Two at the time: The parallel learning of French and English as foreign languages

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the findings of a research project on the parallel learning of two foreign languages, French and English, by the same pupils in secondary education in Flanders (Belgium). The Flemish education system offers a unique context whereby the same learners acquire two foreign languages simultaneously in similar classroom environments. Not only does this reduce the number of intervening variables (e.g. memory capacity and age) substantially, it also offers an exclusive insight into the interaction between linguistic proficiency, curricular context and socio-psychological dispositions. Some 125 Dutch-speaking pupils, enrolled in the final year of secondary school, were selected from five schools in Flanders. Proficiency in both languages was measured by a cross-linguistically comparable test battery that evaluated productive de clercq and simoens: paralell learning 10 skills (speaking and writing). In addition, the pupils' attitudinal-motivational dispositions towards these languages were determined by means of a written questionnaire, consisting of some 100 statements that were based upon Gardner's (1985) AMTB and Baker's (1992) attitude instrument.In spite of their higher curricular exposure to French, the pupils consistently attained higher proficiency levels in English and were overall more favourably disposed towards English than towards French. Although several factors may contribute to this twofoldresult, our study suggests that the extra-curricular exposure to a foreign language is a significant factor with regard to foreign language learning as it influences both the available learning opportunities and the socio-psychological dispositions towards the foreign language. In turn, the combination of additional extra-curricular input and more In the last two decades, the ability to communicate in more than one language has become a key postulate of modern educational theory. Therefore most national educational systems in Europe provide the opportunity for their citizens to learn at least one language other than their own (Bonnet, 2002;EuroStat, 2012). This has resulted in a heightened attention to learning outcomes in foreign language teaching and learning, and in renewed efforts to identify the most effective approaches to foreign language education (e.g. Bonnet, 2002;García, 2009; Rifkin, 2005; Rolstad et al., 2005). To this respect, the current article is concerned with the outcomes and effectiveness of traditional foreign language education in secondary education where the target language (TL) is taught as a separate subject, typically for a limited number of lessons per week, and where the language classroom is usually the major if not sole source of contact with the TL.Although traditional foreign language instruction is still the most prevalent approach to foreign language education (C. Baker, 2006), the general consensus among educational policy makers, language educators and applied linguistics researchers appears to be that traditional foreign language teaching (FLT) i...