mullins via Unsplash

Girl listening in the classroom

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Students who self-identify as multilingual perform better at GCSE

tdk25 — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:26:41 +0000

̽��ֱ��study, of just over 800 pupils in England, found a positive relationship between GCSE scores and ‘multilingual identity’: a reference to whether pupils felt a personal connection with other languages through knowledge and use. Those who self-identified as multilingual typically outperformed their peers not just in subjects such as French and Spanish, but in non-language subjects including maths, geography and science. This applied whether or not they actually spoke a second language fluently.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, not all pupils who were officially described by their schools as having ‘English as a Second Language’ (EAL) thought of themselves as multilingual, even though the term is used by schools and Government as a proxy for multilingualism. Correspondingly, these pupils did not necessarily perform better (or worse) as a group at GCSE than their non-EAL peers.

̽��ֱ��results indicate that encouraging pupils to identify with languages and to value different styles of communication could help them to develop a mindset that supports academic progress overall.

Other recent research has argued for broadening the scope of language lessons so that, as well as studying vocabulary and grammar, pupils explore the importance of languages and their significance for their own lives. This new study was the first, however, to examine the relationship between multilingual identity and attainment. It was led by academics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the findings are published in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education.

Dr Dee Rutgers, a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��evidence suggests that the more multilingual you consider yourself to be, the higher your GCSE scores. While we need to understand more about why that relationship exists, it may be that children who see themselves as multilingual have a sort of ‘growth mindset’ which impacts on wider attainment.”

Dr Linda Fisher, Reader in Languages Education at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “There could be a strong case for helping children who think that they can’t ‘do’ languages to recognise that we all use a range of communication tools, and that learning a language is simply adding to that range. This may influence attitude and self-belief, which is directly relevant to learning at school. In other words, what you think you are may be more important than what others say you are.”

̽��ֱ��study’s authors argue that being multilingual means far more than the official EAL definition of being ‘exposed to a language at home that is known or believed to be other than English’. They suggest that even young people who see themselves as monolingual possess a ‘repertoire’ of communication. For example, they may use different dialects, pick up words and phrases on holiday, know sign language, or understand other types of ‘language’ such as computer code.

̽��ֱ��study involved 818 Year-11 pupils at five secondary schools in South East England. As well as establishing whether pupils were officially registered as EAL or non-EAL, the researchers asked each pupil if they personally identified as such. Separately, each pupil was asked to plot where they saw themselves on a 0-100 scale, where 0 represented ‘monolingual’ and 100 ‘multilingual’. This data was compared with their GCSE results in nine subjects.

Students who spoke a second language at home did not always personally identify either as EAL or multilingual. Conversely, pupils who saw themselves as multilingual were not always those earmarked by the school as having English as an additional language.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that these terms didn’t correlate more closely is surprising considering that they are all supposedly measuring the same thing,” Rutgers said. “Just having experience of other languages clearly doesn’t necessarily translate into a multilingual identity because the experience may not be valued by the student.”

School-reported EAL status had no impact on GCSE results, although pupils who self-identified as EAL generally did better than their peers in modern languages. Those who considered themselves ‘multilingual’ on the 0-100 scale, however, performed better academically across the board.

̽��ֱ��strength of this relationship varied between subjects and was, again, particularly pronounced in modern languages. In all nine GCSE subjects assessed, however, each point increase on the monolingual-to-multilingual scale was associated with a fractional rise in pupils’ exam scores.

For example: a one-point increase was found to correspond to 0.012 of a grade in Science, and 0.011 of a grade in Geography. Students who consider themselves very multilingual would, by this measure, typically score a full grade higher than those who consider themselves monolingual. Positively identifying as multilingual could often therefore be enough to push students who would otherwise fall slightly short of a certain grade up to the next level.

̽��ֱ��findings appear to indicate that the positive mentality and self-belief which typically develops among pupils with a multilingual identity has spill-over benefits for their wider education. ̽��ֱ��authors add that this could be cultivated in languages classrooms: for example, by exposing young people to learning programmes that explore different types of language and dialect, or encouraging them to think about how languages shape their lives both inside and outside school.

“Too often we think about other languages as something that we don’t need to know, or as difficult to learn,” Fisher said. “These findings suggest that if pupils were encouraged to see themselves as active and capable language learners, it could have a really positive impact on their wider progress at school.”

Young people who consider themselves ‘multilingual’ tend to perform better across a wide range of subjects at school, regardless of whether they are actually fluent in another language, new research shows.

If pupils were encouraged to see themselves as active and capable language learners, it could have a really positive impact on their wider progress at school.

Linda Fisher

Jacqueline Brandwyn via Unsplash

Saying goodbye

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Cultivating ‘multilingual identities’ in schools could help reverse national crisis in language-learning

tdk25 — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 08:40:02 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge study found that pupils who learn about the value of languages, how languages shape personal identity, and their impact on social cohesion, feel much more positive about subjects like French, German and Spanish; compared with those who only learn the speaking and writing skills prescribed by the national curriculum.

