The online questionnaire
Our team arranged a short online questionnaire, which included 25 questions related to personal language identity and language situation of Kazakh students in Vienna.
The age of the responders is from 18 to 32 year old.
The vast majority of responders are in the age of 23-27 and moved to Austria from the two biggest cities of Kazakhstan: Almaty and Nur-Sultan (Astana). 32% of them live in Vienna for more than 5 years, whereas the greater number of students (32%) study in Austria for 3-5 years.
The graphics below show the difference between foreign language knowledge and the languages which Kazakhstani students use in daily life.
The situation changes a bit when we come to communication with friends in Austria. 3 students regularly speak in Kazakh with their friends, others prefer Russian, German and English.
On the working place, Kazakh is not used at all by any of the responders.
One of the goals of the online questionnaire was to find out the reasons for choosing Austria for getting higher education.
The top 4 reasons are:
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Affordable education
-
Safety
-
Future prospects
-
Quality of education
Nevertheless, there are various difficulties which Kazakh students face, such as Austrian mentality, language barrier and local dialects, financial difficulties, limited employment opportunities and visa prolongation, which might be time-consuming and stressful.
The online questionnaire
Our team arranged a short online questionnaire that was posted on the page of the Kazakhstan Student Society in Austria in Facebook Group, including 25 participants taking part in the study and 22 questions related to personal language identity and language situation of Kazakhstani students in Vienna.
The age of the responders is from 18 to 32 years old.
The vast majority of responders are in the age of 23-27 and moved to Austria from the two biggest cities of Kazakhstan: Almaty and Nur-Sultan (Astana). 32% of them live in Vienna for more than 5 years, whereas the greater number of students (32%) study in Austria for 3-5 years.
The graphics below show the difference between foreign language knowledge and the languages which Kazakhstani students use in daily life.
The situation changes a bit when we come to communication with friends in Austria. 3 students regularly speak in Kazakh with their friends, others prefer Russian, German and English.
On the working place, Kazakh is not used at all by any of the responders.
It is necessary to mention, that Kazakhstani students use 3 languages (Russian, German and English) equally for their daily needs (reading or googling), but only 1 responder uses the Kazakh language for the online search.
In terms of the association to certain language(s), most of the responders chose Russian, followed by English and Kazakh respectively.
One of the goals of the online questionnaire was to find out the reasons for choosing Austria for getting higher education.
The top 4 reasons are:
-
Affordable education
-
Safety
-
Future prospects
-
Quality of education
Nevertheless, there are various difficulties which Kazakhstani students face, such as Austrian mentality, language barrier and local dialects, financial difficulties, limited employment opportunities and visa prolongation, which might be time-consuming and stressful.
To sum up, online questionnaire gave us a sufficient overview of language practice and language situation of Kazakhstani students of different age. After moving to Vienna, responders expanded and at the same time limited their language usage: Kazakh remained only for communication with Kazakhstani relatives; English and German "joined" Russian, and these three languages are commonly used in daily life.