From cognition to affect: a longitudinal study of pre-service teachers’ evolving attitudes in response to a course on English as a global language

An increasing number of studies have proposed strategies for integrating the role of English as a global lingua franca into teacher education programs as a way to respond to the demands posed by the globalised spread of English. While numerous pedagogical proposals acknowledging the significance of English as a global lingua franca have been put forward, there has been relatively less research exploring the potential effects of such proposals on the ideologies and attitudes of English pre-service teachers towards the language. To fill this gap, the current study was designed to investigate the influence of a semester-long course on English as a Global Language on attitudes towards English held by five Catalan university students. The findings reveal that the course had an impact on the cognitive and affective dimensions of attitude (Garrett, 2010) of all participants. However, as expected, these changes were not uniform across all students, and notably, they did not progress consistently in the two dimensions. Essentially, changes at the cognitive level manifested first and were met with minimal resistance from the participants. In contrast, changes at the affective level proved to be more intricate and nuanced in their progression.