Across Borders

Katerina Zacharopoulou

The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, United Kingdom; Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, United Kingdom

Joanna Ziobro-Strzępek

Carpathian State College in Krosno

Agnieszka Habrat

In the ever-changing, modern world, the identity is subjected to the impact of a conglomerate of factors of diverse nature. The process of globalization, the end of communism in Europe, economic and political transformations, migration, increased mobility, rapidly expanding media technologies have resulted in the emergence and expansion od so-called global English, or world Englishes (varieties of English). Hence, identity needs to be interrogated in the face of such profound changes. It is inevitable that when individuals transgress geographical and psychological borders and start to function in new sociocultural environments, they are prone to destabilization of their sense of self and they may find themselves in a state of struggle for balance.

The geo-political and social processes mentioned before have led to increasing multilingualism in schools and society and the emergence of so-called millennium identities, i.e. the mechanisms that account for linguistic and cultural hybridity in the modern times (Higgins 2015). Learners can assume transnational identities that were not socially imaginable until the 1990s (De Costa & Norton 2016). It is only natural that by using social media, multiple channels of communication and digital resources, such transnational learners can access the past and present achievement of English language teaching methodology.

Identity and motivation

Language globalization has changed the relationship between the Ideal L2 self and the L2 native speakers. The construals of the Ideal L2 Self are no longer based on the native speakers of the L2 but on all (including non-native) speakers of English as an international language (Calvo 2015). Many learners hold an “international posture”, which means that they envisage themselves in the future as belonging to an international community and the English language works as a passport to the community (Yashima 2009).

The attitude to the L2 users seems to be inextricably related to the way learners view the culture of L2-speaking communities. Attitudes toward L2 speakers are presumed to be marked with openness to them that might be interpreted as more favorable attitudes toward the L2 group, or as lower L1 group affiliation such as ethnocentrism and fear of assimilation. While deepened cultural awareness is important for communicating and interacting in today’s multilingual communities, cultivating this concept in FL learning can be a long-lasting process. Cross-cultural awareness develops through a process of learning in which learners experience an internal transformation because they start to recognize themselves and others as culturally situated. The cross-cultural awareness is important in a transformation process in FL learning as it is centered on the relational aspects of language learning. In other words, cross-cultural awareness focuses on helping learners to understand culture as guiding their views of themselves and of the world around them (Mitchell 2016). Gardner (2001) emphasized that integrativeness did not mean that one wanted to become a member of the other cultural community, but referred to an individual’s openness to take on characteristics of another cultural-linguistic group. Individuals for whom their ethnicity is not a major characteristic of their identity and who are interested in other cultural-linguistic communities would possess high levels of integrativeness: “thus the individual’s openness to other cultures will influence his/her motivation to learn the language” (Gardner 2001: 7). So, this positive attitude and openness towards other L2 group plays a big role in developing a strong L2 motivation (Matušin 2014).

Learner identity and age

Based on the theoretical considerations presented above, the study was set out to address the following research questions:

1. What is the relationship between the Ideal L2-Self, Ought to-Self, the attitudes to foreign cultures and native speakers of English in Polish learners?

2. Does the relationship change with the age of learners?

Method

In the current study, I employed a quantitative approach to investigate the relationship between different dimensions of L2-Self and attitudes to foreign culture or native speakers of English.

Participants

In the research I surveyed 70 language learners from Krosno, a town in southeastern Poland, with the population of 47 000. I focused on the three major language learning contexts in Poland: primary, secondary and tertiary with four-year intervals, thereby there were class 7-primary school students, class 2-secondary students and year 3-college students. All of the participants followed intensive courses of English in state schools, which meant that they had at least five lessons of the language in a week, and their proficiency level ranged from pre-intermediate to upper intermediate levels.

As for the primary school students (N=26), they were all from the same class that had an extended course of English and some Content and Language Integrated Learning in two Science subjects. They were approximately at the age of 14, in the seventh class, so they had been learning English at school for seven years, and the language was a compulsory subject. The level of proficiency in the cohort was near B1 according to CEFR.

The participating tertiary education students (N = 20) were recruited from Carpathian State College in Krosno, the English Philology Department. They were majoring in English, which means that the majority of their classes were in English, which amounted to approximately 20 lessons of practical English or content subjects in a week. The level of English is C1.

Instruments

The questionnaire used in the study consisted of 20 six-point Likert scale items aimed at measuring the Ideal L2-Self, Ought to Self as well as the attitudes to foreign cultures and native speakers of English. It also contained a brief demographic section about the type of school attended and the gender of the participants. The factors that were explored by the questionnaire were measured by means of the following instruments: