Visit to International School NOVA in Skopje

Second-year students at UACS School of Foreign Languages taking the course in Contrastive Analysis with Assoc. Prof. Marjana Vaneva, PhD visited the International School NOVA in Skopje on 22 November 2016 (Tuesday). They attended a class in German language taught to the high school students by Dr. Ana Foteva, who is also an adjunct faculty at UACS School of Foreign Languages.

The aim of the visit was to observe a multinational class and learn how students with different mother tongues (coming from different countries), who have a knowledge of English language, were learning German; whether in their learning German they relied on their mother tongue, or on English, so that they made a smoother transfer to the target language. The class observation showed that, because the students’ level of German and the one taught were pretty high, they did not have to resort to their previously learnt languages, except for the niceties, which were explained in English.

This observed topic is central to the subject that contrastive analysis is interested in when it comes to language teaching/learning.  Therefore, the UACS English language students attended a class in which another foreign language was taught, to make comparison and notice contrast.