Content
Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 2
Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 3
Results .................................................................................................................................... 4
Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 12
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 14
Reference ............................................................................................................................ 15
Appendix............................................................................................................................. 16
Appendix (1) Questionnaire ........................................................................................ 16
Appendix (2) Completed questionnaire .................................................................. 17
Appendix (3) Research diary ....................................................................................... 19
1
Introduction
Bilingual education is a worldwide phenomenon, especially in some countries in Asia
and South America, such as China, Korea and Argentina. These countries’
governments support their people to learn second language for improving their
people’s skills and ability. But in some other countries, they have their own language
and they want to support it. Because they believe their language is an important part
of their culture. Welsh government is one of them. It support welsh education for a
long time. Some surveys made by Welsh government or some institutions show that
about 22% of students (based on 7700 seven-year-old learner in 2015/16) attend in
Welsh-medium education. The number of adults and young people fluent Welsh
speaker remained stably from 2004 to 2015, but Welsh government tries to increase
the figure to 40% by 2050 (Welsh government 2017). However, the number of young
people who can speak welsh decreased, only 11% young people speak Welsh daily
(Welsh government 2015). There is no sufficient research to show which groups of
people more likely to support bilingual education (Welsh-English). Therefore, the
purpose of the research was gathering data and trying to find the correlation
between the attitude to bilingual education and educational background. The
hypothesis is that university graduates are more likely to support bilingual education,
because we believe university graduates may more attach importance to knowledge
and language diversity whereas non-university graduates may be prone to
anti-intellectualism.
2
Methodology
The report is based on the results of questionnaire which is trying to find the people
with different attitudes to bilingual education (see Appendix 1). The research was
undertaken in Queen Street, from 3pm to 4:30pm, on 22th July, 2017. 20 people
were surveyed, separately 11 non-university graduates and 9 university graduates.
The questionnaire had been piloted with 6 classmates from other classes in Cardiff
Business School before it was tested officially. It found some problems and we
modified them to be seen more formal and clearer.
The questionnaire consists of 9 questions, which includes 3 open questions and 6
multiple choices questions. Some questions are based on the research from welsh
government website (http://gov.wales/?lang=en). Searching key words combines
with ‘Welsh language’, ‘bilingual education’, ‘investment of Welsh language’.
3
Results
The percentage of people
Q1 Can you describe your Welsh language level?
Please choose all that apply.
100%
100%
80%
60%
46%
40%
0%
18%
18%
20%
0%
0% 0%
0%
18%
0% 0%
0%
Understand Speak Welsh Read Welsh Write Welsh None of the
spoken
above
Welsh
University graduates
Above all
Non-university graduates
The graph shows that all of university graduates (9 people) do not understand Welsh.
5 non-university graduates do not understand welsh either, but 2 non-university
graduates are experts of Welsh.
The percentage of people
Q2 In your community, are there adequate
opportunities for learning Welsh?
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
78%
55%
45%
22%
Yes
No
University graduates
Non-university graduates
Figure 2. If people have enough opportunities to learning Welsh in their
communities.
As we can see from figure 2 above, 78% university graduates think that there are no
adequate opportunities to learn welsh in their communities. On the other hand, 55%
4
non-university graduates think there are enough opportunities to learn Welsh.
Q2.1 If not, do you think it should be included
in your community?
The percentage of people
80%
70%
71%
60%
60%
50%
40%
40%
29%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Yes
No
University graduates
Non-university graduates
Figure 3. Should there be opportunity to learn Welsh in their community?
The bar graph shows that 5 university graduates (71%) believe there should have
chance to learn Welsh, the proportion of non-university graduates who believe
learning Welsh should be included are also high (60%).
Q3 What are the difficulties in Welsh learning?
University graduates
Non-university graduates
Hard to learn;
22%
Do not need to
use; 45%
No
time/opportunit
y to practise;
33%
Figure 4. People’s different opinions of difficulties in Welsh learning
The pie chart shows that two parts of university graduates (separately 45% and 33%)
believe the difficulties of learning Welsh are ‘no need to use’ and ‘no
time/opportunity to practice’. On the other hand, more than half of non-university
graduates (55%) think learning Welsh is ‘no chance to use’.
5
THe percentage of people
Q4 To what extent are you willing to learn
Welsh in future?