Researchers conducted a trial with 270 pupils at four English secondary schools over a full academic year. While all the pupils received traditional language lessons, some also participated in activities which explored the value of multilingualism and its significance in their own communities and lives. Pupils who were exposed to this extended programme showed significantly more belief in their ability to learn a language, and were up to 35% more likely to express positive sentiments about studying languages, by the end of the year.

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that encouraging young people to form ‘multilingual identities’ could help to reverse the national crisis in language learning. According to the British Council’s annual Language Trends survey, only 51% of pupils opt to study a foreign language to GCSE: far off the Government’s Ebacc target of 75% of pupils by 2022.

Dr Karen Forbes, from the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Young people in England often wonder why they should study languages given that English is used internationally. ̽��ֱ��answer they usually get is that it might be useful in the future, which is a pretty unpersuasive argument when you’re 14. We found that if we encourage them to reflect on how languages relate to them personally, they are much more likely to respond positively to language learning. This seems crucial if we want to reverse the decline in these subjects.”

̽��ֱ��trial used downloadable materials developed by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge-based ‘We Are Multilingual’ project, which aims to encourage young people both to value multilingualism, and to appreciate that everyone uses more than one ‘language’ in the broadest sense.

Dr Linda Fisher, ̽��ֱ�� Reader in Languages Education, said: “Everyone depends on a repertoire of communication, whether that involves a second language, a particular dialect, non-verbal signs, or something like computer code. Helping young people to realise that is key to showing them that they can ‘do’ languages. Language education needs to be about more than just vocab and verbs.”

̽��ֱ��pupils were in Year 9 (ages 13 to 14): the final year of compulsory language education before they choose subjects for GCSE. They were drawn from four very different schools in London and the East of England.

Participants were split into three groups. A control group continued with their regular lessons in French, German or Spanish; while two intervention groups took six, one-hour modules exploring multilingualism over the course of the year. These covered topics such as ‘Why learn languages?’, different types of language and dialect, and the relationship between language, cultural identity and belonging.

̽��ֱ��two intervention groups engaged with this material at different levels. While a partial intervention group completed follow-up activities designed to reinforce some of the core ideas, the full intervention group examined how the topics affected them personally. For instance, in one exercise, this latter group was asked to investigate what different languages their own classmates knew; in another they compiled photographs showing how different languages were used where they lived.

̽��ֱ��researchers used surveys, both before and after the academic year, to measure how far pupils’ attitudes towards language learning changed. For example, pupils were asked to rate how ‘multilingual’ they considered themselves on a scale of 0-100. They were also asked about their beliefs regarding languages, those of their parents and friends, and how competent and confident they felt as language-learners. In addition, pupils were asked to complete the blanks in statements such as: ‘Learning a foreign language is like… because…’

By the end of the trial, those in the partial and full intervention groups consistently responded more positively to statements about the importance of languages than those in the control group. They also showed much more self-belief about their ability to learn languages.

̽��ֱ��most significant findings, however, came from the full intervention group. For example, the extent to which pupils in this group self-identified as multilingual rose on average by 11 percentage points over the year, compared with a 2.5-point rise in the partial intervention, and a one-point fall in the control group.

Significantly, pupils in the full intervention expressed much more enthusiasm for learning languages, and took greater pride in the idea of doing so. When asked to complete different statements regarding their feelings about languages, the percentage of positive responses in this group rose between 15% and 35% across the year, compared with much smaller changes in the other groups.

“It seems pretty clear that pupils who are encouraged to think about what languages mean to them personally are more interested in studying them, and see themselves as more multilingual,” Forbes said.

Fisher added: “ ̽��ֱ��evidence suggests that we are missing an opportunity to teach children about languages, as well as how to speak and write them. Integrating that into the curriculum could potentially lead to very positive transformations in pupils’ attitudes towards language learning.”

̽��ֱ��research is published in ̽��ֱ��Language Learning Journal.

More young people may choose to study foreign languages to GCSE if they are encouraged to ‘identify’ with languages at school, rather than just learning vocabulary and grammar, new research suggests.

We are missing an opportunity to teach children about languages, as well as how to speak and write them

Karen Forbes

Michael und Maartje via Pixabay

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Research at the chalk face: connecting academia and schools

lw528 — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 10:00:50 +0000

Twenty years ago, two head teachers walked into the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Education with a proposal. We want to work with you, they told academics, but don’t just come and “do research on us”. We want to work in partnership.

̽��ֱ��approach might have met short shrift in more traditional institutions, but the outward-looking Education Department, now the Faculty of Education, was different. Already working closely with over 30 schools on a school-based teacher education programme, and welcoming many teachers onto its Masterʼs and PhD programmes, it saw the chance to forge new bonds.

Two decades on, School– ̽��ֱ�� Partnership for Educational Research (SUPER) continues to flourish, bringing together academics and teachers from 12 schools around the eastern region. ̽��ֱ��partners devise and run collective research projects – on topics from pupil engagement to teacher learning – and share findings within and beyond the group.

