Aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras: Estudio sobre las percepciones del futuro profesorado en Educación Primaria

Abstract

This study focuses on the learning of foreign languages. It is aimed at: 1. Finding out if the number of foreign languages ​​that the respondents dominate influences what they believe about the degree of learning difficulty of the first Foreign Language (FL1) in Primary Education, 2. Knowing the beliefs of the participants about whether the difficulty of learning the first Foreign Language (FL1) is related to the difficulty of learning the second Foreign Language (FL2), and 3. To get to know the perception of the participants about the use of translanguaging as a useful tool to reinforce the learning of a Foreign Language. To do this, a quantitative methodology was applied, and a survey was designed to be completed by 69 monolingual, bilingual and multilingual anonymous and volunteer graduates’ pre-teachers. Results show that (i) the number of foreign languages ​​they control does not influence their beliefs, (ii) the belief they have about the learning difficulty of FL1 in relation to the learning difficulty of FL2 has a correlation between both, and (iii) they perceive translanguaging as a valuable instrument for learning a foreign language. Conclusions suggest that the answers are based on what has been learned instead of being based on personal experiences, and that the use of translanguaging is considered useful when learning is intended for understanding contents and for good communication purposes.