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In the framework of modern social tendencies, particularly as a result of integration of European nations into the European Union, mastering foreign languages is often emphasized as highly important, with the focus on learning. Thus, there is a broad discussion regarding the age when teaching foreign language should begin, as well as the most appropriate teaching methods. However, the issue of the need for learning foreign language is seemingly not explained to a sufficient degree; it is often reduced to its mere use value, but other educational values are ignored. From this perspective, several developmental segments can be highlighted, such as perceiving, differentiating what is important and what is unimportant, logical thinking, concluding.... The purpose of this paper is to discuss one of the educational reasons for learning foreign language, and answer the question how the attitudes towards other nations are affected by learning foreign languages. In this sense, the results of the research are presented, in which 40 respondents were asked to answer an anonymous questionnaire about their attitudes and knowledge of other nations before beginning to learn a new language, and after one year of learning. The results of this study have clearly shown that respondents have the most positive attitudes towards what they are familiar with, so that the best ranking nations in almost all questions are the British, German, French and Italian, followed by the somewhat lower ranking Greek, with the Finn and Bulgarian being the lowest ranking nations. The survey was repeated after a year of learning a new foreign language (German). Consistent with the expectations, the attitudes towards this language and its speakers, as well as towards the other less familiar languages and nations (Bulgarian and Finnish), were improved. Comparing the results of the two surveys the initial assumption was confirmed, i.e. that learning a language is more than merely adopting a useful skill – it also significantly contributes to our "opening" for what is new, facilitating the skill of accepting what was previously unfamiliar or strange, and being one of the prerequisites for the creation of better and more humane society.
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In the society of total globalization and internationalization, model of multilingualism is not new model. The factors of globalization and internationalization considerably contribute to its importance. The work is dealing with the notion of multilingualism and learning of foreign languages as a part of language policy respectively. We can examine the multilingual model on the European level as the basic value since the structure of European integration processes particularly distinguished language and cultural variety of the member countries. What to accentuate here is the importance of choice of an individual language and access of learning of certain language in schools as well as the way and the volume of the offer. In Europe, the multilingualism becomes a standard but to urge it in small countries does not mean to push out mothertongue. On the contrary, it means to stop giving advantage to native speakers who speak the languages of the large countries. Cultural and language particularities of EU country members will be an important identification characteristic meaning further on that multilingualism will become one of the features of the Europeans, similar to countries like Switzerland, Belgium and Luxemburg. Thus, we can suppose that the importance of various languages in Europe will become even more distinguished and that it will be a challenge to the contact linguistics, notably to language policy. Besides, it is necessary to examine very carefully the plan of introduction and order of learning foreign languages. The conclusion within the structure of multilingual policy is to systematize with argument and plan the Croatian language policy and to carry out the choice and order in learning certain foreign languages.
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The authors aim to analyse and compare the lexeme Geld and its collocations on the grammatical and semantic levels in general and in business German. A special emphasis will be put on the importance of the communicative function that this lexeme and its collocations have in the language of banking. The paper also has a practical purpose. Its applicability in teaching is envisaged to improve the communicative competence of students of economics.
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The paper presents the aims, tasks and expected results of an е-platform designed for the teaching of foreign languages for specific purposes. The platform, developed by the Laboratory for Language Technologies of New Bulgarian University, is tailored to the specific needs of students. The platform allows: 1/ corpus creation and management; 2/ the creation of term banks, with definitions and translations, 3/ corpus analysis (lemmatisation, POS, morphological and morphemic analysis, syntactic analysis, parallel text alignment); 4/ the generation of text-based drills and tests; 5/ automatic test assessment.
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A considerable number of immigrants in the United Kingdom confront challenges as they acculturate into a new way of life, where language competence significantly influences their social, economic and cultural integration. Such immigrants are often at an educational and social disadvantage compared to the majority of population due to their different social and cultural backgrounds, prior educational experience and the lack of language competencies. The use of technologies for teaching / learning the host country language has been emphasized in European Strategy 2020 policy. Although learning of English usually takes place very naturally in an English-speaking informal environment, formal educational institutions in the UK and immigrants’ native countries tend to be very helpful as well. Assuming that such learners of English usually need more intensively-paced learning and knowing that professional commitments or other reasons can prevent them from coming to classes, blended learning can help them reach their goals faster and not lose connection with their native country. In order to develop insight into such English learners’ needs as well as to identify teaching forms that could help in meeting these needs, this study used a survey to explore the most important factors influencing the development of the UK immigrants’ English language competence and students’ general practice of using ICT for English learning and their attitudes towards ICT in foreign language learning. Furthermore, the research aimed to answer the question whether a blended strategy of language learning organized by their native countries institutions would be able to positively influence the learning outcomes while maintaining a connection with their native country and culture. The research sample was a group of English learners enrolled in an ESOL course. To explore the needs, experiences and attitudes of the participants, a quantitative research methodology was applied and short semi-structured interviews were conducted. The present research has demonstrated that the advancement of technologies has increased the use of ICT not only for personal purposes but also for work and studies. The students have indicated quite a frequent use of various on-line English study tools and programmes and have demonstrated a generally positive attitude towards blended English learning.
