POSSIBLE WAYS OF ORGANIZING FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING USING LANGUAGE TRANSFER

Abstract

The main focus of this paper is to examine the role of English as the first foreign language (FL1) in learning German as a second foreign language (FL2) at the university level. The results will provide insight into the possibilities of improving foreign language teaching at tertiary level. More specifically, the aim of this research is to find out to what extent Serbian students, whose mother tongue is Serbian, rely on their knowledge of English as the FL1 while learning German as the FL2. The research was done with first year students (N=140) from the departments class teacher, pre-school teacher and boarding school teacher at the Faculty of Education in Jagodina. A comparative study of positive and negative transfer of English in the process of learning German will be presented in the paper. The paper will outline specific strategies that could be of great help in learning the foreign language, as well as the ideas for the higher education quality improvement. In addition, the authors will point out different issues of cross-linguistic influence in language learning and suggest some ideas for practice improvement in this area.