Language attitudes and language competences. An analysis of their effect on students in Catalonia
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Abstract
The migratory movements which occurred in the last decade placed Catalonia among the Spanish Autonomous Communities with the highest number of immigrant population, fact that had a significant impact on the education system. The studies conducted so far on this phenomenon highlight the little, or lack of, knowledge of the languages ??of the schools with which the immigrant students incorporate. Consequently, this reveals one of the current challenges of the education system: to promote equal opportunities for autochthonous and immigrant students. An equity in which linguistic knowledge is a key element, but no less important, are the language attitudes that those students have toward the main vehicular languages ??of the school. In this sense, our study aims to analyze the influence of Catalan and Castilian competences on language attitudes and if these relationships are conditioned by the origin of the participants. Our sample consisted of 673 autochthonous and 500 immigrants students enrolled in 10 center of Compulsory Secondary Education in Catalonia. Overall, the results reveal a positive relationship between language competences and language attitudes. However, in the case of autochthonous students a negative relationship between Catalan competences and attitudes toward Castilian was noticed, as a result of the negative association between attitudes toward Castilian and attitudes toward Catalan. Consequently, these results suggest the need to integrate language attitudes in the development of educational policies due to the effect they have on the construction of linguistic knowledge and vice versa.
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