The Attitudes towards Bilingualism
Ami Sato 011064
Summary
This research tried to find out what people generally think of bilingualism. I have
conducted a questionnaire to total 141 subjects in order to reveal people’s attitudes
towards bilingualism.
The questionnaire is based on some of the bilingual beliefs that
I found on websites, and those are for example;
1. Learning two languages confuses children and impairs their cognitive ability.
2. Bilingual education has been proven ineffective, it only serves to delay the learning
of English and slow students academically.
3. A child should learn one language properly first, then you can start teaching the
other.
Research questions
1. to reveal whether bilingual beliefs are bilingual myths.
2. to find out people’s attitudes towards bilingualism.
Are they taken positively or
negatively?
3. to investigate further implications for English education in Japan.
The experiment
Subject:
141 subjects from several age groups and backgrounds.
Instrument:
Questionnaire based on bilingual beliefs including 12 questions.
Procedure:
Questionnaires were given randomly to subjects including students,
teachers and people who are neither students nor teachers.
Subjects are to give their age groups, occupation, years of learning
foreign languages and its levels.
For the questions, subjects are to
answered each question by using a scale to show their agreement or
disagreement with the question or disagreement.
They also have
some space to give reasons for why they think in that way.
Results
1. Bilingual beliefs are there bilingual myths？
Bilingual beliefs turned to be bilingual myths. Over 80 % of the subjects disagreed
with beliefs that are ‘Learning two languages lowers child’s intelligence’, ‘Bilingual
education has been proven ineffective and it only serves to slow students
academically’. The results appeared significantly on each questions showing that
people hold strong opinions. In other words, subjects have strong interests in this
topic.
Q2. Do you agree learning two languages lowers his intelligence?
Age
18-22
23-30
31-50
51-70
Total
Strongly agree
35
13
21
8
77
Agree
15
7
6
2
30
Slightly agree
11
1
7
1
20
Slightly disagree
6
3
1
10
Disagree
1
2
Strongly disagree
Total
3
1
68
22
1
39
12
141
Q5. Do you agree bilingual education has been proven ineffective and it only serves to
slow students academically?
Age
18-22
23-30
31-50
51-70
Total
Strongly agree
26
7
10
6
49
Agree
22
7
15
2
46
Slightly agree
12
4
6
2
24
Slightly disagree
3
2
6
2
13
Disagree
4
2
67
22
6
Strongly disagree
Total
37
12
138
2. Bilingualism is taken positively or negatively?
The aspects of people’s attitudes take bilingualism positively.
Many of the
subjects mentioned cognitive encouragement when learning a second language.
117 out of 140 subjects answered that they want to bring up their children
bilingually in order to broaden children’s opportunities in job fields.
In addition,
some people mentioned that learning another language help their children
understand another culture as well.
3. Implications
Through this research, I found out that subjects hold positive attitudes towards
bilingualism.
This result will encourage our English education at earlier stage in
Japanese education system, because Japan in under an appropriate circumstance to
introduce English education to children.