Scholarly record
HIGH PERSONAL NEED FOR STRUCTURE AND GERMAN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
Abstract
Individuals? cognition demands are constantly increasing in the current globalized world, and therefore, they have to face the need to work with information in new and more complicated ways not only in their mother tongue but also in foreign languages. In order to orient themselves in the huge amount of information, individuals develop different strategies and procedures that help them sort information and to create a cognitive structure that makes it easier to process information. This process is called a personal need for a structure (PNS) and it is different for each individual. In this study, we analyse the high PNS in the process of cognitive structuring of new information in a foreign language (German language). The aim of the research is to identify the connections between the high PNS and the proficiency in German. German language morphology has precise rules as well as many exceptions, and an individual with a high PNS usually tends to simplify information and to follow rules. 172 primary and secondary school learners from Bratislava, Slovakia, aged 13 to 18 participated in the research. We used two research methods, the PNS questionnaire and didactic tests. The results show that German language proficiency is not related to the high personal need for structure. It seems that every respondent expresses the PNS based on the language competence.
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