Accessing a global community through L2 learning: a comparative study on the relevance of international posture to EFL and LOTE students

ABSTRACT

Due to the ‘global English bias’ in the field of L2 motivation, many motivational constructs have been primarily investigated in relation to learners of English. One of these, international posture, has been recently found to hold some relevance to LOTE students. Despite this, no research has examined comparatively similarities and differences in the relevance of a global community to the motivations of EFL and LOTE learners. This study fills this research gap, by focusing, as a case in point, on data collected via a questionnaire and interviews with university students of English studies in Italy and in Germany, and of students of Italian and German studies in Australia. The findings confirm the relevance of this construct to both learner groups and show that it can co-exist with integrative motives. While EFL respondents viewed the affiliation with a global community as dependent on the mastery of English, most LOTE respondents associated it with the language learning process itself and with their new positioning as second language learners and speakers in their monolingual environment. This study advances our understanding of the range of reference of international posture and contributes to reducing the gap in scholarship between EFL and LOTE learners.

KEYWORDS:

• Global community
• international posture
• EFL vs LOTE
• global English bias
• global identities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 The acronym ‘LOTE' has attracted considerable criticism in the Australian context, where the term ‘language(s)' is now preferred (see e.g. ACARA 2016, 58). However, it was decided to utilise it in this article for convenience of comparison with the international literature, where the term is commonly used (see e.g. Ushioda and Dörnyei 2017).

2 I use here the term monolingualism in line with studies on the motivations of Anglophone language learners (see e.g. Oakes 2013; Lanvers 2017, etc.). As a critical discussion of monolingualism goes beyond the scope of this article, the reader is referred to Gramling (2016) for a recent insightful analysis of this notion.

3 The following notations are used to identify respondents in the four sample groups: E_I (English in Italy), E_G (English in Germany), I_A (Italian in Australia), G_A (German in Australia).

4 In keeping with current scholarship in bilingualism research (see e.g. Dewaele 2015), the term ‘bilingual’ is utilised in this article to refer to any individual who has at least minimal competence in two languages.