Use of and Attitudes to English in a Multilingual University

This survey focused on non-English students at Rhodes University in Grahams-town in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, which is an English-medium University which offers support for ESL speakers in the form of language development programmes. Over the years there has been a steady increase in the proportion of non-English speakers registering at the University and while this implies a conscious desire among these students to develop skills in English, the likelihood of groups of speakers of other languages forming linguistic communities of their own within the larger community at Rhodes is increasing. The survey aimed to investigate the attitudes of such students towards English, their (self-assessed) personal competence and fluency in English and to find out which language they actually use outside of the formal learning environment. The research used a two-pronged approach: a questionnaire and a large-scale random survey by fieldworkers in order to note the frequency of the use of languages other than English in informal contexts. While Xhosa students, who form a growing majority on campus, spoke the least English and were the least enthusiastic about it, the appeal of English is patently evident in the results of this survey: the vast majority of non-mother-tongue speakers embrace it with enthusiasm, believing in its mystical appeal as an agent of modernisation and social change, and provider of access to mobility and advancement. While English may be perceived by many as the language of oppression and elitism, second-language students at Rhodes today are clearly not willing to sacrifice their own futures on the altar of linguistic diversity.