MOROCCAN STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS LOCAL AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES: THE ROLE OF SELF-DIRECTED AND LANGUAGE POLICY FORCES
Vol.6, Issue 2, 2020, pp. 295-320 Full text
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.20.2.7
Web of Science: 000607561000008
Author:
Abdelmajid Bouziane https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4138-2450
Affiliation:
Faculty of Letters and Humanities Ben M’Sik, Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco
Abstract
This article contributes to the hot debate on language preferences and choice at schools and society at large in Morocco from an empirical perspective. It investigates the Moroccan students' attitudes towards the languages they use in their daily interactions and those that are widely used in the Moroccan education system and attempts to explain whether these attitudes are driven by intrinsic forces or by the language policy orientations set by decision makers. To do so, 1,477 respondents belonging to different school levels and disciplines completed a survey about their frequency of use and mastery of languages, as well as their preferences of language use in the future. Findings show that Moroccan students have positive attitudes towards all languages and would like to use foreign languages for instrumental purposes. They also show that such positive attitudes do not depend on the level of mastery of these languages, nor on their use as mediums of instruction or communication. The findings imply that attitudes towards languages in Morocco are rooted in factors beyond the official policy orientations.
Keywords: Morocco, students' attitudes towards languages, motivation
Article history:
Submitted: 1 August 2020
Reviewed: 21 October 2020
Revised: 29 October 2020
Accepted: 1 November 2020
Published: 21 December 2020
Citation (APA):
Bouziane, A. (2020). Moroccan Students' Attitudes Towards Local and Foreign Languages: The Role of Self-Directed and Language Policy Forces. English Studies at NBU, 6(2), 295-320. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.20.2.7
Copyright © 2020 Abdelmajid Bouziane
This open access article is published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. If you want to use the work commercially, you must first get the authors' permission.
Acknowledgements: I am very grateful to the students who worked on this project for their great help with the collection of data. I am indebted to the reviewers of ESNBU for the pertinent remarks made on an early draft of this article.
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Review
1. Reviewer's name: Undisclosed
Review Content: Assoc. Prof. Svetlana Dimitrova-Gyuzeleva, PhD, New Bulgarian University
Review Verified on Publons
2. Reviewer's name: Undisclosed
Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons
Handling Editor: Stan Bogdanov, PhD, New Bulgarian University
Verified Editor Record on Publons