Scholarly record

IMPACTS OF PREVIOUS STUDIES OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ON STUDYING ENGLISH LATER IN LIFE

V. TauchmanovГ 

Abstract

Senior education, which has its specific features, is becoming one of the priorities in the present era of ageing of population, especially in Europe. Different kinds of courses are offered to seniors by so called Universities of the Third Age which have been established in the Czech Republic. Courses in foreign languages belong to the most popular and most demanded ones. Teaching at courses in foreign languages offered to seniors has to be adapted to the specific features of adult learners but it also cannot ignore the students’ previous experience with and skills gained from learning their first foreign language or previous foreign languages. The author presents not only her personal experience in teaching English in courses of the University of the Third Age run by the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Kralove (Czech Republic) but she also analyses the opinions and self-reflections expressed by seniors in a questionnaire which was distributed to and completed by them in connection with their learning more foreign languages. The aim of the text is to point out both the positive aspects and the negative transfers resulting from the learners’ previous studies of other foreign languages, and to present proposals leading to potentially improved ways of teaching English in courses provided to seniors.

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