Native French Speakers’ Attitudes Toward English in France, Switzerland and Belgium

Abstract

Language attitudes and their effects on foreign language acquisition have been subject to extensive research. The consensus amongst theorists and teachers is that positive attitudes toward a language facilitate learning and end proficiency in that target language. Although studies looking into language attitudes have been conducted in a multitude of environments and toward a wide array of languages and dialects, no research has yet focused on comparing the attitudes of French, Swiss and Belgian speakers of French toward the English language. This study looks into the differences in attitudes of speakers in these three regions and aims at finding a correlation with their respective English proficiency. Evidence of attitudes was gathered through an online survey using a Matched Guise technique. The results of this study indicate that French speakers of Switzerland exhibit the most positive attitudes toward English, attitudes that correspond to the significantly higher proficiency found in Switzerland. Confirming the hypothesis based on proficiency and existing literature, France showed the least positive attitudes out of the three surveyed countries. French speakers from Belgium, on the other hand, did not prefer French to English as anticipated on the basis of the declining English proficiency recorded in Wallonia. These findings indicate a need for future research into the effects of attitudes on language proficiency across the different French-speaking populations.