K akvizičním strategiím v učebnicích češtiny pro cizince

On acquisition strategies in Czech textbooks for foreigners

The quality of teaching material has a significant role in the process of acquiring a foreign language. It can serve to facilitate, strengthen, and accelerate the process. The pace of acquisition of Czech as a foreign language is influenced by the degree of typological and genealogical differences between Czech and the foreigner's mother tongue. The advantage of the learners' Slavic mother tongue is most evident at the beginning of the study (A0 - A2); subsequently, it gradually decreases. The basic problems in the presentation of Czech grammar include formalism, i.e., a strong focus on grammatical forms, but not on their meanings and functions in communication. We also consider the unbalanced attention to morphology (which predominates) and syntax (which lags behind) to be unsatisfactory. We have objections on the hybrid mixing of linguistic means within standard Czech (i.e. among the literary, neutral, and colloquial layers). The lack of an explicitly formulated concept on the basis of which the Czech grammar is presented (e.g. on the basis of frequency, communicative importance, formal difficulty of the learning material, etc.) is also undesirable. As far as the key chapters of the Czech vocabulary are concerned, the prevailing separate presentation of verb classes, more frequent discussion of the simple past tense before the future tense, the gradual presentation of cases (and not entire paradigms), as well as the dominance of deduction, prescription and semasiology are notable in the textbooks. We consider improving the instruction about the speech dimension and increasing focus on onomasiology as crucial.