Currently, there are five domains of teaching Slovak as a foreign or second language:
teaching Slovak at non-Slovakian universities to university students
teaching Slovak at Slovakian universities and other institutions for those interested from other countries (mostly adults)
teaching Slovak for Slovaks living as a minority (e.g. in Hungary or Romania)
teaching Slovak for Hungarians in Slovakia
teaching Slovak for refugee children – a new domain having appeared in the past decade.
The first two domains share more similarities than any other domains in their methods as well as in their requirements: firstly, they are both based on the methodology of foreign language teaching, and secondly, their target groups mostly consist of adults who, having more language awareness, acquire new languages differently from children.
The third domain (teaching Slovak language for minority Slo-vaks e.g. in Hungary or in Romania) provided us with the least data.
1 Members of the research group studied the Finnish education of Finland Swedes and the Swedish education of the majority population in Finland.
2 The project, entitled Teaching National Languages in Hungary’s Neighbouring Countires (Slovakia and Ukraine): A Comparative Analysis, was funded with the Domus 4815/15/
2015/HTMT tender of The Hungarian Academy of Science.
The fourth and fifth domains are similar as far as the target group goes (if they are children in the fourth domain as well), but they differ in their methods. Refugee children learn Slovak in intensive language courses for materials made especially for them. For children of Hungarian minority Slovak language teaching is organized as a part of Slovak educational system for minority children, within the frame-work of the Slovak Language and Slovak Literature class.
2.1 Factors influencing the teaching of Slovak for Hungarians living in Slovakia
2.1.1 The purist linguistic approach of the Ministry of Culture, influenced by nationalism (among others)
The following, culture-related areas fall under the competence of the Ministry of Culture: fine arts, passing and enforcing the natio-nal language act, the protection of the nationatio-nal language, the media (including audio-visual media), copyright, cultural heritage, etc. The Slovakian national language act has been analysed by many in the past fifteen years3; analysing the effects of this act lies beyond the scope of this study. It is also the Ministry’s responsibility to make announcements related to the spirit of the national language act, as well as to examine the use of the Slovak language in Slovakia. The Ministry’s reports in 2016 on the use of the national language inves-tigate the use of Slovak in central administration, local administra-tions, the media and in schools.4 The reports are rigidly purist. The basis of all reports is that the only acceptable variety used in the domains of interest is the codified one of the Slovak language. Any deviation from the codified variety is frowned upon and to be correc-ted. According to the conclusions drawn regarding schools (Third Report, 2016: 14), “nurture” of the Slovak language should be impro-ved in all areas of education, including higher education. The docu-ment pays special attention to teaching Slovak in schools where the language of instruction is Hungarian (in kindergartens, primary and secondary schools as well).5 In its report on kindergarten inspections, the inspectorate of education highlights bilingualism as a positive
3 Among others, see Berényi 1994; Cúth 2011; Gyuricsek 2013; Kollár–Priklerová (eds.) 1999;
Lanstyák 1999; Misad 2009; Šutaj–Sápos 2000; Szabómihály 1998; Szabómihály 1999, 2006;
Vass 2013; Vogl 2009.
4 The second report was written in 2012, and the third one in2014.
5 The Third Report on the the Use of the National Language of the Slovak Republic 2016 2016 (Tretia správa o stave používania štátneho jazyka na území Slovenskej republiky file:///E:/3.Sprava_o_SJ-2016_aj_s_prilohami %20(1).pdf). ”Ukazuje sa, že starostlivosť o slovenský jazyk vo všetkých typoch škôl a školských zariadení vrátane vysokéhoškolstva bude potrebné zlepši.” ”It can be established that the nurture of the Slovakian language should be improved in schools of all kinds, including higher education”.