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
100%
45%
28%
0% 0%
0% 9%
Strongly agree
Agree
University graduates
18%
0%
0%
Neutral
Disagree
Totally
disagree
Non-university graduates
Figure 5．People’s different inclination to learn Welsh in future.
From Figure 4 , all 9 university graduates totally disagree with learning Welsh in
future , while the figure for non-university graduates have more positive attitudes to
learn Welsh, separately 1 agree and 3 neutral choices.
The percentage of people
Q5 Do you think if it is necessary to increase
Welsh-medium resources for Welsh learners (for
example, textbooks)?
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
78%
73%
27%
22%
Yes
No
University graduates
Non-university graduates
Figure 6. People’s opinions of if Welsh-medium resources should be increased for
Welsh learners.
The graph shows that more than half of non-university graduates (78%) think it is
6
necessary to increase Welsh-medium resources. The number of non-university
graduates disagree with ‘learning Welsh resources should be increased’ is a little
more than that of university graduates (separately 27%, 22%).
THe percentage of people
Q6 Do you think whether social media should
support people to use Welsh?
80%
67%
70%
64%
60%
50%
40%
36%
33%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Yes
No
University graduates
Non-university graduates
Figure 7. People’s attitude to whether social media should support people to use
Welsh.
The graph indicates that 64% non-university graduates think social media ‘has no
need to support people to use Welsh’, which are similar to university graduates
(67%).
The percentage of perople
Q7 What effects do you think if employees
have enhanced Welsh language skills?
50%
45%
40%
30%
33%
36%
27%
27%
20%
11%
10%
11%
9%
0%
It brings a lot of It just works a little. It does not work.
advantages.
university graduates
non-university graduates
7
I do not care.
Figure 8. People’s different attitudes to Welsh learning in workplace.
The bar chart shows the proportion of university graduates that believe ‘learning
Welsh just works a little’ are the highest (45%), while 36% non-university graduates
believe Welsh can ‘bring a lot of advantages’.
Q7.1 Why People have different attitudes to Welsh learning
in workplace?
University graduates
Non-university graduates
18%
18%
27%
37%
Good to know culture, encourage
people to learn
More opportunities to learn
different languages
Not effective to communicate
Useless for finding jobs
Figure 9. The reasons of different People have different attitudes to Welsh learning in
workplace.
These two pie charts show that 56% university graduates thought learning Welsh is
good for specific jobs, like translation. However, the most proportion of
non-university graduates think it is not effective to communicate, which is 37%.
8
The percentage of people
Q8 To what extent do you support government invest
more funding to bilingual languages (for example,
bilingual signs and bilingual schools)?
50%
40%
44%
33%
36%
30%
20%
18%
18%
11%
10%
9%
11%
0%
0%
Strongly agree
Agree
neutral
University graduates
18%
disagree
Totally
disagree
Non-university graduates
Figure 10. People’s different opinions of government investment to Welsh-English
language education
The graph shows that a large proportion of university graduates (44%) strongly agree
to support, which is as same as the numbers of non-university graduates. However,
11% university graduates chose ‘disagree’ on this investment.
9
Q8.1 The reasons why people agree/disagree government's
inverstment of bilingual languages
Non-university graduates
University graduates
18%
18%
27%
37%
Totally agree, broaden language and culture
Agree, useful for specific jobs, like Welsh language
teachers
Neutral/disagree, no need to use
Totally disagree, not useful for young people to find
jobs
Figure 11 People’s attitudes to investing money on bilingual education.
The charts illustrate that most university graduates totally agree with it is good for
culture diversity (45%). Non-university graduates think it is useful for specific jobs,
which are 37%.
10
Q9 Rank the following languages in order of how important
they are for children’s education.
University graduates
Non-university graduates
C-A-B; 11%
B-C-A;
56%
C-B-A; 22%
B-A-C; 11%
A.Welsh only
B. English only
C.Welsh-English
Figure 12. People’s opinions of rank of importance of languages
The pie charts show that the proportions of both university graduates and
non-university graduates who believe English only is the first priority are similar
(separately 67% and 64%). Only 33% university graduates believe Welsh only is the
first priority.
11
Discussion
The hypothesis of the report is university graduates are more likely to support the
bilingual education (Welsh-English). However, according to the results of the
questionnaire, the hypothesis seems to be disproved. Some charts show that
non-university graduates are more inclined to support bilingual education
(Welsh-English).
