| Summary: | 碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 英國語文學系 === 107 === Language attitude plays a vital role in multilingual societies as it influences language use, language maintenance, and language policy. In recent years, due to the rise of Southeast Asian countries in the global economy, many enterprises actively rushed into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), especially in the Asian context. The learning of Southeast Asian languages has thus become an important project for the Taiwanese government. Consequently, the Taiwanese government has promoted the New Southbound Talent Development Program from 2017 to 2020, aiming to foster bilateral exchange and mutual resource sharing. This program has led our colleges and universities to develop substantive educational exchange programs with the ASEAN countries. In addition, according to the Ministry of Education, the seven major Southeast Asian languages will be included in the Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year. The New Resident Languages are listed as one of the mother tongues required in primary school for primary schools starting in the 108th academic year. To address the importance of this impact on the education of Taiwan in the near future, the current study investigates the local college students’ attitudes towards the Vietnamese language and their points of view on the inclusion of Vietnamese in the Curriculum Guidelines of 12-Year. In addition, this study also investigates the relationship between the participants’ personal background factors and their attitudes.
In the study, a questionnaire survey was administered to 69 college students to elicit their attitudes towards Vietnamese together with a focus group interview. The results from the questionnaire indicate that the Vietnamese language is evaluated negatively among college students. The results further show that the participants have the most positive attitude towards the pragmatic function of the language, followed by the desire to learn or speak the language, their perception to the intrinsic features of the language, a general liking of the language, and language use.
Additionally, there was no significant difference found in terms of gender and region on their language attitudes towards Vietnamese. Therefore, the gender and the region of the participants are not the crucial factors for influencing students’ language attitudes towards Vietnamese in the study. From the result of the focus group interview, the interviewees point out that their attitude towards Vietnamese is influence by the frequency of their language use.
This study also provides insights of attitudes towards Vietnamese and language policy. The results show that more than half of the participants agree with this policy. Also, we find that the majority of the participants agree with the policy because of the identity for the Southeast Asian language and culture. Most participants indicate that they think identity with the Southeast Asian languages and culture for New Second Generation is very important. Four reasons are found, and they are: (1) the identity for the Southeast Asian language and culture, (2) language competence cultivation, (3) enhancement of language competitiveness, and (4) development for global perspective. On the other hand, among the participants who disagree with the policy, three reasons are found. They are: (1) identity for Taiwanese and culture, (2) inappropriateness in primary schools. These results provide some implications for policy makers to promote both native/local languages and new resident languages and modify our curriculum in the future.
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