engleski

Comparative Analysis of Communicative Competence of Junior Croatian Speakers in Germany and Hungary-Learning Croatian as Heritage Language

Besides 4, 5 million of native speakers in the Republic of Croatia, Croatian language is used for communication by almost the same number of speakers outside of the country. Hence, learning and teaching of Croatian language abroad is becoming an important topic in Croatian education policy. Within the framework of several domestic and foreign projects (Development of Communicative Competencies in Early Acquisition of Croatian Language, FTE, MZOS, 2006-2013 ; Methodology for Evaluation, Observation and Assessment of Communicative Competencies of Junior Croatian L2 Speakers, FTE, 2015-2017 ; Language and Cultural Identity of Students with respect to Education Languages in Croatia and Slovenia, 2016- 2018), this research was conducted on the topic of acquiring language skills of Croatian as a heritage language (L2). The examinees were junior Croatian speakersinthe Federal Republic of Germany (province Baden-Württemberg) and the Republic of Hungary (Pécs, Budapest, Baja and Santovo). Although the majority of them consider Croatian to be their native language, the results of the research show that they still predominantly use German or Hungarian language in communication, i.e. the language of the environment where they live. That is why the aim of this paper is to analyse and compare the results of the Test of Communicative Competence conducted in The Republic of Germany (Pavličević-Franić, AladrovićSlovaček and Gazdić-Alerić, 2010) and in the the Republic of Hungary (Pavličević-Franić, AladrovićSlovaček and Jager, 2017). Both tests research morphological, orthographic, lexical and textual level of students (N = 208) who are Croatian schools' students abroad. Equally, the above results will be compared considering the length of Croatian language learning, self-assessment of students' knowledge and their satisfaction with Croatian schools abroad. It is expected that the examinees will have the best knowledge at the lexical level and the worst at the textual level, and that deviations at the morphological level will be related to the interference of German or Hungarian language. It is also expected that self-assessment of Croatian language and the length of language learning will be in a positive correlation with the results of the knowledge test.

second language learning, heritage language, communicative competence, learning Croatian as L2

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-5275- 5688-1-sample.pdf