The perception of success in learning English as an L2 in the era of globalization – a multilingual student perspective

Abstract

Resorting to ecolinguistic theories, underscoring the concept of (trans)languaging and methodologies highlighting the need for analytical contextualization (Steffensen, Fill, 2014), the author presents the understanding of success in learning English as an L2 among selected multilingual students of Applied Linguistics at his home university, for whom knowledge of English and other languages is to be a final product of a professional character. Data has been elicited via focus group interview methodology (Parker, Tritter, 2006; Lankiewicz, 2023) with the use of a semi-structured interview and thematic framework analysis. The research findings suggest that English occupies a special place in students’ plurilingual repertoires and its pluricentric character helps them to be legitimate L2 users of their linguistic repertoires who do not measure their success by native speaker standards. The research undertaken offers insights into the process of the language learning evaluation of multilinguals via including their full linguistic repertoires to account for language learning processes.