Mastering Morphological Competence in the Acquisition of Croatian as L2

Mastering Morphological Competence in the Acquisition of Croatian as L2

Aladrovic Slovacek, Katarina

During the project “Development of Communicative Competence in the Early Croatian Language Discourse” (2006-2011), a research on the mastering of Croatian as a second language was carried out among the children of Croatian emigrants to Germany. Although all participants were born in Germany and German is their dominant idiom, most of them (76.5%) consider Croatian to be their mother tongue. However, the study has shown that all participants use German as the first language of communication and their Croatian language competences are lower. This means that, despite their personal attitudes towards Croatian as their mother tongue, Croatian is in fact the second language (L2) of these speakers. The research has been carried out on the sample (N = 100) of participants belonging to different age groups and different groups according to the number of years they had studied Croatian. As Croatian morphology is one of the most difficult grammatical contents, the primary aim of the research was to investigate the mastery of the morphological competence as that segment signals the general level of the mastery of the standard Croatian language. The instrument used in this study was the Test of Communicative competence in the Croatian language. For the purpose of this paper the part dealing with the mastering of the morphological competence of the standard Croatian language was analysed. The data were analysed with the SPSS statistical analysis software. The methods used were Pearson’s and point bi-serial correlation coefficients to show correlation between the dependent variable (mastery of the morphological competence) and the independent variables (participants’ age and years they had spent learning Croatian). Research results will be used for the purpose of the analysis of language competences in pupils whose second language (L2) is Croatian and the estimation of the successfulness of Croatian language teaching abroad.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2012-05

884