UNISONOST JEZIČKE POLITIKE I PLANIRANjA U SRBIJI I EVROPSKOJ UNIJI

Abstract

The aim of the paper is, by comparing the results of the implemented language policy in Serbia and the European Union in the past twenty years of this century, to find an answer to the research question whether the language policy and language planning are a „choice” of a social community or whether it represents the adoption and implementation of that policy by the relevant authorities, not taking into account religious, socio-cultural, political and other characteristics of the countries at a certain historical moment. The paper applies the operational method of content analysis of documents, as well as the comparative analysis of statistical data of the relevant bodies in the Republic of Serbia and the EU. In the EU member countries, 83.3% of all students learn at least one world language, while that percentage in the Republic of Serbia is 100%. It should be borne in mind that the lower percentage in the EU results from the fact that only 14 member states have compulsory early learning of world languages, i.e. the first world language between the ages of 6 and 7, and in those 14 countries 99% of all the students are covered by the above-mentioned language policy. Furthermore, 79.4% of students in the EU learn English as the first foreign language, while that percentage in Serbia is 97.34%. Therefore, the tendency of the growth of English language learning in the period between 2009 and 2016 or 2022 continues both in the Republic of Serbia and the EU. Today, in the Republic of Serbia, only 2.74% of students in the first educational cycle do not learn English as the first foreign language, while that percentage of younger students in the EU is 20.6%. The research results also indicate that in the Republic of Serbia the second world language is German, which is learnt by almost one half of all primary school students, followed by French, Russian, Italian and Spanish, while in the EU, the predominant second world language is French, followed by German and Spanish as the only world language with the percentage of its learners increasing in the past decade. The research results show that the proclaimed multilingualism from the end of the 20th century has remained just ink on the paper because English, both in Serbia and in the EU member countries, has reached the first place by its presence as the first and often the only foreign language that is learnt. Based on the relevant research in this field, such dominance does not take the Foreign Language Learning Strategy in Serbia into account.