Multicultural awareness and foreign language learning among Chinese college students: a one-year longitudinal investigation

ABSTRACT

The study explored the longitudinal relationship between multicultural awareness and language development among collegiate English as a foreign language (EFL) students. Sixty-five first-year college students participated in the study. Drawing on the Multicultural Awareness-Knowledge-Skills Survey (MAKSS) [D’Andrea, M., Daniels, J., & Heck, R. (1991). Evaluating the impact of multicultural counseling training. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70(1), 143–150; Perkins, R. M. (2012). The multicultural awareness, knowledge, skills and attitudes of prospective teachers: A quantitative and heuristic phenomenological study (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Missouri, Kansas City] and a series of proficiency measurements (vocabulary, reading and writing abilities), the study found that the participating EFL students generally had positive attitudes toward multicultural differences, however they did not seem to be confident about dealing with multicultural situations in real life. More important, the results showed that multicultural awareness measurements did not contribute to foreign language skills within a short period of time while the contribution was substantial over one academic year. Discussion and implications centred on the uniqueness of language development in the foreign language context and the indirect utilities of multicultural awareness in second or foreign language development.

KEYWORDS:

• Multicultural sensitivity
• language and literacy
• longitudinal effect
• foreign language acquisition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University; Shanghai Pujiang Program [grant number 18PJC035]; Shanghai Planning Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences [grant number 2018EYY009]; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant numbers 2018ECNU-QKT015, 41300-20101-222154].