The study of language learning in multilingual education: students’ perceptions of their language learning experience in Basque, Spanish and English

Abstract

This paper focuses on teaching techniques for language learning as related to student satisfaction on multilingual compulsory education in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), where Basque and Spanish are official languages and English is taught as a foreign language. Using a multilingual approach, the paper discusses similarities and differences between the relationships found for the teaching techniques and the satisfaction levels in the three languages (Basque, Spanish and English). The results of the T-test analysis show significant differences between the three languages in the use of teaching techniques and levels of satisfaction. Additionally, the patterns of relationship between the teaching techniques and the language learning satisfaction levels show some weak relationship in the three languages, being learner-centred teaching techniques related to satisfaction levels. Results are explained according to some assumptions in language acquisition, and related to the context of the study. Finally, we discuss some opportunities for language teaching in multilingual contexts with a minority language.