This paper describes the speech of a pair of identical twins, native speakers of Croatian, in the period between their two and two-and-a-half years of age. The author looks at the lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonological and... more
This paper describes the speech of a pair of identical twins, native speakers of Croatian, in the period between their two and two-and-a-half years of age. The author looks at the lexical, morphological, syntactic, phonological and phonetic levels, comparing the children's utterances noted at this stage with the utterances from the period when the girls were just beginning to talk. The paper also deals with the manifestation of some specific features of twin discourse in the speech of the subjects. It is observed that one child is somewhat more advanced in verbal communication, while the other one is superior in terms of general expressiveness of speech, which is achieved by prosodic and paralinguistic means. The observations made here are suggested as guidelines for a comprehensive study on the national level, and the author stresses the need for the foundation of a Croatian association for the research of twin speech.
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This paper was written as part of the project “English in Croatia” and deals with the place of English listening comprehension in total competence. It is shown that in primary school girls are better at this component than boys, whereas... more
This paper was written as part of the project “English in Croatia” and deals with the place of English listening comprehension in total competence. It is shown that in primary school girls are better at this component than boys, whereas in secondary school the sex of pupils makes no difference in this respect. The intensity of English learning in primary school is related to achievement in listening comprehension, but is not decisive. In secondary school sample no correlation has been found between the intensity of learning and achievement in this component of the test. Length of learning has also been found to be nonsignifi cantly related with achievement in listening comprehension. City pupils turn out to be more successful than pupils from small towns in this component of the test. In her discussion of results the author puts special emphasis on the role of exposure to English in out-of-school everyday life.
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... Bruna Kunti}Makvi}, Kristina Cergol, Jelena Parizoska and Ivanka Rajh for their help in administering the questionnaire. We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which helped us to improve upon... more
... Bruna Kunti}Makvi}, Kristina Cergol, Jelena Parizoska and Ivanka Rajh for their help in administering the questionnaire. We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, which helped us to improve upon the original version of the paper. Page ...
The present research establishes the impact of globalisation and the possible emergence of a Euro–English on the attitude of Croats towards their foreign accent. As one’s foreign accent gives away one’s national identity, the extent to... more
The present research establishes the impact of globalisation and the possible emergence of a Euro–English on the attitude of Croats towards their foreign accent. As one’s foreign accent gives away one’s national identity, the extent to which one strives to approach native–like pronunciation or preserve and display features of one’s national identity varies considerably and depends on a number of factors. We look at how gender, proficiency in English, the sociolinguistic status of the subject’s regional dialect of Croatian, regional pride, and perfectionism determine the way in which the subjects view their own production, teaching models and non–native speakers. It is shown that there is a clear divide between ’liberal’ and ’traditional’ students with regard to ELF, which is connected primarily with student profiles and self–assessed pronunciation proficiency. Gender, regional provenance and self–assessed perfectionism also play a role, but to a smaller extent. All these issues seem...
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This paper deals with the attitudes of Croatian speakers to ELF, in particular to its pronunciation. Four methods were combined to reach conclusions about the status of ELF in Croatia: diary study, teacher interviews, a preliminary focus... more
This paper deals with the attitudes of Croatian speakers to ELF, in particular to its pronunciation. Four methods were combined to reach conclusions about the status of ELF in Croatia: diary study, teacher interviews, a preliminary focus group interview and a survey. Whilst the first three methods revealed that the subjects regularly disfavour ‘bad pronunciation’, the survey showed that when it actually comes to talking to either native or non-native speakers, the subjects turned out to be tolerant to a slight accent. This clearly suggests a case of what is known as linguistic schizophrenia (B.B. Kachru 1977; Seidlhofer 2001). However, there are notable differences among groups of participants depending on variables such as professional profile, gender, degree of ease and success in learning pronunciation, and national pride. In any case, the combination of these methods proved to be a very good way to deal with the topic. The diary study is a valuable method to look into everyday p...