There are many unexpected outcomes. In Figure 4, 4 university graduates (44.4%)
attributed the ‘no need to use’ to the difficult part of learning Welsh whereas more
non-university graduates (54.5%) believed that ‘no chance to use’ is an important
obstacle. It may indicate that university graduates already have achieved higher
degree, they are easier to obtain good career. Therefore, they do not have
motivation to learn. It may be able to explain the results of Figure 8, more
non-university graduates (72.7%) believe that Welsh can help their works, but only 3
of university graduates believe that it brings a lot of advantages. It demonstrates that
non-university graduates are more likely to believe that Welsh have positive impact
on their job. The reason may be their types of work are different. The more
university graduates’ works may involve higher technology, such as doctor, lawyer or
teacher. These jobs need to move to other place, English is more important than
Welsh for them. But the most non-university graduates work in service industries,
they are more likely to speak Welsh with local residents. Therefore, Welsh may be
more useful to them.
On the other hand, from the Figure 3, more university graduates believe that there
should be more opportunity to learn Welsh in their community. The reason may be
university graduates believe learning skills is a good thing. The figure can connect
with the idea in introduction, which is university graduates may more likely to
respect
knowledge,
but
non-university
graduates
may
have
spirit
of
anti-intellectualism. Besides, from Figure 10, more university graduates (55.5%)
12
support investing more money on bilingual education. It seems possible that
language diversity may be the one of their considerations (Menken and Solorza 2014),
the results of their essay agree with the point of view.
However, there are some figures which are inconclusive. For example, Figure 12
cannot recognize the big difference in these two groups. The most proportions of
university graduates and non-university graduates regard English as a more
important course comparing with Welsh. These results may be explained by the fact
of people believe English is an international language, and it plays important role in
people’s life.
13
Conclusion
The hypothesis seems to be disproved. This study has important implications for
university graduates may have a tendency of pragmatism, they may believe Welsh is
less useful than English. However, university graduates show paradox in the
hypothesis, in some questions, they support Welsh, but they will not learn them. It
confirms the idea in introduction in some extent, which is they respect knowledge,
but they will not learn. On the other hand, questionnaire shows that non-university
graduates pay more attention to Welsh benefits and Welsh cultural inheritance, they
believe Welsh can help them to improve their life, and language diversity is a good
way to improve Welsh status in Britain. Therefore, they show stronger inclination to
support bilingual education.
There are some limitations：only 20 people were asked, the samples should be
widened; there are some confused questions, we have to explain these questions
during the surveying; some factors which may influence the result of the report were
not taken into account, such as nationality, age and gender.
Some possible recommendations are results of the report confirmed the data of
Welsh government in introduction, which is young Welsh user decreased. Welsh
government may be benefited from the report that they can realize that they should
build policy for different groups. For example, disseminating information about
advantages of language diversity to well educated people, but promote good effects
of Welsh to common publics.
14
Reference
Menken, K and Solorza, C. 2014. No Child Left Bilingual: Accountability and the
Elimination of Bilingual Education Programs in New York City Schools. Educational
policy 28(1), pp. 96-125.
Welsh government. 2015. Welsh language use in Wales, 2013-15. Available at:
http://gov.wales/newsroom/welshlanguage/2015/151126-welsh-language-survey/?l
ang=en. pdf [Accessed: 27 July 2017]
Welsh government. 2017. Cymraeg 2050: A million Welsh speakers. Available at:
http://gov.wales/statistics-and-research/Welsh-language-use-survey/?lang=en.pdf
[Accessed: 27 July 2017]
15
Appendix（1） Questionnaire
Bilingual (Welsh-English) Language Questionnaire
Aim: To find the correlation between university graduates and non-university
graduates for supporting bilingual languages.
University graduates □
Non-university graduates □
1. Can you describe your Welsh language level? Please choose all that apply.
Understand spoken Welsh □
Speak Welsh □
Read Welsh □
Write Welsh □
None of the Above all□
2. In your community, are there adequate opportunities for learning Welsh?
A. Yes
B. No
(1)If not, do you think it should be included in your community?
A. Yes
B. No
3. What are the difficulties in Welsh learning?
4. To what extent are you willing to learn Welsh in future?
(5-strongly agree, 4-agree, 3-neutral, 2-disagree, 1-totally disagree)
A．5
B. 4
C.3
D.2
E.1
5. Do you think if it is necessary to increase Welsh-medium resources for welsh
learners (for example, textbooks)?
