Jezik struke na Pravnom fakultetu Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Jezik struke na Pravnom fakultetu Sveučilišta u Zagrebu

Summary/Abstract: The teaching of languages for specific purposes has been an increasingly appealing and relevant topic both in the academic and the professional sphere for decades. In today’s globalised world and, more specifically, in an increasingly united Europe, the importance of learning and using foreign languages need no longer be particularly emphasized. Using foreign languages in professional communication facilitates participation in political and economic exchange and arrangements. The field of law is a peculiar area in terms of its professional language. Law is firmly dependant on its national language, making it an even more closed system, creating its own unique concepts in the national language, often without obvious counterparts in other systems. However, communication between legal experts and the European integration of which Croatia is part make it necessary for legal professionals to master the foreign languages of the legal profession. This is particularly true of English, as it is still the dominant working language in EU institutions, but also of French, being the principal working language of the Court of Justice of the EU, and finally of German. The importance of German is twofold – not only is the Croatian legal system rooted in the traditions of German and Austrian law, but it is also those two countries that have a strong presence in economic transactions in Croatia. The appreciation of the importance of learning foreign LSPs at Croatian universities and their faculties varies to a great extent. Some faculties have dedicated departments that organize teaching in foreign languages of the pertinent professional material, develop curricula and do scientific research in the pertinent fields, while others hire external teachers to cover a varying quantity of teaching hours of the LSP, and who in parallel teach foreign languages in completely different settings, making it difficult to specialize in one particular area of LSP. When it comes to the four law schools in Croatia, foreign language teaching enjoys a similar status. The organization and carrying out of the teaching of foreign languages of law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zagreb will be presented in more detail below. The Faculty of Law in Zagreb was founded in 1776 as part of the Royal Academy of Sciences. It became part of the University of Zagreb from the latter’s creation in 1874. Until 1968, the only curriculum offered was that of Law, which went from being a twoyear professional course to a four-year study with a scientific approach. It then added the study of Public Administration. Fifteen years later the study of Social Work was added, and the latest addition to its offer of courses is the study of Public Finances, also known as Tax. Today, the Faculty of Law offers two university study programmes – Law and Social Work – and two professional programmes – Tax and Public Administration. In addition, the Faculty regularly offers postgraduate doctoral and specialist programmes. The teaching and research staff of the Faculty is organised in 29 departments, one of which is the Department of Foreign Languages. Foreign languages have been taught at the Faculty since after the Second World War, gaining the status of a compulsory course in 1967. Students chose between a number of languages, such as Russian, French, German or Italian, but since the late 1970s, English and German became compulsory courses in the first two years of the study of Law. They have kept this status since. As regards the teaching staff, in 1990 the Faculty gave permanent positions to the external teachers that had been hired to carry out the teaching, while the Department of Foreign Languages was established in 1997. It currently employs four full-time teachers in the position of senior lecturers. They teach compulsory and optional LSP courses in English and German in the five study courses offered by the Faculty – the integrated undergraduate and graduate university study of Law, the undergraduate study of Social Work, the professional study of Public Administration, the graduate specialist professional study of Public Administration, and the professional study of Tax. The compulsory LSP courses are taught in the first two years of the undergraduate and professional programmes, and in the first year of the graduate specialist programme of Public Administration. As regards the compulsory courses in the study of Law, the first-year students choose between English and German of the Legal Profession as their compulsory course, taught in the first four semesters of the study of Law. A vast majority, over 95%, choose English. The number of students enrolled in the first year has gone from over 1,000 to between 500 and 600 over the last decade, which has positively reflected on the teaching of foreign languages. To be more specific, the size of the groups for English has gone down to between 80 to 130 students, while the number used to be invariably around 150 students per group only 10 years ago. Nowadays, German is chosen by 15-20 students, which is a decrease from 60 students on average in the generations between 2011 and 2015. The classes are taught in weekly 90-minute sessions. The number of contact sessions is currently normally 12, which accounts for 24 hours of the 30-hour curriculum per course. The remaining 6 hours are carried out through interactive activities posted on the Moodle-based E-teaching platform Merlin. The activities include quizzes, tests, and various homework assignments, on which feedback is given by the teacher. The teaching is content-based, focusing on legal terminology, but with a comparative approach, providing Croatian equivalents, where possible, and inviting students to reflect on the possibilities and challenges of translating legal concepts from a foreign language, where there is either a systemic gap or a partial match in legal concepts between L1 and L2. The work on terminology includes various language exercises, including translation. Lesser emphasis is given to communication skills, considering time constraints and the substantial classroom sizes. However, opportunities are provided for students to engage in oral and written communication within and outside the classroom, through discussions, group work and preparing student presentations. As regards the topics covered in the English courses, each of the four courses deals with a module of the compulsory literature – English for the Legal Profession by L. Sočanac, M. Matijašević, I. Horvatić Bilić, S. Husinec and M. Javornik Čubrić. The first module deals with general topics concerning the law, legal systems, the language of the law and the organisation of government. The