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Executive Summary - Research on sociolinguistic variation among teachers of Welsh

Young, Katharine S. 2019. Executive Summary - Research on sociolinguistic variation among teachers of Welsh. [Project Report]. Unpublished.

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Abstract

Context Sociolinguistic competence – that is, the ability to vary one’s language to engage in a variety of interactions both formal and informal – is an important part of gaining a “nativelike ability in the target language” (Hansen-Edwards, 2011: 1258). Previous studies of French (Mougeon et al, 2010) have demonstrated that students in French immersion education in Canada do not often encounter the more colloquial forms at school, due to the formal nature of classroom language. Recent Welsh Government targets (2017) to increase the number of Welsh speakers to 1 million by the year 2050 places a responsibility on our teachers to ensure that students gain a full grasp of native-like or fluent variation. Educators of Welsh, both as a first language (W1L) and as a second language (W2L), are expected to teach varieties of Welsh which are appropriate in a number of different registers (WJEC, 2015; WJEC, 2017) conforming to academic, workplace and more casual community norms, thus improving the sociolinguistic competence of their students. However, little research exists on the sociolinguistic variation that takes place in Welsh classrooms around Wales. This project examined teachers’ awareness of a range of features that vary in Welsh, and reported on the variation which teachers reported takes place in classrooms. Summary of aims The research set out to answer the following research questions: RQ1 What kind of language variation takes place in Welsh language classrooms according to teachers? RQ2 What are teachers’ attitudes towards marked casual socio-stylistic variation in their classrooms? RQ3 To what extent does type of Welsh taught (W1L, W2L or W1L+W2L) impact teachers’ formality and attitudes towards the socio-stylistic variation in the classroom?

Item Type: Monograph (Project Report)
Status: Unpublished
Schools: English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PB Modern European Languages > PB1001 Celtic languages and literature
P Language and Literature > PE English
Language other than English: Welsh
Publisher: Unpublished
Last Modified: 05 Mar 2020 09:25
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/130089

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