Attitude towards English-Spanish bilingualism in High School American students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the attitude of 12th grade high school students in Ventura County´s Scholar District, in California, USA. Seventy three students of both genders and ages between 17 and 19 years old, from three public high schools (Ventura High School, Buena High School y Foothill Technology High School) participated in a survey, which also explored the relationships between observed attitudes and some social and demographic relevant variables. The knowledge, beliefs and preferences of the surveyed subjects on bilingualism English/Spanish was analyzed related to their educational formation, their job future and the social development of the City of Ventura. A specially designed and validated 23 items questionnaire was collectively self-administered in each school. The questionnaire had a reliability of 0.75 based on Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient and a validation construct established through a factor analysis with extraction of two subjacent factors, identified with the affective and cognitive dimensions of attitude bi-factorial models as a mediating construct of the manifested conduct. The research was based on Fishbein and Ajzen´s Theory of Reasoned Action. The theoretical model was confirmed through, mainly, a simple and partial correlation analysis. The attitude toward bilingualism was in general favorable, although significant differences were observed between the English speaking majority and the Spanish speaking minority. The Spanish speaking minority showed a more favorable attitude toward bilingualism than the English speaking majority. These results are justified by the socio-economic differences observed between the two groups. The results were deemed valid for this study´s sample only, because such sample is not representative of the general population of 12th grade high school students in Ventura.