The Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Competence in a Welsh immersion context

Previous research in Canada has shown that students in French immersion classrooms often struggle to acquire the range of registers available to L1 speakers and so do not reach full sociolinguistic competence. The situation in Wales differs insofar as pupils from Welsh-speaking and non-Welsh-speaking homes are taught together. There has, however, been no work which compares the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence among pupils from these two backgrounds.

Looking at the spoken Welsh forms that pupils are exposed to inside and outside of the classroom, the project will answer the following research questions:

- To what extent is there variation in pupils' linguistic registers?

- To what extent do other social factors (home language, use of Welsh in community, use of Welsh outside school) affect sociolinguistic competence?