Podcast Episode 4 (transcript)

4 (Eng): ‘“Everything we do revolves around the exam”: What are students’ perceptions and experiences of learning Welsh as a second language in Wales?’ with Dr Mirain Rhys

Professor Enlli Thomas is joined by Dr Mirain Rhys to discuss the article: ‘“Everything we do revolves around the exam”: What are students’ perceptions and experiences of learning Welsh as a second language in Wales?’ https://doi.org/10.16922/wje.24.1.1 

ET: Hello and welcome to the Wales Journal of Education podcast. I’m Professor Enlli Thomas, one of the editors of the journal, and today I’m joined by Dr Mirain Rhys from Cardiff Metropolitan University. We’ll be discussing her article titled ‘“Everything we do revolves around the exam”: What are students’ perceptions and experiences of learning Welsh as a second language in Wales?’, which was co-authored with Dr Kevin Smith. Mirain, thanks for talking to us on the podcast.

MR: No problem. Thanks for having me.

ET: First of all, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, and Kevin, maybe?

MR: Yes, absolutely. I’m originally from Caernarfon in north Wales. I was brought up with Welsh as my first language, so I’ve always had an interest in the language, and myself as a Welsh-speaker, but also how that relates then to other people in Wales. That interest kind of grew into me studying a Psychology degree at Bangor University and then going on to studying for a PhD, with Enlli as my supervisor, on the impact of bilingual education on children’s cognitive and linguistic skills. From there then, I went to work for Cardiff University, for the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data, or WISERD, as we fondly refer to it. There, I worked in lots of different research projects, and one of those research projects was WISERD Education, a longitudinal study following about 1,500 pupils, on a yearly basis, in different schools around Wales, and asking them about their experiences of education, their experiences of life in Wales, about their community, their hopes for the future, their lives at present, and that’s where I met Kevin. Kevin is originally from the US, but he has roots here in Wales. He was a teacher, he was an academic around the world, in various countries, and then settled in Wales to work on WISERD Education and other research projects within WISERD. It was great to work with him on WISERD Education because we came from different perspectives, although both Welsh at heart. Kevin’s expertise lies in autobiographical approaches to the curriculum and curriculum theory, which married quite nicely with my expertise in bilingual education, which led to this project.

ET: Can you tell us a little bit about what prompted yourself and Kevin to do the work for this particular article?

MR: As I said, we came from different experiences in relation to Wales and the Welsh language. From collecting data from pupils across Wales… We asked them about a lot of things to do with their lives, but one of the things we asked them was what they enjoyed in school? One of the questions on the questionnaire that we were asking them was, what subjects do you enjoy most in school? Interestingly, or interestingly to us, I suppose, the Welsh language, or Welsh as a subject in school, was quite low down the list. Pupils told us that they didn’t enjoy Welsh as a subject in school. Also, this was a longitudinal study with four different cohorts. We had children, at the start of the study, who were in Years 2, 6, 8 and 10, so quite a big variety from primary school to secondary school. As the cohorts moved up in their education, moving up from primary to secondary, it sounded as though their experiences with Welsh as a second language lessons got worse. They told us that they didn’t enjoy it as much as they moved up secondary school. This was from the quantitative information that we collected from the WISERD Education longitudinal study. So, Kevin and I were quite interested in learning a bit more about the context of that. Giving the pupils a bit more of a voice and a bit more of a chance to explore that with us. We were interested in relation to Sioned Davies’s report about Welsh as a second language in education, we knew that there was a lot of literature around Welsh as a second language not really being a priority in relation to Welsh language development within Wales from a Welsh Government perspective. So, we kind of thought it would be really interesting to know a bit more about this from the pupils themselves. That’s where the interest sparked.

ET: What was the main focus of the article itself?

MR: The focus of the article itself was to provide some context to the quantitative data that we had from the WISERD Education project. What we wanted to do was to further explore the reasons behind why Welsh was their most hated subject, really. We wanted to give young people a voice, and we were hoping that, in giving the young people a voice, we’d be better able to maybe inform future policy and practice in relation to Welsh as a second language.

ET: You mentioned the larger WISERD questionnaire data. Can you explain a little bit more about how you collected the data for this particular article?

MR: We were already involved with 30 schools across Wales. They were tied into the research project, and they were happy to participate. What we did was we went back and asked the English-medium secondary schools whether they’d be interested in taking part in a bit of additional research, an exploration into Welsh as a second language. We ended up with three schools taking part in the study. School 1 was in south Wales, School 2 was in mid Wales and so was School 3. The schools varied in terms of the medium of education. Both the school from the south and one school in mid Wales were categorised at the time as English-medium schools, and the other school was categorised as an English-medium school with significant use of Welsh. There was a semi-urban school, a school in a town and a school in a rural area. It was quite a nice mixture of experiences and background for the participants that we had taking part in the study. They also came from a variety of home language backgrounds, even though they were all attending English-medium schools.

