INTEGRATING VARIATION THEORY WITH MULTILINGUAL INSTRUCTION IN MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOMS: BRIDGING THEORY AND PRACTICE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

This thesis explores language teaching and language acquisition by multilingual learners using a Variation Theory approach and multilingual teaching in a university setting in Macao, China. It includes three case studies applied to students of the Spanish language in the introductory level which took place from late August to early December of the year 2017. The first study describes Macao’s multilingual language learners in the University of Macao in 2017. Based on the LEAP-Q questionnaire, a questionnaire was created to inquire all Spanish language students about their languages´ background, their motivations to learn new languages, as well as their learning strategies. The second study shows how the usage of Variation Theory techniques and multilingual teaching techniques boosted the teaching and the learning during the semester. This study employs a case study methodology, by analysing in-class multiple interactions gathering information on how multilinguals´ language background affects the pedagogical process. It analyses a total of 28 classes of 1 hour and 15 minutes. The third study presents the analysis of a questionnaire to 82 students of the initial level of Spanish language in the University of Macao, along with the analysis of interviews from 10 selected multilingual students about their linguistic background and how they experienced the semester. These interviews collected more information about the effectiveness of the Variation Theory in the semester in terms of in-class teaching and learning. From the triangulation of these three studies, some conclusions have been drawn about the advantages of using Variation Theory and multilingual teaching techniques for multilingual students, for the language teacher and ultimately also into the curricular design of foreign language teaching. In sum, that the linguistic background of students plays a major role in how they acquire a new language and, that applying Variation Theory techniques can be an immensely effective technique in a language classroom setting; suggesting that multilingual students will gain from being previously identified and placed in a separate class where these variation techniques were applied. Since this thesis focuses solely on an introductory language course, there is ground to explore this same approach on more advanced multilingual language learners