CONCEPT FOR UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE TEXTBOOK FOR CROATIAN STUDENTS (IN TERMS OF LEARNING A CLOSELY RELATED LANGUAGE)

Abstract

In creating textbooks and course books for foreign language education, the starting point is the goal of learning the language – language acquisition either on the level of communication skills for specific purposes (business or daily), or as part of the process of training philology specialists, or more specifically, linguistics specialists. In this, among other factors, authors should take into account the ethno-linguistic characteristics of the audience, so the training process should be organised differently for groups of students who study a language closely related to their native language. In studying a closely related language, a variety of phenomena is observed, such as, for example, interference, cross-language homonymy, the fact that ability to perceive and understand a foreign language always outweighs the ability to reproduce material, etc. These points are important to consider when preparing textbooks and course books, and they should be reflected in the selection of lexical material and presentation of grammar. Existing textbooks for learning Ukrainian as a foreign language are mainly not designed for a Slavic languages-speaking audience, which makes the process of training specialists in Ukrainian in Slavic countries more difficult. On the other hand, the methods of organising the material in a textbook and its structure should be designed for philology students and therefore should feature a complex and comprehensive presentation of the language material and combine various methods of teaching. We propose the principles we follow in creating a textbook for learning Ukrainian designed for Croatian students whose primary field of study is the Ukrainian language.