We had 36 students taking part in the focus groups that we conducted in the three schools and we developed the focus group questions based on literature that we knew about, in relation to Welsh as a second language. There were questions relating to what they thought of the Welsh language in general, how they related to the Welsh language as individuals, what their experiences were when they were in primary school versus secondary school, how they see the lessons, what happens in the lessons, what they like about them, what they don’t like about them. We also asked a bit of a million dollar question, which was, if you worked for the Welsh Government, and you were tasked with making Welsh as a second language lessons better, better for you, what would that look like? That was a really interesting question because it got a lot of engagement. The students could imagine themselves, I suppose, making those decisions, and it was really interesting to hear about their experiences from that perspective as well. It was good to give them a bit of autonomy over what they would like to see in the future.

ET: You mentioned, in terms of the WISERD project itself, that you gained some insights from children in Years 2, 6, 8 and 10. What were the age groups of the children in the focus groups?

MR: When we started WISERD Education, that’s where the starting point was. The first sweep of data, I suppose, was when they were in Years 2, 6, 8 and 10. When we collected the data, the cohorts were in Years 9, 10 and 13, so the ages varied along those year groups. But they were all in English-medium secondary schools, and they were all either studying Welsh as a second language or they had experience of studying Welsh as a second language, but they weren’t at that point in time, because they were doing A Levels, etc. 

ET: What would you say are the most important findings from your research?

MR: I suppose Kevin and I reflected quite a lot on our perspectives in relation to the Welsh language, and how that might have differed from these pupils’ experiences of the Welsh language and learning the language. We were also very aware of the literature that had set up these pupils’ experiences of learning Welsh as a second language. We knew beforehand that there was documentation out there highlighting that Welsh as a second language in English-medium schools had been neglected for many years, and that the focus perhaps had been on developing Welsh-medium provision instead of providing maybe an equal balance for the majority of these pupils, who are learning Welsh as a second language in English-medium schools. It was actually a privilege to speak to these pupils and to give them a voice to be able to tell us what their experiences were of learning Welsh as a second language. A lot of the students talked about how positive they felt about being Welsh, and understanding how important it was to learn the language, just in general. They felt proud to be Welsh, a lot of them spoke about how they wished they could speak Welsh, and how, if they wanted to change something, one of the main things that they talked about was wanting to have an opportunity to practise these skills, to develop their oral skills, and the practical nature of just speaking the language. Some of them talked about having a Saturday job and wanting to use just very basic Welsh in their day-to-day lives, but feeling that they couldn’t really do that because the lessons, they felt, were quite outcome-focused, they were set up for them to be able to pass the exam and not for them to be able to use the language of their country as they so desperately wanted to do. They also spoke about the Welsh Government narrative that’s been there for quite a number of years now about why they should learn the language. They knew, they’d been told by their teachers about this economic advantage of learning the language. They also felt as though there was quite a strong family link. That had an impact on their motivation to learn or not to continue. If they had Welsh-speaking grandparents, they felt more of a motivation to learn, to engage with family members who did speak Welsh. And also the flip of that, if people in their family hadn’t had a good experience of learning Welsh. That kind of perspective then had an impact on their attitudes and motivation. They also spoke about how they wanted more incidental Welsh in different areas around the school where they were. They wanted more practical activities to practise the verbal communication skills that they were supposed to be developing in these lessons, and they also wanted more cross-curricular staff support. Using Welsh in other lessons in their school day, not just in their Welsh language lessons. So, it varies, in terms of how many Welsh lessons these pupils get. Some pupils get maybe up to four hours a week, some pupils maybe get one hour a week. We know that the literature highlights that the more exposure you have to a language, the better you’ll be at speaking that language. That makes sense, right? So, these students were telling us exactly that, the exact findings of international research on bilingualism, but that it was actually happening in their classroom, that they weren’t being exposed to the language, so they didn’t feel confident in speaking it. Lastly, they also spoke of this image they had of north Wales as being this Welsh-speaking nirvana. I giggled at that, because obviously I’m from north Wales myself. But the image they had, in north Wales, everyone speaks Welsh, so it’s easier for you to use the language, for it to be a part of your life, and that they pined for that. If was quite sad, sometimes, to listen to their stories. Because I feel very strongly that everyone should have the opportunity to learn Welsh, and for this not to be a reality for these students, it was quite sad to realise that they were telling us this. Pupils also spoke about feeling that they didn’t have a choice in learning Welsh as a second language, because, obviously, the Welsh lessons were a compulsory part of their education, and that if they did have a choice, then they understood that maybe a lot of people wouldn’t choose to study Welsh as a second language, but that choice should be there. They also spoke about the impact of their primary education experiences and how that had a huge impact then on their motivation in secondary school. Their attitudes toward the language and how that had an impact on them. They also spoke about the actual lessons themselves. They spoke about how they sometimes saw it as a bit of a joke. It was really hard to actually learn the language because a lot of them felt that all they were doing was copying things down in their books. It’s like the title of the article, “Everything we do revolves around the exam”. They felt they were doing things just to pass the exam, as opposed to gaining those practical skills and knowledge in the language so that they can go on and use the language as part of their lives.