̽��ֱ��latest project has focused on the increasingly critical area of pupil resilience, as Dr Ros McLellan, coordinator of the SUPER network, explains: “Across the UK, mental health issues in children are increasing while wellbeing is deteriorating. Evidence shows that wellbeing programmes in schools can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. But we know that funding constraints and lack of prominence given to wellbeing in the inspection framework create real challenges for schools. Our research is asking how resilience and wellbeing can be promoted in a results-driven educational climate.”

̽��ֱ��group devised a wellbeing survey that was conducted across the partner schools, backed up by detailed pupil interviews. ̽��ֱ��findings showed that girls and Year 10 students are more vulnerable at secondary school – and that students from low-income backgrounds are vulnerable at all ages.

“ ̽��ֱ��individual schools are now introducing their own wellbeing interventions tailored to the needs revealed by the study, and we’ll be working with them as they assess and share the impact of the interventions,” says McLellan.

A ‘toolkit’ to help schools

SUPER is one of a range of projects forging direct connections between the Faculty – part of a world-leading university that is often viewed primarily in an international context – and the living, breathing community of pupils, parents and teachers on its doorstep.

Dr Riikka Hofmann, for instance, has been working with local schools on understanding how best to improve students’ learning – finding that approaches that draw on interaction and students’ ideas can achieve better outcomes. But she has also found that it’s not always easy for schools – especially those in deprived areas that are tackling a wide range of pupil needs – to translate research findings into teaching practice.

“We know that teachers find it difficult to take up new forms of learning, no matter how effective research shows them to be,” she explains. “Schools may be concerned about the short-term risks for performance outcomes and inspections involved in trialling new practices. Also, teachers in schools serving disadvantaged populations can hold limiting views of their students’ capabilities and be less likely to introduce change.”

Hofmann’s latest project, backed by an Economic and Social Research Council-funded Impact Acceleration grant, is creating a ‘toolkit’ to help schools introduce and evaluate effective educational techniques to boost teaching and learning. Her team is working with four eastern region partnership schools in which a high proportion of students face multiple disadvantages, such as financial or language difficulties.

She aims to make the toolkit available to all schools, nationally and ultimately globally. Tried and tested Faculty research, she argues, should benefit all schools, not only those with fewer challenges to divert them, and ensuring this happens is as much part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s widening participation agenda as diversifying admissions. “It is well known that some of the core barriers to raising aspirations among disadvantaged children happen not only at widening participation in terms of university admissions, but also much earlier, in learning opportunities that disadvantaged children have in school.

“We are a university with a global mission and that includes focusing on disadvantaged communities everywhere, including those near us. ̽��ֱ��East of England has some of the most deprived areas in the whole country. Our work aims to have a positive impact on the people in those communities, and also helps us to understand the ways change can happen in disadvantaged settings.”

Language learning

̽��ֱ��busy two-way pipeline linking the Faculty of Education and schools in the region also lies at the heart of a partnership that focuses on exploring the influence of multilingual identity on foreign language learning among teenagers and its relationship with attainment. ̽��ֱ��education strand of the project, led by Dr Linda Fisher, is part of a large-scale and far-reaching language sciences research programme, Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies (MEITS) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Working with six secondary schools in the eastern region and another in London, Fisher’s team is tracking the academic performance of 2,000 pupils over two years, including monolingual learners studying a second language and multilingual learners adding a further language in the classroom.

Together with teachers, Fisher and colleagues have devised and trialled a package of teaching materials, which begin by encouraging students to recognise that their understanding of dialects, slang, emojis and even the most basic foreign language ability all represent a form of multilingualism.

“ ̽��ֱ��main idea is to see whether we can we offer young people the agency to develop a multilingual identity if they so wish and to see what the impacts of that are,” Fisher says. ̽��ֱ��results have been positive. “Reflecting on language learning was not only enjoyable for students but also made them more open minded, more aware of the place of language in the world and more inclined to be engaged with language learning in the classroom.”

Many students involved in the project reported a change in attitude, seeing languages more as a vital life skill than just another subject to struggle with at school. “I used to think languages only help on holiday,” said one. “Now I think languages adapt your brain and help you understand different cultures.”

“Practical, and real, and of use to schools”

For the academics, meanwhile, all of these projects are creating a model for boosting the chances of research findings making the journey from concept to coalface and having a real impact on school practice.

This level of collaboration between academics and schools is fundamental to the success of the projects, and yet is surprisingly unusual and should not be taken for granted says McLellan: “Whenever I talk about SUPER in other contexts, people are always interested in how we manage to do it because schools and universities often have different agendas, timescales and ideas over what constitutes research.

“ ̽��ֱ��projects work because schools in our region, which is very diverse, want to work with us. This is not just pie in the sky, ivory tower stuff: it is practical, and real, and of use to schools. We’ve broken down the artificial walls: we’re out there.”

Researchers in Cambridge’s Faculty of Education are working with teachers to improve the experience of learning in the East of England – and boost pupils’ life chances.

̽��ֱ��projects work because schools in our region, which is very diverse, want to work with us. This is not just pie in the sky, ivory tower stuff: it is practical, and real, and of use to schools. We’ve broken down the artificial walls: we’re out there

Ros McLellan

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