Becoming Multilingual: Empowering College Students to Learn and Maintain Languages for Life

Peter Ecke

Department of German Studies

Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching

eckep@arizona.edu

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Bilingual Initiative Symposium, University of Arizona, April 12, 2024

• NEH-funded project
• Research related to and revise the general education course “Becoming Multilingual: Learning and Maintaining Two or More Languages” (GER 150A1)

Overview

• Course history and objectives
• Course-related research about participants’ language backgrounds and needs
• Select questions and findings
• Discussion and Implications

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GER 150A1 Course history and objectives

• Developed in 2015 to:
• introduce undergraduates to research on bi/multilinguals (people who use two or more languages in their everyday life)
• help them see how myths about bilingualism and language learning persist
• and what the realities are.

Offered

• 9 times to date during spring semesters
• 9 times during summer/winter sessions
• to 1,367 UA students
• Including Hispanic students, international, immigrant, and Native American students.
• students who experience challenges related to their perceived language proficiencies and cultural identities

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Bilingual students

• Are often very critical and anxious about their language skills
• Feel that they do not meet expectations from family members and friends.

In this course:

• They realize that their experiences are shared by many others.
• Learn what it means to acquire, maintain, and forget languages.
• Gain insights that help them make informed decisions as language learners/users in college, their careers, and their families.

Research in progress

• On students’ language backgrounds and needs, their attitudes toward and perceptions of bilingualism, changes in perceptions from course beginning to the end
• Pre-/post-course questionnaires collected 2020-2024.
• Preliminary findings about
• Students’ language backgrounds
• The extent to which students are comfortable about their language skills
• Which issues related to bilingualism and language learning they are most curious about, and
• What they would like to improve most about their language skills.

Method: Questionnaire Items

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• Which of the following languages are your
• first/native language(s) [L1], and your second [L2], third [L3] or additional language(s) [L4, L5] with respect to order of acquisition?
• Mark all that apply, but only mark the second (L1) if you acquired 2 native languages simultaneously in childhood.

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Method: Questionnaire Items

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• Which term, do you think, best describes you and your language experiences/background?
• Monolingual
• Foreign language learner
• Bilingual
• Multilingual

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Method: Questionnaire Items

• Do you feel comfortable with your language skills?
• 1 very uncomfortable
• 2 somewhat uncomfortable
• 3 neither uncomfortable nor comfortable
• 4 somewhat comfortable
• 5 very comfortable

Method: Questionnaire Items

• Which of these questions are you most curious to learn about in our course?

I would like to:

• learn how I can effectively learn a foreign language.
• (re)learn a language that I used in childhood.
• learn about myself as a bilingual/multilingual.
• learn about people who learned and speak multiple languages.
• learn how I can bring up a child as a bilingual/multilingual.

��Method: Questionnaire Items�

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• What would you like to improve with respect to your language skills?

Course participants’ languages�

�

Other languages

��Being monolingual or bilingual��Which term, do you think, best describes you and your language experiences/background?��

Comfort with languages

Do you feel comfortable with your language skills?

��Interest in course topics��Which of these questions are you most curious to learn about in our course?��

Language improvement ��What would you like to improve with respect to your language skills?�

Summary�

• The UA’s bi-/multilingual and language-learning student community is incredibly diverse.
• Their language skills are a resource and capital.
• Some students (one third in the described course) are uncomfortable with their language skills.
• Many students are interested in how to effectively learn additional languages.
• Challenge: How can we address their interest and needs in UA language and cultural programs?

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Summary�

The GenEd course “Becoming Multilingual: Learning and Maintaining Two or More Languages” (GER 150A1)

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• Attempts to address students’ language challenges and needs.
• Helping them:
• Develop a (more) positive self-image by appreciating their (home) languages and cultures,
• Understand how language learning, maintenance and loss work,
• Set realistic goals for their own language (re)-learning
• Promoting a (more) harmonious bilingualism and well-being.

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