Language used as the medium of instruction or in the classroom communication in an educational setting is an important aspect as it impacts the students in many ways. This sociolinguistic investigation examines the phenomenon of students’ language choice in higher education setting in the Maldives. This mixed method study adopted a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and observations to collect the data. The quantitative data was collected from 400 university students enrolled in different programs and analysed using descriptive statistics. Thematic analysis was used to evaluate the qualitative data gathered from the interviews and observations. The findings show that a large percentage of the students prefer a mixed language choice to be used in most of the teaching and learning related activities in the university. This study proposes some educational pedagogical implications, explicitly for tertiary education. Therefore, it is important to reflect on the findings and the conclusions derived from this study, as it will be useful in the future, in making decisions regarding pedagogical practices and language related issues in higher education, such as language policy in higher education.

Authors:
Aaidha Hammad, Maldives National University, Maldives

About the Presenter(s)
Aaidha Hammad is currently working as a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, The Maldives National University. Her areas of interests and expertise are English language teaching and learning, sociolinguistics, Language and dialects.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

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