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The EU consistent policy on languages promotes new language teaching methods and encourages pedagogical experiments at all levels of education, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) being one of language education innovations. Over the past twenty years CLIL proved to be an effective method in foreign language acquisition and there is considerable evidence of successful CLIL implementation in secondary schools in many European countries. Speaking about foreign languages in higher education, it is necessary to note that abbreviation EMI – English as a Medium of Instruction – is mentioned much more often than CLIL. One of the reasons for lower CLIL implementation at a tertiary level is the complexity of subject contents taught at universities. Furthermore, if a student’s major is law, the issue becomes more challenging because of the differences in common law and civil law systems. However, one of lawyer’s professional competences directly connected with language learning is a communicative competence. Such spheres of lawyer’s activity as client counseling, negotiation, and mediation rely heavily on listening, paraphrasing, reframing, summarising, and skills of question formation regardless of what legal system a lawyer belongs to. These so-called soft skills can be developed within a foreign language course but it seems more rational to master them through a professional medium. Therefore, law teachers should be engaged in designing a substantive part of course materials, while language teachers are to be in charge of communicative competence development. The present study aims at analyzing the practice and experience in designing and implementing an original optional course “Client Consultation in English”. This course can serve as an illustration of a CLIL Legal English course and its structure can be used as an example to follow while designing similar courses.
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Issues in minority education in relation to citizenship have received more attention lately, because of new requirements for language testing in several countries (Bevelander, Fernandez & Hellström, 2011, p. 101). The acquisition of citizenship is more decisive for immigrant participation in society than the duration of stay in the country (Bevelander, Fernandez & Hellström, 2011). The second language is crucial for active citizenship and integration in this perspective. Most countries in the EU (except Ireland and Sweden) have language requirements for citizenship and the use of language testing becomes increasingly common among the countries that receive migrants. The rapid development highlights the need for new international studies on the relationship between citizenship and conditions for second language learning. The goal of the recent study is to compare premises, perspectives and scales of values of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish language educators, related to the requirements for immigrant citizenship. Previous studies (Björklund & Liubiniené, 2004) indicate that there are major differences in value systems even between the neighbouring countries. To reach the objective of the present study, interviews were conducted with language educators in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The results have revealed two opposing patterns. The values of Swedish informants show a wide-ranging variation, while the Danish and Norwegian data on values are consistently similar. The results raise further questions about the effects caused by differences in values among language educators when comparing the countries and call for a further verification of the data in a more extended study, including Lithuania and other Baltic states.
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This paper examines article use in Dutch by adult Czech learners. Since Dutch does have the category of articles and Czech, as the majority of Slavic languages with the exception of Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not, the acquisition of this grammatical phenomenon can be very problematic. The aim of this paper is to define the main issues involved in the article acquisition in Dutch by Czech learners. Firstly, the paper briefly refers to recent research on second language acquisition of articles based on the mentalistic and behavioristic dichotomy. Further, the article use in Dutch and the way to express similar issues in Czech are described. Some characteristics of articles, such as definiteness, specificity and grammatical gender, are discussed. Finally, an error analysis is carried out in order to determine the biggest stumbling blocks of the article use in Dutch by adult Czech learners.
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This writing deals with the opportunities for conducting research in the field of exploiting the potential of songs for the purposes of Teaching Dutch as a Foreign Language (to this area is in the text referred with the Dutch abbreviation NVT — “Nederlands als vreemde taal”). This research is based upon a combination of the literature study and examples of good practice. These examples were observed at one of the NVT-institutes offering university studies of Dutch in the Czech Republic. The methodological choice for using the NVT-field within the region of Central Europe as the point of reference is discussed in detail. The same applies to minimalizing the number of the NVT-institutes where this research is carried out. These reasons have primarily to do with the feasibility of this research and with the increased availability of the ICT-tools in the recent years. It is expected that these tools can contribute to improving foreign language teaching and make it more effective. Special attention is being paid to the pilot research concerning the ways how the bachelor students of Dutch in the 1st and the 2nd year at this particular university perceive systematic implementation of songs for the language teaching purposes.
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This article aims to report on the status of French as the "language world." To speak French, to writing in French its own culture or to translate into in French does not imply that it is a French of France. The French language is a plural space varies according to neighboring languages, and especially according to the culture of the users of that language. So if French is a language of diversity and place of crossing cultures, it is because language and culture mother are always present in speaking of speakers, in their social imaginary, in their writing, etc.. Language and culture are seen in their correlation. This complex relationship comes in "language / cultureS" especially in the case of French and foreign cultures within a given community.
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This article focuses on the situation of French as a Foreign Language in Morocco; special attention is paid to the oral comprehension techniques. Our main idea is that the French-speaking culture is built in schools, by teachers, with the help of their students.