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feature, even though “the children understood bilingual communica-tion; they mostly gave one-word answers to the questions they were asked. Their vocabulary of the national language was significantly smaller than that of their mother tongue [...] Smaller children communicated in their mother tongue [sic!] or gave incorrect ans-wers, not knowing the adequate meaning of words”6 (2016: 14). The two-faced nature of the report is illustrated by the fact that, despite all the problems listed, the inspectorate finds the quality of education average or adequate at all three levels. It does suggest, however, that the concept of education should be re-evaluated and the textbooks should be rewritten; but it does not explain why these steps are necessary. The report puts a special emphasis on the fact that the Ministry of Education introduced new state education programmes in September 2015, taking the previous report’s recommendations into account. One of these recommendations is enhancing the linguis-tic culture of both teachers and students. Although the recommenda-tions might seem positive for a well-meaning reader, the exclusivity of the nation-based approach is problematic. The expectation, which is general in Slovakia, that minorities living in Slovakia must have a native-like command of Slovak thus made official, given law-like force, and, consequently, a basic reference-point.7 The main goal of the authors’ of the report is to make everyone acquire the codified variety of Slovak perfectly, which, from an ESL point of view, is an indecipherable ambition, designed to result in language shift. The document says nothing about the value of the mother tongue or about achieving active bilingualism.
2.2 The isolation of the domains of Slovak language teaching The Studia Academica Slovaka centre of Comenius University in Bratislava has been training teachers of Slovak as a foreign language since 1965. It is in charge of teaching Slovak for non-native speakers, studying Slovakian as a foreign language and coordinating research into it, writing textbooks and methodological reference works, and
6 Dvojjazyčnej komunikácii deti zvyčajne rozumeli, na kladené jednoduché otázky prevažne odpovedali jednoslovne. ... Ich slovná zásoba bola výrazne obmedzenejšia v štátnom jazyku ako v materinskom jazyku. Mladšie komunikovali v materinskom (maďarskom, rómskom) jazyku, prípadne neodpovedali správne, pretože nepoznali adekvátne ekvivalenty slov.
7 Uznesenie vlády Slovenskej republiky č. 238 z 21. mája 2014 k Správe o stave používania štátneho jazyka na území Slovenskej republiky ’A Szlovák Köztársaság 238. sz. határozata a Szlovák Köztársaság államnyelve használatának állapotáról szóló jelentéshez’
file:///E:/UZNESENIE_238_2014_pouzivanie_statneho_jazyka.pdf Uznesenie vlády Slovens -kej republiky č. 86 z 2. marca 2016 k Tretej správe o stave používania štátneho jazyka na území Slovenskej republiky ’A Szlovák Köztársaság 238. sz. határozata a Szlovák Köztársaság államnyelve használatának állapotáról szóló harmadik jelentéshez’.
file:///E:/1._uznesenie_k_sprave_2016%20(1).pdf
training Slovak language assistants working at universities abroad.
The university does not offer a BA or MA course in teaching Slovak as a foreign or second language, but the centre mentioned above does run a two-semester post-graduate course for a certain fee. Studying the literature on teaching Slovak as a foreign language (Pekarovičová, J.
[ed.] 2002; Pekarovičová, J 2004; Pekarovičová, J.–Žigová, Ľ.–
Mošaťová, M. 2007; Žigová Ľ.– Vojtech. M. [ed.] 2011; Sedláková 2013), it can be observed that none of the works mentions even the slightest possibility of teaching Slovak as a second language for Slovak minorities. These two types of foreign language teaching are so separated that no article on second language teaching makes any reference to foreign language teaching, and vice versa. Paradoxically, neither of the domains acknowledges the other or uses its findings.
This, however, does not necessarily have to be this way: in her extensive study published in the Hungarian journal Slovenčinár in the 2014 issue, respected expert of teaching Slovak as a foreign language Jana Pekarovičová discusses the sociolinguistic, psycholin-guistic and ethnocultural aspects of foreign language teaching.
Another problem is the already mentioned “language cultivation” approach in teaching Slovakian, with the basic principle that learners should be taught and acquire the language grammati-cally and stylistigrammati-cally perfectly with flawless pronunciation. This approach is present, albeit less emphatically, in textbooks published for learners from other countries; for instance, many books have been published about the importance of correct pronunciation. The pursuit of language cultivation is discernible in the curricula desig-ned for students who learn Slovak as a national language. None of the findings of any other linguistic subdisciplines (sociolingustics, cognitive linguistics) were taken into consideration in the reform of teaching Slovak as a second or foreign language. Also, it should be noted that, apart from the J. Selye University in Komárom and the primary school teacher training programme of the university in Nitra, teacher trainees are not trained to teach Slovak in Hungarian schools. No Slovakian university with a training programme for future teachers of Slovak language and literature offers such a course for its students.