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This paper deals with the attitudes of Croatian speakers to ELF, in particular to its pronunciation. Four methods were combined to reach conclusions about the status of ELF in Croatia: diary study, teacher interviews, a preliminary focus... more
This paper deals with the attitudes of Croatian speakers to ELF, in particular to its pronunciation. Four methods were combined to reach conclusions about the status of ELF in Croatia: diary study, teacher interviews, a preliminary focus group interview and a survey. Whilst the first three methods revealed that the subjects regularly disfavour ‘bad pronunciation’, the survey showed that when it actually comes to talking to either native or non-native speakers, the subjects turned out to be tolerant to a slight accent. This clearly suggests a case of what is known as linguistic schizophrenia (B.B. Kachru 1977; Seidlhofer 2001). However, there are notable differences among groups of participants depending on variables such as professional profile, gender, degree of ease and success in learning pronunciation, and national pride. In any case, the combination of these methods proved to be a very good way to deal with the topic. The diary study is a valuable method to look into everyday p...
Research Interests:
This paper deals with the attitudes of Croatian speakers to ELF, in particular to its pronunciation. Four methods were combined to reach conclusions about the status of ELF in Croatia: diary study, teacher interviews, a preliminary focus... more
This paper deals with the attitudes of Croatian speakers to ELF, in particular to its pronunciation. Four methods were combined to reach conclusions about the status of ELF in Croatia: diary study, teacher interviews, a preliminary focus group interview and a survey. Whilst the first three methods revealed that the subjects regularly disfavour ‘bad pronunciation’, the survey showed that when it actually comes to talking to either native or non-native speakers, the subjects turned out to be tolerant to a slight accent. This clearly suggests a case of what is known as linguistic schizophrenia (B.B. Kachru 1977; Seidlhofer 2001). However, there are notable differences among groups of participants depending on variables such as professional profile, gender, degree of ease and success in learning pronunciation, and national pride. In any case, the combination of these methods proved to be a very good way to deal with the topic. The diary study is a valuable method to look into everyday p...
Research Interests:
The present research establishes the impact of globalisation and the possible emergence of a Euro-English on the attitude of Croats towards their foreign accent. As one's foreign accent gives away one's national identity, the extent to... more
The present research establishes the impact of globalisation and the possible emergence of a Euro-English on the attitude of Croats towards their foreign accent. As one's foreign accent gives away one's national identity, the extent to which one strives to approach native-like pronunciation or preserve and display features of one's national identity varies considerably and depends on a number of factors. We look at how gender, proficiency in English, the sociolinguistic status of the subject's regional dialect of Croatian, regional pride, and perfectionism determine the way in which the subjects view their own production, teaching models and non-native speakers. It is shown that there is a clear divide between 'liberal' and 'traditional' students with regard to ELF, which is connected primarily with student profiles and self-assessed pronunciation proficiency. Gender, regional provenance and self-assessed perfectionism also play a role, but to a smaller extent. All these issues seem to be connected with the construction of identity in various societal roles.
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Studies of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) suggest that some speakers of ELF are willing to mark their (national) identity in their ELF pronunciation, while others want to strive for native models (e.g. Jenkins 2009). A recent study... more
Studies of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) suggest that some speakers of ELF are willing to mark their (national) identity in their ELF pronunciation, while others want to strive for native models (e.g. Jenkins 2009). A recent study (Stanojević and Josipović 2010) confirms this, suggesting that liberalism vs. non-liberalism towards ELF among Croatian university students is based on their major. In this paper we show that there may be a more pervasive process at play behind the liberal vs. non-liberal attitudes to ELF, namely identity construction. Based on the results of a questionnaire conducted among secondary school pupils, university students and employees of a company, we show that different attitudes to one’s own accent, the accent of one’s collocutors and teaching models primarily hinge on belonging to different groups of participants: learners vs. speakers of ELF. Our results support a non-monolithic, stratified ELF model, which changes along with the needs and identity construction of its speakers.