The study aims to take the lens of language ideologies to examine how the divergent beliefs towards languages impact students' mobility choices and investment in learning Chinese and using languages other than English. Thirty participants, from 18 different countries and have distinctive language and cultural backgrounds, are all from a two-year English-medium Master's degree program in a public university in an international metropolitan Shanghai, China. The study adopts mixed methods to analyze the data.
The findings demonstrate that language ideology is the key navigator for transnational mobility and investment in learning a target language. The language ideologies enacted and adopted towards Chinese, English, and other languages result in divergent attitudes towards the local communities and different strategies for learning and using Chinese in the multilingual space. The paper, therefore, highlights the role of language ideologies in learning a second language. It presents empirical evidence to better understand the language situations of students who study abroad in English-taught programs in China. Implications for stakeholders, policymakers, and program designers have also been discussed.
