engleski

The Mother Tongue and the Foreign Language Correlation in the Primary School in Croatia

The paper provides an account of the research on the acquisition of English as the first foreign language and Croatian as the mother tongue among young learners in Croatia. Children become polyglot at the earliest age ; they start going to school by speaking their home idiom, and then they learn standard Croatian and the foreign language. English and Croatian, belonging to different language groups, feature different linguistic features, but they still have mutual aspects that can enhance language learning. This hypothesis is examined in the research by observing English and Croatian classes and school success. There are external and internal factors that influence language acquisition, in the paper pupils’ attitudes towards language learning are emphasized. The hypothesis is that pupils who are positively oriented towards language learning are more successful when acquiring the language. Research results show that acquisition of both En glish and Croatian at young age is more or less equally successful, while it decreases in higher grades.

Mother Tongue ; Foreign Language ; Croatian ; English ; Younger Pupils

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