engleski

Non-native language speaking students in class cohesion

Class cohesion relates to the relationships between students that occur through mutual affective attraction, shared interests, attachments between individual members of the class etc. It is characterised by a feeling of community and mutual solidarity between students. In the context of class cohesion, this paper focuses on the status of non-native language speaking students, who most often join an already-formed class setting. One of the problematic aspects is the strictness of criteria for inclusion in a social group, which hinders the status of acceptance of new students in the class. In addition to these criteria, non-native language speaking students also face many other challenges. The successful inclusion of non-native language speaking students depends on many factors, which we could divide into linguistic and non-linguistic. This study was aimed at the non-linguistic factors, primarily the social and affective aspects. Peer relationships and a feeling of acceptance within the class play a major role in the adaptation of non-native language speaking students to the new environment and their personal development. The empirical part of the study focused on a quantitative-qualitative research approach. The participants in the research were non-native language speaking students at the elementary school of the Centre for Non-Native Language Speakers in Zagreb. An explanatory sequential design was used, which involved collecting data first using a quantitative and then a qualitative method. The first research question is aimed at the sociometric status of the student in the class hierarchy, where an affective sociometric questionnaire was used. The status of acceptance or rejection of foreign language speaking students within the class was defined on the basis of a numerical rating scale. In order to understand the quantitative results better, two additional research questions were asked. The second research question was aimed at self-assessment of the status of the non-native language speaking students within the class, and the third at a presentation of their personal experiences in the process of adjustment to the new community. In order to obtain responses to the second and third research questions, a semi-structured guided interview was used. The results indicate the absence of the status of isolation and rejection of non-native language speaking students in the classes, the high level of satisfaction with their acceptance, and positive personal experiences related to adjustment to the new class setting.

didactic culture, experience of adaptation, peer relations, sociometric status

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