Project: European Sociolinguistics/ County: Estonia/ Questions → Contact → Answers

Where?: Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt/ Summer semister 2007

What?: Advanced seminar "The Sociology of Languages in Europe’s Center and Periphery"

By whom? Whose idea?: Dr. J. Grzega

Result?: Projekt:European Sociolinguistics

On this page you will find the questions that were asked in the framework of the Projekt:European Sociolinguistics, the successful and failed attempts to contact the people from Estonia and the answers that were managed to get. Here are represented not all the questions of the project, but only those that needed the answers of Estonia citizens: teaching stuff and students. The page is devided into two parts: the questions that were put to Professors and the questions that were put to Students. All the questions of the project you will find under Projekt:European Sociolinguistics.

Professors

Questions to Professors

1. Which role does intercultural competence play in secondary education?

2. Which role does international English (aside from AmE and BrE) play in foreign language teaching?

Contact with Professors

To get the answer for the first two questions I wrote to the several universities of Estonia:

•Tallinn University

•University of Tartu

•Eurouniversity

Answers from Professors

Till now, I got the answer only from the Tallin University from the Head of the Department of Germanic and Romance Languages - Janika Johanna Marley:

1. Which role does intercultural competence play in secondary education?

″If we consider intercultural competence within learning and teaching English then I'd say it is considered very important. Students are required to know customs and traditions and aspects of English speaking countries both at secondary school as well as university levels. Since people are free to travel and communicate with different nationalities the knowledge of varios other cultures is seen as an integral part of good education. Most textbooks used in EFL classes contain information about different cultures.“

2. Which role does International English play in foreign language teaching?

″Again, many textbooks present audio material explaining the basic differences in varieties of English. Nevertheless, the information is brief and does not really teach students to imitate accents, rather the focus is on comprehension- it can be seen as an attempt to help students cope with different speakers in the real world. At university level students take a course acquainting themselves with the most widespread varieties like accents of Britain, USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, wales, Scotland, Ireland and also pidgins of English. The course is both theoretical and practical.“

Students

Questions to Students

3. What is language criticism directed against?

4. Are there prominent examples for word-coinages due to “political correctness”?

5. Are there prominent examples in the history of your country where language has been a prominent factor for manipulating people?

Contact with students

The contacts with students were made through Studiverzeichnis

Answers from Students

3. What is language criticism directed against?

a. “In our country it is directed to those people who don´t speak russian as their second language or the other way around, because we have a big number of russians living in Estonia and parts where only they live. So that is under big pressure and people have fought against and for it.” (Student from Estonia)

Information to the language criticism:

“Actually no. There was once a politician who said a phrase in estonian wrong (natively he was russian) in front of journalists and it was turned into an example all over the country about how russians ain´t able to learn estonain right even though they are in politics!!” (Student from Estonia)

b. “Ich kann dir sagen, dass die esten obwohl sie russisch sprechen, kein russisch sprechen wollen. es gibt aber junge künstler russen und esten, die gemeinsame projekte machen. zurzeit ist die politische lage gegenüber den in Estland lebenden russen sehr gespannt. und es gibt viele aufstände von den estlandrussen.” (Student from Estonia)

4. Are there prominent examples for word-coinages due to “political correctness”?

Sorry to say, there was not got any answer to this question.

5. Are there prominent examples in the history of your country where language has been a prominent factor for manipulating people?