The statutory education sector and health and social sectors are obliged to provide Welsh language services, either by teaching through Welsh-medium or Welsh as a second language or by providing an ‘Active Offer’ of Welsh language services. This thesis identifies that bilingual capacity in the workforce is vital to fulfilling these policies and that training the current workforce to increase their fluency and confidence to use Welsh is necessary to increase capacity. This thesis used questionnaire data obtained from participants on the sylfaen | foundation course of the Welsh National Sabbatical Scheme to investigate the course as a language capacity building and strengthening model, both to determine its effectiveness and best practices in increasing fluency and confidence to use Welsh by its participating English-medium primary school teachers; and its generalisability and applicability to the health and social sectors. A Sabbatical Scheme Model was proposed to senior officials in the social and health sectors in the Cardiff region and semi-structured interviews were undertaken of current Welsh language training and the perception of Welsh in the sectors. Based on these interviews, new questions were raised in terms of how the sectors are focusing on increasing fluency and confidence in using the Welsh language in work, with focus turning to either language capacity strengthening or language capacity building as opposed to a combination of the two. As a result, this thesis sets out conclusions regarding language capacity building versus language capacity strengthening, and how both are necessary in creating a strong bilingual workforce that can both actively offer and deliver Welsh language services.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:738367 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Wagoner, Christina |
| Publisher | Cardiff University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://orca.cf.ac.uk/109723/ |
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