A. Yes
B. No
6. Do you think if social media support people to use Welsh?
A. Yes
B. No
7. What effects do you think if employees are enhanced Welsh language skills?
A. It brings lots of advantages
B. It just work a little
C. It doesn’t work
D. I don’t care
(1) And why?
8. To what extent do you support government invest more funding to bilingual
languages (for example, bilingual signs and bilingual schools)?
(5-strongly agree, 4-agree, 3-neutral, 2-disagree, 1-totally disagree)
A.5
B.4
C.3
D.2
E.1
(1) And why?
9. Rank the following languages in order of how important they are for children’s
education.
A. Welsh-only
B. English-only
C. Welsh-English
Thank you
16
Appendix （2）Completed questionnaire
17
Completed questionnaire
18
Appendix （3） Raw data
Bilingual (Welsh-English) Languages Questionnaire
Aim: To find the correlation between university graduates and non-university
graduates for supporting bilingual languages.
University graduates □ 11
Non-university graduates □
9
1. Can you describe your Welsh language level? Please choose all that apply.
Understand spoken Welsh □ 4(Non) 3 (Uni)
Speak Welsh □ 2(Non)
Read Welsh □
4(Non)
Write Welsh □
2(Non)
None of the above □
5(Non)
9(Uni)
2. In your community, are there adequate opportunities for learning Welsh?
A. Yes 6(Non)
2 (Uni)
B. No
5(Non)
7 (Uni)
(1) If not, do you think it should be included in your community?
A. Yes 3(Non)
5 (Uni)
B. No
2(Non)
2 (Uni)
3. What are the difficulties in Welsh learning?
Non-uni:
(1) No chance to use.
6
(2) Quite hard to learn.
3
(3) Different from English.
2
Uni:
(1) Do not need to use.
4
(2) No opportunities to use. 3
(3) Hard to learn.
2
4. To what extent are you willing to learn Welsh in future?
(5-strongly agree, 4-agree, 3-neutral, 2-disagree, 1-totally disagree)
A.5
B. 4
C.3
D.2
E.1
Non-uni:
A:0
B:1
C:3
D:2
E:5
Uni:
A:0
B:0
C:0
D:0
E:9
5. Do you think if it is necessary to increase Welsh-medium resources for welsh
learners (for example, textbooks)?
A. Yes
B. No
Non-uni:
A:8
B:3
Uni：
A:7
B:2
6. Do you think if social media support people to use Welsh?
A. Yes
B. No
Non-uni:
A:7
B:4
19
Uni：
A:6
B:3
7. What effects do you think if employees are enhanced Welsh language skills?
A. It brings lots of advantages
B. It just work a little
C. It doesn’t work
D. I don’t care
Non-uni:
A:4
B:3
C:3
D:1
Uni：
A:3
B:4
C:1
D:1
（1）And why?
Non-uni:
(1) A, good to know culture, encourage people to learn.
4
(2) B, give more opportunities to learn different languages.
3
(3) C, useless for finding jobs.
2
(4) C/D, not effective to communicate.
2
Uni:
(1) A/B, good for specific jobs, like translation and public service infrastructure. 5
(2) B/C, not effective to communicate.
2
(3) B/D, only useful in Wales.
2
8. To what extent do you support government invest more funding to bilingual
languages (for example, bilingual signs and bilingual schools)?
(5-strongly agree, 4-agree, 3-neutral, 2-disagree, 1-totally disagree)
A. 5
B.4
C.3
D.2
E.1
Non-uni:
A:2
B:4
C:1
D:2
E:2
Uni：
A:4
B:1
C:3
D:1
E:0
（1）And why?
Non-uni:
(1) Totally agree, broaden language and culture.
2
(2) Agree, useful for specific jobs, like Welsh language teachers
4
(3) Neutral/disagree, no need to use
3
(4) Totally disagree, not useful for young people to find jobs
2
Uni:
(1) Totally agree, good for culture diversity.
4
(2) Agree, but just useful for public service system.
1
(3) Neutral, only useful in Wales.
3
(4) Disagree, waste money.
1
9. Rank the following languages in order of how important they are for children’s
education.
A. Welsh-only
B. English-only
C. Welsh-English
Non-uni: B-C-A:6
C-B-A:3
C-A-B:1
B-A-C:1
Uni:
B-C-A:5
C-B-A:2
C-A-B:1
B-A-C:1
20
Appendix Report diary
Week2
10, July, 2017, Monday
· Discuss which area we want to choose. Initial idea about the pair report:
considering education and language.
