Multilingual competence development in the Greek educational system: FL teachers' beliefs and attitudes

Abstract

The European Commission has aimed to increase diversification in the languages taught at primary and secondary educational level and to strive for multilingualism in all state members for the past two decades. The study was conducted with the aim to provide an account of foreign language (FL) teachers' beliefs regarding multilingualism and FL learning and teaching in the Greek educational context. The sample consisted of 120 teachers of FLs in state schools in Northern Greece. Semi-structured interviews were used as the basic instrument to collect data. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyse the data. The findings of the present study indicated the teachers' positive attitudes towards basic issues of FL policies. Despite their acknowledgement of English language as a strong communicative means, which was recorded, the need for students to acquire multilingual communicative competence in major European languages was also signified. In addition, the benefits from learning more than one FL, in an enlarged and multilingual Europe, from a very young age were highlighted. Moreover, concerns and speculations were raised regarding the development of multilingualism, the organisation and the updating of teaching principles and methods in the Greek educational system.