engleski

Lexico-Grammatical Features in Croatian ELF

This paper studies the usage of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) by Croatian learners who do not focus on English in their undergraduate studies but study it only in their English for specific academic purposes (ESAP) course. Three aspects of the participants’ ELF usage have been investigated: their ability and degree to which they can identify the lexico-grammatical aspects of ELF which are considered erroneous in the standard native English varieties ; their ability to comprehend a text designed to display the ELF features ; and the usage of the ELF lexico- grammatical structures while translating a text comprising potential features of ELF from Croatian into English. The instrument used in the study was an English text designed to include some lexico- grammatical aspects of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) which deviate from the native-like varieties although they supposedly do not impede communication (Seidlhofer, 2004). One group of participants was required to identify the ELF features in the text and present them in a standard English variety. The second group of participants was asked to translate the same English ELF text into Croatian to check for its intelligibility. The third group of participants was asked to translate the Croatian version of the same text into English in order to check for the potential induced usage of ELF features. The purpose of this study was to propose a scale of usage of the lexico-grammatical features of ELF in a limited group of Croatian ESAP learners ranging them from the more fundamental ones – the ones Croatian learners find more difficult to identify, correct and use – to the more peripheral ones – the ones more easily identified and rarely used in Croatian learners.

English as a Lingua Franca, scale of lexico-grammatical features, Croatian ELF learners

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