Abstract

School is one of the basic pillars of the linguistic normalization process, and teachers play a fundamental role in encouraging this task. Therefore, teacher training, and more particularly its first stages, is a basic area of analysis. It is of great interest to study Teacher Training College students, the teachers of a not so distant tomorrow, regarding their knowledge and use of the language, their linguistic attitudes and rules of usage and, most specifically, their expectations concerning professional use of Catalan. This paper analyzes these issues from the point of view of the Alacant province area, by showing the surveys carried out during the academic years 1993-94, 1994-95 and 1995-96 among the students of the Escola Universitària de Formació del Professorat (Teacher Training College) at the University of Alacant. An analysis of the results, which is moderately optimistic, points out a few structural faults in the Valencian educational system and proposes a number of priority measures.

Abstract

The author presents schools as an overestimated socialization environment, which nowadays has to compete with the media. There is special emphasis on the relatively limited influence of the educational system in the linguistic area, both concerning substitution and normalization processes. After describing the process by which Catalan was introduced in schools in the Balearic Islands, the author analyzes the efects of such introduction upon linguistic competence, the usage of Catalan and the linguistic ideology of Majorcan youths, It is proved that schools has caused an improvement in the degree of linguistic competence of a portion of Majorcan youths but, on the other hand, it does not seem there has a great change in the linguistic ideology or in usage beyond the school environment.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show how the Catalan spoken in the south Valencian region is reacting to the effects of the linguistic normalization process that was initiated more than ten years ago. Basically, this process concentrated on two areas: on the one hand, education, where Catalan is present either as a compulsory subject, or as the language in which the whole teaching takes place; on the other hand, the spreading of several mass media which more or less use the language. We shall try to describe a few linguistic phenomena, phonetic as well as morphologic and lexical, through a survey carried out among various age groups and, in the case of small children, considering their school situation concerning Catalan and their family language. In this way, we shall grasp the predictable generational differences, the origin of which we shall try to find out, especially in order to relate the fact to the new sociolinguistic situation.

Abstract

An immersion programme is an integrating educational curriculum, which aims to increase and not to reduce knowledge, and on no account tries to replace the family language of the student. Provided the teachers follow suitable pedagogic guidelines, they will encourage the students' capacity for linguistic reflection and, therefore, will foster the learning of other languages, making it easier for students to become multilingual and multicultural Such programme is included in our legislative codes which, in addition to giving legal support, also give methodological strategies that may guide teachers in its application. However, we may not forget that any school choice implying a change of language has a clear sociopolitical dimension, which is clearly the origin of the attitudes families and students possess on arrival at school.