second module outlines the English and American legal systems over a selection of topics covering in particular the legislative and judicial branches of government and the sources of law. The third module, covered in the third semester, deals with specific areas of law, including contract law, tort law, family law, criminal law, employment law, and company law. The basis is English law with comparisons to the Croatian regulations and terminology. Finally, the fourth semester concerns the topics of international and supranational law, including topics on international organisations, such as the UN and the Council of Europe, and in particular the European Court of Human Rights, while a substantial part of the curriculum is dedicated to EU-related topics, notably EU institutions and the sources of EU law. In the fifth year, optional courses in English, German and French are taught. While English and German are taught by department staff, French is taught by an external associate under the auspices of the Embassy of the French Republic to Croatia. The optional English course used to include a study trip to London, with visits to the criminal and civil courts, the Supreme Court, the British Parliament, and a lecture at the London School of Economics. The optional courses have been attracting fewer and fewer students, due to the increasing number of courses on offer, combined with a decreasing number of students in the fifth year, making the study trips difficult to organize. Students of Social Work have their foreign language courses only in the first and third semester of the undergraduate programme, but with 60 hours per semester instead of 30. In this way, approximately the same amount of content is covered in one semester as is covered in two semesters in the other studies. The professional studies of Public Administration and Tax have the same setup of foreign language courses as the study of Law, i.e. 30 hours per semester and four semesters of compulsory LSP courses. In all other aspects, the approach to the teaching of foreign languages for specific purposes is very similar across all the programmes offered by the Faculty. All courses require a written and oral examination in order to progress to the following course. In addition, each curriculum uses its own coursebook, covering topics tailored to the main curriculum of the pertinent study (i.e. social work and social policy topics in LSP courses for students of Social Work, topics concerning public administration in Croatia and in the EU for students of Public Administration, and topics concerning law and taxation for students of Tax). An optional course in Academic Writing is offered to third-year students of Social Work and compulsory English and German courses are available to first-year students of the graduate specialist study of Public Administration. In addition to the compulsory and optional courses, the Faculty organizes free courses of French, with an emphasis on the language of the law, ranging from beginner to intermediate levels. These are available to all students regardless of the year of study and are taught on a basis of one 45-minute lesson per week. Interest in these courses is very high, with more than 100 students enrolled in the current term. Apart from the courses in LSP described above, the Department of Foreign Languages is active in the area of lifelong learning, offering courses in legal English, German, French and Italian for working lawyers and other interested parties. In addition, tailor-made workshops for translators focusing on legal terminology in various areas of law are organized and carried out by department staff in co-operation with teachers from other Faculties and occasionally external associates. Compared to the other three faculties of law in Croatia, the position and importance given to foreign languages at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb is clearly significant. The only faculty offering more compulsory instruction in foreign languages is the Faculty of Law in Osijek. However, the Faculty of Law in Zagreb still dominates when all the other noncompulsory activities in LSP instruction are concerned. As can be concluded from the above, foreign languages can be said to be held in relatively high esteem by the Faculty management, considering their compulsory status, the possibility of numerous optional courses and the support for the lifelong learning training programmes offered by the Faculty administration. Despite that, the Department is facing certain problems, some of which are becoming less serious, while others persist or worsen. The first problem concerns group size in most study programmes, which is rarely below 70 students per group. This negatively impacts the quality of teaching, making any kind of individual approach virtually impossible. The staff compensates for this using various methods, including e-course activities. Still, there is no doubt whatsoever that working with smaller groups of students would be more beneficial for them. However, compared to 10 or more years ago, the number of students in some groups has been reduced. This is a result of the overall reduction in the number of students enrolling in the first year of the undergraduate study of Law in the first place. Despite this reduction, the administration of the Faculty has not reduced the number of groups, working towards improving the conditions for the students in learning foreign languages. The other growing problem is a constant decline in the number of students opting for German as their LSP course. In fact, the only study programme in which there are still regular classes in German for special purposes are those in the study of Law. The studies of Social Work, Public Administration and Tax have for years now only had a handful of students selecting German, with the numbers being too few for actual regular classes to be held, only to be replaced by occasional work in small groups where the teacher helps them prepare for the exam. The Faculty has been supportive of the Department in combatting this problem. Students who take English as their LSP course in the study of Law can now also attend German classes, without the obligation to take the exam, in an effort to popularize the learning of German for law. The importance of German in the legal professions seems sometimes to be recognized by students in their senior years or even after they graduate. This is evident from the fact that many students who enrol in the paying lifelong learning courses of German for law are in fact senior-year students or fresh graduates of Law. Hopefully, the interest in German in other study programmes will be rekindled in the coming years, despite the growing dominance of English as the language of international communication.

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