Factors Affecting Children’s Second Language Acquisition in a Multilingual Context at an International School in Nonthaburi

Abstract

This paper sought to identify the factors affecting children’s second language acquisition (SLA) in a multilingual context at an international school in Nonthaburi. The mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. The qualitative instrument was presented by a series of interviews to different four groups, including 1)Five Chinese teachers; 2)One principal; 3)Three administrative staff and 4)Twenty kindergarten children. The questionnaire in quantitative method was used to collect the data from fifty parents. The researcher applied simple calculation in frequencies and percentage for the quantitative analysis and used descriptive analysis to analyze the data collected from the interviews. The findings of this research were 14 factors affecting children’s second language acquisition (SLA). They were 1)School curriculum (50.00%); 2)Parental factors (47.37%); 3)Language environment (44.74%); 4)Teachers’ instruction (39.47%); 5)Personality (15.79%); 6)Age factor (13.16%); 7)Learning Strategies (10.53%); 8)Culture shock (10.53%); 9)Native Language (7.89%); 10)Different social context (7.89%); 11)Cognitive development (5.26%); 12)Investment on study (5.26%); 13)Textbooks (5.26%) and 14)Teaching facilities (2.63%). The top five factors were as follows: school curriculum (50.00%), parental factors (47.37%), language environment (44.74%), teachers’ instruction (39.47%) and personality (15.79%). In addition, learning environment (44.74%) was the most common factor that had been found in the top three listed in both the questionnaire and all interviews.