engleski

Sociolinguistic elements / scopes in natural and institutional context of the Italian language in a Croatian sample

The contexts in which the elementary school pupils meet the Italian language are primarily the natural context with socio-cultural and pragmatic prerogatives, and the institutional context defined by the curricular offers of this language. The elements or scopes that influence motivation for language learning in both contexts are: 1) the time of immersion in language and 2) the sources of access to the language (teacher, friends, television, films, songs, family...). A sociolinguistic questionnaire, as well as the motivational scales prepared for this research was used. The cronbach alpha of used scales varied from 0.87 to 0.67. Two groups of pupils (Croatian citizens) took part in the research. One of them learned Italian language as L1 (n=256) and the other as L2 (n=144). The mean age of the participants was 12.26 years (SD= 2.19). This study is a part of a larger research project related to motivation for learning the Italian language among children grades 5th through 8th of elementary schools in the Istrian and Kvarner region. The first point regarding the time of linguistic immersion changes from the natural to the institutional context. Children who learned Italian as mother tongue are in full immersion for a minimum of seven hours a day, while the children who learned Italian as foreign language or language of social environment are in the contact only for two hours a week. The results regarding the natural context will be presented in the paper. Regarding the second scope, this research showed interesting results. The first observation is that the primary position in the analyzed territory is dedicated to the English language as the possible universal language. As expected, the English and American songs are in the first position in order of preferences, while the Italian songs occupied the third position. The films and television are also the very important elements for choosing the language. It is interesting to say that the teacher was a very important source for the second language learning (45, 1%), but not so important for the mother tongue (14, 8%). The same difference between L1 and L2 is observed regarding parents: 35, 4% for L2 vs. 18, 8% for L1, while the results regarding peers are not significantly different: 30, 6% for L2 and 32, 8% for L1. A two-way analysis of variance (3 evaluations of Italian language x 2 language levels) was performed on individual intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as dependent variables. The results showed a significant main effect of evaluation of Italian language for intrinsic motivation, as well as significant main effects of linguistic levels for extrinsic motivation. Implications for practice are discussed.

second language acquisition; italian language; sociocultural and pragmatic prerogatives; institutional context

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