Abstract:

This interdisciplinary study presents the results of an analysis of factors affecting the success/failure of learning a minority language in adult courses. We consider the correlations between the types of language learning motivation and the types of students’ expectations from both the language learning process itself and the desired results. The focus of the research was the question: why, given a high internal motivation to learn the language and a high positive assessment of the Tatar language, the number of students who successfully completed the course is relatively small. Adult students of fee-based Tatar language courses in Moscow were selected as a focus group. The study was conducted in 2017-2021 and carried out from a social perspective.

The research methodology was based on a questionnaire (60 units) and 20 mini-interviews with the view to finding out the motivation of students to learn the Tatar language and the trigger that made them sign up for a language course. The analysis of the results showed a high level of internal motivation with a predominance of the subtype “trauma therapy of language absence”; in external motivation, integrative subtypes predominate. Next, at the second stage of the study (in 2020-2021) we used a questionnaire and the method of semantic differential on eleven scales (25 respondents), thus, obtained the types of representation of the Tatar language among students. The results show that the Tatar language is significantly ahead of Russian in terms of factors of evaluation, inferior in terms of potency, and comparable in terms of activity. Further, in a series of mini-interviews (25), held in the form of personal conversations during breaks between classes, we identified the main types of expectations from the Tatar language courses and the desired results.

The statistics of course attendance since 2001 is approximately the following: 40% study regularly (group “regular” GR), 40% leave and return, sometimes after several years and more than once (group “hesitant” GH). 20% drop out of courses. In GR, students with the instrumental type of external motivation are most successful in mastering the language. There, we distinguish a subgroup with also an external, but integrative type of motivation – as a rule, they are elderly people who attend courses for the purpose of communication, but not learning the language. Most GH students have internal implicit (various compensatory therapies for lack of language) and implicit (conditionally called “return” to the roots) types of motivation. GH often quits learning the language but comes back again. Our data analysis on the problem of expectations from language courses shows that respondents like to speak Tatar, but do not like reading and rarely like writing. This correlates with their ideas about the Tatar language as the language of “home, family, village, childhood, nature”, which is generally typical for many languages in a minority situation. The problem of language learning is not being ready for the fact that the Tatar language is difficult and requires efforts to master its structures.

Keywords:

Plurilingual didactics, courses for adults, minority languages, Tatar language, language learning motivation.