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JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH
comprised full words; contextualized items included
grammatical words as well. In the latter group, items belonged to
various parts of speech. However, only nouns and adjectives
were presented without context. Contextualized items contained
some potentially problematic elements either because of their
lower frequency or because of their formal resemblance but
semantic difference from Slovak words. Items without context
contained some typical „false friends“. It was a choice of 10
words belonging to basic French, familiar to Slovak speakers,
but without an easily spottable equivalent for someone who has
not been studying French.
Previously conducted studies (Chovancová – Zázrivcová –
Křečková, 2015; Chovancová – Zázrivcová – Ráčková, 2018),
measuring the capacity of Slovak native speaker to understand
Romance languages, used a similar methodology. Unlike these
tests, this study was aimed at mapping metalinguistic
representations as well and worked with the concept of bridge
words (cf. mots ponts in Castagne, 2007), taken from the
didactics of intercomprehension. A bridge word is a word from
the mother tongue or from a foreign language (in most cases
different from the target language to be understood) which, due
to its formal and/or semantic relation to the opaque element from
the target language helps the speaker understand the meaning of
the latter. A bridge word helping an English speaker understand
the French word mer (Engl. sea, Slov. more) can be the English
adjective maritime, formally and semantically identical with the
French adjective maritime. In a similar way, the Czech word
puntík could be understandable for various kinds of (native)
speakers in association with the German form punkt or the
English and French form point.
As it was indicated above, local comprehension was tested using
a series of 20 lexical items. The sub-series A consisted of 10
contextualized lexical items (volcan, île, flammes, dans, local,
dernières, habitants, éruption, ans, est) selected from the text.
The sub-series B consisted of 10 lexical items presented without
any context (âge, national, femme, bourse, forêt, école, difficile,
tarte, mémoire, lac).
The adequacy of Slovak equivalents proposed by speakers was
assessed on a 6-grade scale (from 0 to 5) as follows:
5 – perfect semantic and formal equivalent (ex. fr.
dernières [last] – slov. posledné [last]),
4 – perfect semantic equivalent with different grammatical
categories from the original (ex. fr. flammes [flames]– slov.
oheň [fire]),
3 – partial semantic equivalent or zero semantic equivalent
with an identifiable positive interlinguistic transfer (ex. fr.
est [is]– slov. patrí [belongs to]) or equivalent with a
common seme/common semes with the correct equivalent
(ex. fr. âge [age]– slov. rok [year]) or equivalent derived
from the expected equivalent (ex. fr. national [national]–
slov. národ [nation]),
2 – zero semantic equivalence with a clear negative
interlinguistic transfer (ex. fr. difficile [difficult]– slov.
rozdielny [different]),
1 – unmotivated zero semantic equivalent (ex. fr. habitants
[inhabitants] – slov. vzh
ľad [appearance]),
0 – equivalent was not proposed.
While testing written receptive skills, the analysis of bivalent
and parallel words in synonymic chains were used (cf.
Nábělková, 2013). Each of the suggested equivalents was
assessed. Its accuracy (A) and frequency (F) were scored. Thus,
plamene (5;17) are considered as perfect equivalent for flammes
(accuracy score is 5). This equivalent has been proposed by 17
tested speakers (frequency score is 17).
A specific objective of the study of the Slovaks’ receptive
competence of written French was to establish the importance of
the linguistic context in reception and to check the capacity of
speakers to make an active use of the context in predicting
meanings. It was supposed that the linguistic context plays a
crucial role facilitating reception and is competitive or otherwise
related to other factors, such as the degree of exposure to the
target language, typological and genetic characteristics of the
mother tongue and the degree of its relation to the target
language and, finally, the overall communicative competence in
foreign languages. The study aimed at unveiling indices to
understand the nature of relations between various factors.
Metalinguistic competence of speakers was activated together
with local understanding of contextualized units. For each item,
they were asked to reflect on what helped them understand it,
stating their preference between a bridge word (consequently, a
bridge tongue), the linguistic context, both of these factors or
neither of them.
6 Target group
The study involved 85 speakers. They were students of the
Technical University in Zvolen, specializing in ecology and
protection of biodiversity, environmental management, forensic
environmental science, landscape protection, environmental
engineering, interior and furniture design, economics and
management of woodprocessing enterprises, furniture
construction, fire security and protection, forestry. Before testing
their receptive competence, overall communication competence
in foreign languages was questioned. The speakers themselves
had to declare their level of competences in various language.
The self-assessment results were then confronted with the results
of entry language test results.
Levels of competence are indicated according to CEFRL (A1 to
C2). Speakers are familiar with this type of (self) assessment,
due to its massive use in institutionalized acquisition of foreign
language. The majority of speakers (84) declared an advanced
level of competence in one foreign language (English). The
language in which speakers declared the second highest level of
competence, reaching A2 level on the average, was German (53
speakers, 62 %). The third most often mastered foreign language
was Russian, between A1 and A2 on the average, in which 18
speakers declared to have a certain competence (21 %). Some
speakers declared to have a basic competence reaching A1 level
in French (18 %) and between A1 and A2 in Polish (18 %),
rarely in Spanish and Italian (A1 on the average for 9 % and 8 %
of speakers, respectively). In isolated cases, some knowledge of
Hungarian (3 speakers), Romani (1 speaker) and Dutch (1
speaker) was declared. Some considered to declare the
knowledge of Czech as a foreign language (11 speakers, 13 %).
The mother tongue of speakers was Slovak (83 speakers),
eventually Hungarian (2 speakers).
The scope of mapping language competences was to get to know
language repertoires (fr. bagage linguistique) of speakers, i. e.
their linguistics competences as well as, potentially, their
knowledge about languages, useful in the search for parallels,
contrasts and associations facilitating comprehension. However,
the correlation between the number of languages spoken and the
sum of levels of competences in these languages, established as
an accumulation of scores (A1 – 1 point, A2 – 2 points, ... C2 – 6
points) cannot be established. Speakers with a high cumulative
score can have two different types of profiles: a vertical one (less
languages spoken, but higher level of competence in these
languages) or a horizontal one (more languages spoken, but a
lower level of competence in these languages).
Our understanding of the concept of language repertoire is
related to the theory of language subconsciousness, language
awareness and language consciences, presented by Dolník (2013,
pp. 128 – 129) referring to the works of Horecký (1991) and
Bühler (1939). Language subconsciousness is a system of
linguistic instincts, an innate universal grammar conditioning the
process of acquisition of natural languages. Language awareness
means unconscious, automatized knowledge of languages
acquired in the communication practice. Finally, language
consciousness is the sum of knowledge about languages gathered
by study or a conscious reflection.
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