Language choices of first year student-teachers and their reasons at Mondragon University

Abstract

This study analysed the language choices of first-year student-teachers in the Faculty of Humanities and Education at Mondragon University and the reasons behind them. To this end, students-teachers were classified into three language profiles and focus groups were held with each profiles to reflect on their perceptions and beliefs about languages. The results showed that the student-teachers of the three language profiles examined have, a positive selfperception of their competence in Basque, although there are differences in language choices among them. Basque dominant are the only ones who feel more comfortable in Basque than in Spanish, and both the sociolinguistic areas in which they live and their social networks largely conditioned their language choices. For Basque dominant bilinguals the language has an identity value, but for the rest of the student-teachers, it has merely an instrumental value, and in most cases, they relate it only to school.