Foreign language learning and education in minority circumstances. Problems and possible solutions

Abstract

Some form of bi- and multilingualism means the naturallingual condition for more than the half of the population of the Earth. It is a substantial linguistic aim of the Transcarpathian Hungarian community that beside preservation of their mother tongue (the Hungarian), acquire the state language (the Ukrainian language) and the basis of at least one world language. But this aim is hindered by a lot of things in Transcarpathia. The goal of the study isto shed light on these problems and to find possible solutions based on two researches. The first research, which was carried out in the Tanscarpathian Hungarian schools, was to reveal the conditions and problems of foreign language education. The research threwlight on numerous problems that approve the low level of foreign language knowledge of the Tanscarpathian Hungarian youth. Attitudes and stereotypes influence the success of foreign language acquisition. For this reason in the second part of the study I would like to show, what kind of stereotypes and attitudes can be discovered in the parents (who are lay linguistically and language pedagogically) concerning foreign languages, and within this especially concerning the English language. It appears from the interviews, that nor the attitudes of the state towards foreign languages that was inherited from the soviet system, neither the impassiveness of the parents improves the positive attitudes in the Transcarpathian Hungarian students towards foreign languages, and nor the state, neither the parents approve the motivation of foreign language acquisition.