· Reason: we are familiar with these two areas.
· Decision: education. Because we are students, we have our own experience and
opinion about the different countries’ education.
· Our decision is very general, and we did not decide our specific research area .
11, July, 2017, Tuesday
· We discussed hypothesis—gender，age，nationality，educational background,
wealth. It is very hard to decide. At first, we considered the nationality, wealth and
educational background. My partner came up with rich people are more likely to
support bilingual education. But I disagree，because it is very hard to ask their real
income, because some people may tell us fake income information.
· Deciding the topic—bilingual education. Because I believe
· rethink：we chose the university graduates more likely to support bilingual
education. Because i believe non-university graduates may have spirit of
anti-intellectualism. They may
in the evening：We started searching some information on website
(http://gov.wales/?lang=en).
14, July, 2017, Thursday
· We started to think questions in questionnaire. I came up with 5 questions, Yolanda
thought we should modify some question to be more clear.
· Johan gave us an idea that we can focus on Welsh-English bilingual education.
Because when people talk about bilingual education, it should be Welsh and English
in Cardiff.
· We accepted Johan’s suggestion and focused o
16, July, 2017, Saturday
· Questionnaire draft completed. We wrote twelve questions on paper, but I was not
satisfied with some questions that came up by my partner, such as ‘Are you a local
people or not’, ‘How you describe your gender’, I do not think these questions are
related our hypothesis.
· Solution: Try to come up more questions and find inspiration from Internet.
Week 2
18, July, 2017, Monday
· We piloted our questionnaire in Cardiff business school, we asked six classmates.
Some problems of questionnaire were found, such as the meaning of question not
very clear, and no relation with our hypothesis.
21
· We exchange our opinions in evening, we spent about 2 hours to modify our
questions. In the end of the day, we made a complete questionnaire.
20, July, 2017, Wednesday
· Talked about our questionnaire in some specific questions, modified some
questions again. My partner found a point like social media’s attitude to bilingual
education, I thought it is a good point to ask our samples. Therefore, we added a
question on our questionnaire.
· I thought there were too many questions about work in our questionnaire, I added
some other questions about people’s attitudes to government’ investment to Welsh.
21, July, 2017, Thursday
· We continued to modify some questions. But we have different ideas about our
questionnaire. My opinion was trying to find different groups’ people’s attitude is
most important thing. But my partner believed that we should consider more other
factors, their nationalities and ages. But I believed there is no relation with our
hypothesis.
· I felt not very good that I failed to persuade her. But in the end we reached an
agreement. We deleted some questions which are not related to our hypothesis.
23, July, 2017, Saturday
· We printed our questionnaire in the morning. We stated to survey at 3 pm.
· Location: Queen street, Cardiff.
· We chose people who seems like not very busy. Like people was sitting in chair and
drinking coffee. I think they were easier to be interviewed. We spent about two
hours finishing our survey, the people I had met are nice. We felt tired but happy.
24, July, 2017, Sunday
· We analyzed data of our questionnaire. My opinion was our hypothesis is disproved,
but my partner’s opinion was our hypothesis proved. We communicate it with each
other, and we still held our own opinion.
25, July, 2017, Monday
· I started to write my structure of my introduction and methodology. In the midnight,
I finished our introduction and methodology.
26, July, 2017, Tuesday
· I accepted some suggestions from Johan about our introduction and methodology.
Changed the order of some sentences, added some details on methodology, like
location of surveying and details of our samples.
· I sent the introduction and methodology to my partner, she wanted to modify some
parts of our introduction and methodology.
· In the evening, I wrote the structure of discussion.
22
27, July, 2017, Wednesday
· My partner sent me back modified methodology，but I disagreed with some parts of
it. There are some grammar mistakes and I disagreed with the order of some
sentences.
· In the evening, I made all charts of our results of questionnaire. At first, I did not
know how to make charts by Word and Excel, but I found the method through
Internet.
28, July, 2017, Thursday
· I started to write my discussion based by results of questionnaire. I think it is not
very hard. I finished three paragraphs.
· I searched some journals on Google scholar. Website:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0895904812468228
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373711398127
30, July, 2017, Saturday
· Finished my discussion and conclusion, and I scaned the Appendix.
1, August, 2017, Monday
· Checked the reporter, tried to find some places where can be improved.
· Finished the report, finishing report diary.
23