Richard Nightingale

Bridging the Gap Between the Internal and the External: the Effect of Sociocultural Factors in Adolescent Learners' Attitudes Towards English Richard Nightingale

It is widely accepted that positive attitudes to languages play a significant role in language acquisition and proficiency, this book is one of a growing number of publications which provide an extended account of this phenomena in a multilingual context (the Valencian Community in Spain where Catalan, Spanish and English all exert a powerful influence). Due to the interrelated social and cultural nature of language use, the recognised importance of an early start to language instruction, and the need to continue with effective teaching until adulthood in order to combat the later disenchantment felt by some learners, the study described in this book examines the sociocultural factors which affect the language attitudes of multilingual adolescent EFL students. In order to do this, 29 students aged between 12 and 16 years were analysed by means of a questionnaire adapted from Lasagabaster & Huguet (2007), the results indicate that such external factors as sociocultural status, a stay abroad period, and ?out of school? exposure all have a significant effect on language attitudes. The book should be of particular interest to language teachers and linguistics researchers.