Implementing Multilingual Education in Kazakhstan: Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes Towards the Status of English

Abstract

The present study seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of multilingual education by showing how students understand the role of the English language in multilingual classrooms in the Expanding Circle context. It examines the perception and assessment of the status of English by university students in the context of the trilingual policy currently being implemented in Kazakhstan. The purpose of this study is to determine how the new language policy is implemented in university multilingual programs from the point of view of the functioning of English. The quantitative study utilizes a sociolinguistic questionnaire distributed between undergraduate students of multilingual programs offered by four major universities in the western area of Kazakhstan. The findings suggest that despite the increasing importance and prestige of studying English, it is not used on equal ground with the Kazakh and Russian languages, and its level of proficiency remains relatively low. The statistical analysis of the respondents’ answers allowed identifying gaps in the implementation of the language policy due to the lack of understanding of the specificity of multilingual education by both students and teachers.