ET: You’ve touched upon numerous potential implications of your work in that narrative there. This paper, of course, is a very timely paper, particularly given the census results that were published quite recently. So, I’ll ask you the million dollar question. What do you think are the main implications of your study for education in Wales, thinking about the drop in the number of Welsh speakers between the ages of 3 and 15 that we learnt about in the census data?

MR: I think, given the results of the census, the most recent results, I think this article still highlights the need for developing and understanding better Welsh language lessons for the majority of pupils learning in Wales. The majority of pupils learning in Wales attend English-medium schools. They learn Welsh as a subject, so for that to be neglected for so many years just highlights the huge gap and the actual decrease in young people speaking Welsh. Of course, if you don’t set up positive learning experiences and well-trained teachers to teach these children the second language, then of course it makes sense that their motivation isn’t going to be there to learn the language. So, I think it’s really important for us to think about how the learning experience impacts pupil attitude. How they see the assessment, what the pedagogy looks like, what the contents of the lesson are, and also providing the practitioners with the correct knowledge and understanding that they need in order to teach a second language. So, I think that’s really important to continue to think about and develop. In terms of the implications, I think there’s a continued need here for more practical activities for students to develop that conversational use of Welsh. I’m hoping that the new curriculum will support that, in moving away from teaching to the test, for example, and giving children more holistic opportunities to learn through doing, and learn something so that they can use it, for example, the Welsh language. I also feel that practitioners need bespoke training on effective teaching methods. It’s unfortunate that teachers are expected to, I suppose, know everything, and be able to teach everything. So, their curriculum – in terms of how they’re trained to be a teacher – is already jam-packed. So, how can we fit in this understanding into developing teachers’ knowledge? I don’t have the answer to that. I’m not an ITE expert. But I’d love to think a bit more about what practitioners need in order to teach Welsh as a second language effectively, because that’s not something that’s covered at the moment in their training. I also think, lastly, like I said earlier, I feel really strongly about giving everyone the opportunity to be able to learn the Welsh language so that they can use it, not just to pass an exam, to tick a box, to highlight that X amount of people are taking this exam or that they can speak the language etc, but to give individual people that lived experience of speaking the language of their country, something that they’ve told us that they want. So, how can we make that a reality? I think it is a partnership between maybe working with people’s families and the school, and how we can make that work better, because we know that literature highlights that family experiences then have an influence on children’s experiences and their motivation to learn. Thinking about that, thinking about how we can develop that practitioner expertise, and then just generally thinking about how we can make this accessible to everyone, and thinking about that lived experience and the authentic needs of individuals within schools, and how that then can translate into them going out into the world, using the language and feeling proud about that as well. I think that’s my take-home from the paper.

ET: Thank you so much for telling us about your article. Clearly, there are numerous issues that arise from this particular study. Hopefully, people will have the opportunity to pick up on some of those. Is there anything else you would like to tell the listeners about this piece of work that we haven’t already discussed?

MR: I think I’d just like to highlight – like you’ve just said, it’s a really complex issue, there’s lots of moving parts – but really, we’re talking about real-life people and their real-life experiences. I’m really proud to have been part of the project, WISERD Education in general, but also pinpointing that there’s a particular issue here that needs a lot more exploration in order to get to the reality where people can use the language confidently and that the opportunity is available to everyone. Thank you very much for the time today to be able to talk about it.

ET: Thank you, Mirain. Hopefully, you may be tempted to read the article we’ve just been discussing. If you would like to read the article, visit the Wales Journal of Education website. All articles are Open Access, in English and Welsh, and they are available to read at no cost, and can be downloaded as many times as you want. Thanks for listening, and thank you to my guest, Mirain. This is a series of podcasts where I and the other editors will be discussing the research published in the Wales Journal of Education. You can subscribe in your podcast app or listen on our website.