Exploring Teachers’ and Students’ Language Attitudes in a Bilingual Community.

The present study explores teachers’ and learners’ language attitudes in a Spanish bilingual community where two official languages (Spanish and Catalan) and a foreign language (English) coexist. It also analyses the impact produced by teachers’ beliefs on their students’ language attitudes. Data was collected in a private secondary education centre in Castelló de la Plana, Spain. Twenty-four students in their last year of compulsory secondary education and a total of 15 language instructors participated in this investigation. Two questionnaires were used to obtain quantitative data, which was also complemented with qualitative information from interviews with both teachers and students. Results emphasize that diverse internal and external factors, such as the influence of participants’ mother tongue, teachers’ training, or the educational context, influence the way participants perceive languages. Moreover, findings indicate that teachers’ language attitudes shape their students’ perceptions in the case of English, as no political ideologies are involved in the teaching of this foreign language in the Valencian Community. However, this effect is not observed in the other two official languages.