A Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Of
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BARRIERS TO LANGUAGE LEARNING A STUDY OF THE RETIRED BRITISH COMMUNITY ON THE COSTA DEL SOL , SPAIN A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in European Union Studies in the University of Canterbury by Claire McNeill, LLb, BA University of Canterbury 2010 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... 4 ABSTRACT................................................................................................................ 5 GLOSSARY ............................................................................................................... 6 FOREWORD .............................................................................................................. 7 CHAPTER ONE ......................................................................................................... 8 1.1 Introduction and Background .......................................................................................................... 8 1.2 Structure of the Study..................................................................................................................... 13 1.3 International Retirement Migration (IRM).................................................................................... 15 CHAPTER TWO....................................................................................................... 21 2.1 The Development of Southern Spain as a Retirement Destination................................................. 21 2.2 The Costa del Sol............................................................................................................................. 22 2.3 The British Tourist on the Costa del Sol......................................................................................... 27 2.4 Tourism and the Spanish Economy ................................................................................................ 31 CHAPTER THREE ................................................................................................... 35 3.1 English as a killer language............................................................................................................ 35 3.2 Language Ability............................................................................................................................. 38 3.3 Defining “Barriers to Learning”..................................................................................................... 39 3.4 Integration or Isolation? ................................................................................................................. 44 3.5 Ghetto or Sub-culture? ................................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER FOUR ..................................................................................................... 53 4.1 “Just speak English – it’s quicker”................................................................................................. 53 4.2 On Language, Learning and Integration........................................................................................ 59 4.3 Business Operators.......................................................................................................................... 63 4.4 The Spanish Perspective.................................................................................................................. 66 4.5 Spanish Businesses .......................................................................................................................... 67 4.6 Chance Encounters ......................................................................................................................... 72 2 4.7 Availability of Language Lessons.................................................................................................... 74 4.8 Newspapers...................................................................................................................................... 76 4.9 Lessons............................................................................................................................................ 81 CHAPTER FIVE ....................................................................................................... 86 5.1 IRM ................................................................................................................................................. 86 5.2 British Euro-Skepticism.................................................................................................................. 87 5.3 Integration and Ambivalence.......................................................................................................... 89 5.4 Immigrants? No, Tourists. .............................................................................................................. 93 5.5 Language Learning ......................................................................................................................... 94 5.6 Perceived Value of language learning............................................................................................. 97 5.7 Barriers to Language Learning ...................................................................................................... 99 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 109 Figure 1- Diagram showing connecting factors for the increase in IRM ................................17 Figure 2 - Map showing Costa del Sol, Malaga area and Benalmádena ................................23 Figure 3 - "Four times more foreign residents than 10 years ago" .........................................24 Figure 4 - Benalmádena Costa showing some of the many high rise apartments blocks and hotels....................................................................................................................................25 Figure 5 - Map of Benalmádena Costa showing Arroyo de la Miel .......................................26 Figure 6 - Diagram to explain the flow of conversation in an hypothetical conversation. ......56 Figure 7 - "Mas de 100 personas participan en un curso para mejorar el ingles"....................79 Figure 8 - Classified advertisements for Spanish language tuition from Costa del Sol News and Sur in English. ...............................................................................................................80 Figure 9 - "Poco a Poco".....................................................................................................104 Figure 10 - Rent a Car Sign ................................................................................................105 Figure 11 - Bi-lingual menu................................................................................................105 Figure 12 - "English Pub"...................................................................................................106 Figure 13 - More "English Pubs" ........................................................................................106 Figure 14 - Costa Del Sol News and Sur in English ............................................................107 Figure 15 – La Voz and Benalmádena Directo....................................................................107 Figure 16 - Vecinos, The News and EuroWeekly News......................................................108 Table 1 – Extract of results of two studies on Language Ability of Migrants to Spain ............38 Table 2 – Local Newspapers for the Costa del Sol area showing language lessons advertisements ......................................................................................................................84 Table 3 – Results of questions and results from advertisements .............................................85 Table 4 – Graph showing Perceived Future Rewards and Perceived Future Efforts .............99 3 Acknowledgements The author wishes to express sincere appreciation to Professor Martin Holland and Dr Natalia Chaban, both of the National Centre for Research on Europe (NCRE) at University of Canterbury for their support and encouragement towards this project. Special thanks to my parents, Patricia and Claude Firth who initially provided the inspiration for this thesis and allowed an insight into their wonderful retirement world. Additional thanks to their many friends and the people of Arroyo de la Meil , both English and Spanish, who took the time to discuss and share opinions and provided the substance for this thesis. Finally, to steadfast and ever supportive husband Lachlan McNeill who shares my passion. 4 Abstract Tourism to Spain is a significant part of the Spanish economy especially on the southern coastal areas which attracts a huge number of foreign tourists, in particular, a large number of British. Over the years many have chosen this area as their permanent or semi-permanent home and thus creating pockets of English speaking communities along the coast. This is evidenced by the presence of the many English owned and operated businesses coupled with the fact that there is a high number of Spanish who speak English. On the surface the communities appear to be economically self-supporting and socially independent of their Spanish hosts so perhaps it should be of little surprise that there is a low level of Spanish language uptake in these communities. Quite clearly the “need” has been