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The call launched in 2011 within the framework of the four-year programming of the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie – Bureau Europe central et orientale “Making the French-speaking scientific community a reference on the international scene”, and of the priority theme “French language, cultural and linguistic diversity” gave the opportunity to five universities from Romania, Republic of Moldova and Croatia to constitute a partnership unwound between November, 2011 and March, 2014: “Strengthening of French Language and of Research in French for the nonspecialist students in a multicultural and French-speaking environment”. The target group consisted of teachers of French as a foreign language (FLE), of teachers of French for specific purposes (FOS), of teachers of specialized disciplines and also of science students who learn French as an optional discipline. In the first part of our article, we shall characterize the general context of cooperation and we shall present the specific objectives which are on the basis of all the developed activities within the framework of our international partnership. In the second part, we detail these activities (training and research activities, for the teachers and the students) and the results obtained.
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The article discusses the examples of movable past verbs’ suffixes and their usages as described in four old manuals for teaching Polish as a foreign language. They have been confronted with the results of T. Rittel’s and A. Kowalska’s research, which proves that the authors of the old manuals reflected the Polish language of their times in their textbooks. They usually give one form of the past verb, treating it as a model, which was well justified in the case of a spoken language.
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In contemporary Polish linguistics, there are two approaches to determining grammatical gender classes: the traditional and the contemporar formal. According to the traditional concept, derived from the classical school, the nominative case is the basis for the division into gender classes. In modern Polish language, the traditional approach distinguishes the following classes: masculine, feminine, and neutral and in the plural form there is also the masculine-personal and non-masculine-personal. On the other hand, in the contemporary approach the basis for division into gender classes is the accusative case, and less frequently, the genitive case. In didactic practice however, and especially in teaching Polish as a foreign language, the traditional approach is applied as it is the most transparent, understandable and accessible to learners.
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The article discusses the possibility of translating Polish sentences with perfect adverbial participle into the Macedonian language where such a participle does not exist. The first part of the article presents the research on semantics and syntax of the Macedonian glagolski prilog (participle). The second part of the article compares the adverbial participles in Polish and Macedonian languages. The analyses are based on comparing adverbial participles used in Polish literary texts with their Macedonian equivalents used in translation.
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Nagli tresak me probudi iz drijemeža. “Gdje sam? Što je to prasnulo?”, bijahu prve misli koje mi proletješe zbunjenom glavom. Iz zvučnika se čula isprika pilota za nezgrapno slijetanje. Obazrem se i na kraju putničke kabine je sjedio subrat fra Zdenko Frljić. Kroz okno sam vidio kako kiša i vjetar šibaju zeleno-bijelo-narančastu zastavu. Aha, sletili smo u Irsku! Kroz mjesec dana našeg boravka na tečaju engleskog jezika u Irskoj ispostavit će se da će nas kiša koja se i ne da predvidjeti, pratiti, ma kako lijep i sunčan dan izgledao. Prosječna temperatura u Dublinu, glavnom gradu Irske, preko ljeta iznosi 20 stupnjeva, a mi smo imali sreće pa smo čak jedan čitav vikend uživali u potpuno sunčanom vremenu, bez oblaka i kiše. I pri tom se preznojavali na temperaturi od 28 stupnjeva. Mjesec srpanj u Irskoj nalikuje na listopad u Bosni i Hercegovini, pomislih u sebi dok sam navlačio kožnu jaknu koju mi je subrat preporučio da ponesem, iako je srpanj. Ovaj savjet me spasio od sigurne prehlade. Naime, spremio sam se za ljetovanje, a trebao sam za jesen.
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Na tečaj engleskog jezika na Malti krenuli smo iz Sarajeva tri dana poslije nereda u Istanbulu, koji su se događali i na glavnom aerodromu na kojemu smo trebali nastaviti svoj put prema Malti. Strah od mogućih novih izgreda nije pobijedio i nije nas odgovorio od toga da idemo na Maltu. U subotu navečer sletjeli smo na malteški aerodrom Luqa. U vožnji do našega odredišta u glavni grad Vallettu vozač taksija ukratko nam je govorio o ovoj zemlji i njezinim zanimljivostima. U samostanu su nas dočekali fratri koji su nam priredili večeru i trudili se pokazati nam da se možemo osjećati u samostanu kao da smo tu godinama, a ne da smo tek došli. Gvardijan samostana u Valletti vodio nas je u večernju šetnju i kratki obilazak grada. Mjesec dana provedenih na Malti vrlo je lijepo iskustvo. Imali smo priliku upoznati jednu novu kulturu i način života.
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Tek što je završio ljetni ispitni rok, fra Nikola Matošević i ja pošli smo na tečaj talijanskoga jezika u grad koji se naziva prije stolnicom mode. Prvi put u životu sjeli smo u zrakoplov 1. srpnja i zaputili se preko Beograda u Milano. Avantura je počela. Nakon ugodna leta stigli smo u središte Lombardije. Uz određene poteškoće zbog nepoznavanja jezika uspjeli smo se javnim prijevozom prebaciti iz zračne luke do središta grada i pronaći samostan gdje smo trebali boraviti. U velebnom franjevačkom samostanu uz koji se nalazi crkva Sant’ Angelo iz 15. stoljeća srdačno su nas ugostili petorica franjevaca na čelu s gvardijanom fra Renatom.
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