Language Attitudes among International Students and Instructors toward Standard Languages and Dialects in the ESL Language School

In the field of sociolinguistics,language attitude is an important content which reflects the conception and perception of language by speakers.The paper tries to explore different language attitudes towards standard language and dialect among international students and English instructors in the ESL language school.Participants were all interviewed by means of conversation recordings in the ESL language school.The results indicated that the majority of the ESL language school speakers kept a positive attitude towards their standard languages and dialects.The educational methods of parents had an influence on the choice of standard language and dialect towards speakers,and participants also expressed a strong social identity when they talked about their languages.Those findings illustrate the significance of the study of language attitudes in the ESL language school center.

The Subjectivity of Language Attitudes

From a linguistic point of view, all English dialects are‘equally complex, structured and valid linguistic systems'(Trudgill,1992:26) while non-linguists may find it hard to accept, as they are not holding linguistic attitudes but social language attitudes, which are based on their social and cultural values. The relevant researches on language attitudes show how subjective is language attitudes and the reasons behind that is analysed. The study is significant in that it helps us to understand the factors that influences the language attitudes such identities, personal experience and contexts.

Attitudes Towards the Official Recognition of Hong Kong Sign Language by Hong Kong Citizens

This paper is a pilot study that investigates the attitudes towards the official recognition of Hong Kong Sign Language(HKSL)by Hong Kong citizens.We used video-chat software(mainly WhatsApp,and Facebook Messenger,but also FaceTime)to conduct long-distance semi-structured interviews with 30 participants grouped as deaf,hearing-related(hearing people that are closely involved in the Deaf community),and hearing-unrelated(hearing people that have little contact with deaf people and the Deaf community).Results show that the majority of participants(N=22)holds a supportive attitude towards the recognition of HKSL;Five participants hold a neutral position,and three participants hold a negative attitude towards it.We discussed each type of attitude in detail.Results show that participants’attitudes are positively related to their awareness of deaf people’s need,the understanding of‘language recognition’,and personal world views.In other words,the more participants are aware,the more they foster official recognition,at least as a general trend.Results also indicate that hearing people who are not involved in the Deaf community know very little about deaf people and the Deaf community,in general.At the end of the paper,we also reflect on two issues:we argue that the standardization of HKSL plays an important role in deaf education and empowering citizenship awareness and participation.

French versus English: A sociolinguistic study of Moroccans’ foreign language attitudinal tendencies

The complexity of the Moroccan language landscape sparks off a power struggle between languages. The focus in this chapter is on the apparent French/English language contest over supremacy. Here comes the current investigation that aims at gauging Moroccan’s perceptions of French and English through a language questionnaire.Responses were subjected to statistical analyses to support or reject the hypothesis that gender, age and language proficiency affect Moroccans’ evaluations of French and English.The study reveals that Moroccans’ attitudes towards English are significantly more favorable than those towards the French language. Age, but not gender, has turned out to have a statistically significant difference in the overall evaluation of French and English.These evaluations have also been shown to correlate with the respondents’ French and English language proficiency. The result of this study is an indication that Moroccans’attitudes toward French and English are undergoing a change from a conventional preference for French to a recent favor of English whose phenomenal growth globally may have affected language attitudes locally.

Language Attitude and Language Degeneration:An Empirical Study Based on the Pearl River Delta of China

This paper conducts a tracking investigation of the dialect speakers in Cantonese,and addresses the impact of language attitude on language degeneration by using OLS models.Results reveal that the stronger the language identity,the less obvious the language degeneration.It’s necessary to maintain the harmonious coexistence of dialects and Mandarin.

A Study on the Differences of Intergenerational Language Attitude of Lichuan Dialect in China

Research on the changes of Lichuan dialect mostly focuses on microlinguistics such as specific vocabulary,syntactic or semantic research,less on the language use and language attitude in sociolinguistics.Therefore,This study mainly discusses the differences of intergenerational language attitude of Lichuan dialect and the reasons so as to protect traditional dialects in China.11 participants were interviewed.The results reveals the reasons:(1)internal reasons of personal dialect attitudes including cultural confidence,social identity,dialect inheritance;(2)language attitudelanguage contact such as educational background,rural-urban migration,study and work with people from different cities and media development.

Reading “the Word” and “the World”: Promoting Learner Agency through an Engagement Model of Literacy Instruction

Learning to read in English is not just about learning to decode words, but about learning to make sense of the world through the language. However, EFL reading instruction tends to focus on developing decoding and word knowledge in an isolated manner, neglecting learners’ sense making beyond the text. This text-based approach of reading instruction often leads to students’ low interest and engagement in English learning and low profi ciency in English achievement. Drawing on examples from current research and practices in K-12 schools in the U.S. and Canada, this paper introduces an engagement model of literacy instruction, INSPIRE, that focuses on involving students in reading and writing for meaningful purposes beyond learning to decode. This integrated model of literacy instruction capitalizes on students’ personal interests and lives of school, allows choices in materials, and follows students’ lead to promote learner agency for deeper learning and comprehension. When students are more engaged in learning the world through the words, they achieve better learning outcomes in both language skills and attitudes.

Study on the Status Quo of Yichang Dialect-A Case study in Xiling District

Dialect is threatened by the increasing language contact. In Yichang, seldom young students speak its dialect. In this preliminary research, the author tries to clarify the actual language use and language attitude in the community of family by the means of interviewing the parents living in Xiling district, both of whom could speak the dialect. It is found that the profession,education background of parents would influence their language attitude and actual choice of language to their children. The result shows that there exists significant disparity between the parents' language attitudes and the actual communication with their children. Reasons of such disparity and the public prediction of the tendency of Yichang dialect and provided. In the end, suggestions towards language policy are presented.