Jakob Patekar

• Ph.D. in Language Teaching
• Associate Dean for Research and General Education at RIT Croatia

Student teachers and teacher trainees face a number of challenges when they enter the classroom during their university education and upon graduation. The aim of this paper is to highlight the most common challenges that foreign language student teachers and teacher trainees encounter when delivering a lesson in elementary and high school-and to of...

The aim of this paper is to determine the inclusion and the instructors' attitudes toward the inclusion of content related to early foreign language learning and teaching at an early age in foreign language study programs in Croatia. To establish whether there is a specific course in early foreign language learning and to identify respondents, we l...

Početkom se 21. stoljeća u Hrvatskoj zamjećuje promjena diskursa – ne govori se više o posuđivanju iz engleskoga već o prodiranju toga jezika u hrvatski. Doba interneta i elektroničkih medija omogućilo je da govornici hrvatskoga dolaze u kontakt s riječima iz engleskoga jezika neposrednije i mnogo brže nego prije te da engleske riječi brzo uključuj...

This paper examines the challenge of starting a sentence with a proper noun or an abbreviation that is written with an initial lowercase letter (e.g. iPhone, danah boyd, pH). Traditionally, placing such words at the beginning of a sentence would be avoided, but this limits one's syntax and style. Hence, the aim of this paper is to explore the rules...

Writing in a foreign language is a particularly difficult skill to develop, especially when young learners are concerned because they are parallelly learning to write in their L1 and do not have strong oral foundations in their L2. The issue becomes even more complex when the ways to assess young learners’ writing are considered, given that researc...

Knjiga pruža sveobuhvatan pregled suvremenih znanstvenih spoznaja o vrednovanju jezične kompetencije učenika rane školske dobi (od šest do jedanaest godina). Polazeći od razvojnih obilježja djece srednjega djetinjstva, sustavno se analiziraju temeljna načela poučavanja stranoga jezika u ranoj školskoj dobi te različite vrste vrednovanja s posebnim...

One of the aspects of language proficiency that characterizes proficient speakers of English is collocational competence. Those who have not developed or have emerging collocational competence avoid using collocations or resort to literal translation from their first or stronger language when they need to produce collocations in L2 English. The use...

Collocations, words that habitually go together, such as "to book a meeting", represent a peculiar linguistic phenomenon that has resulted in numerous studies by linguists and applied linguists, especially those in search of the mechanisms of words forming a companionship and of the effective techniques of teaching and learning collocations in anot...

Background: ChatGPT, a chatbot based on a large language model, captured global attention toward the end of 2022. With its potential to generate comprehensive texts of a variety of genres based on a string of straightforward prompts, it was soon perceived as a threat by many in various fields, including – and in particular – education. Schools acro...

The paper describes Croatian EFL learners’ collocational competence with regard to congruent and incongruent collocations. Congruent collocations are those which express the same meaning in both languages with similar lexical components, whereby a direct translation from L1 into L2 produces an appropriate collocation. On the other hand, incongruent...

In research on collocations published in English we encounter, albeit rarely, the use of the notion "metaphorical collocations". It is interesting to note that seldom if ever are metaphorical collocations defined in any way in these studies, suggesting that researchers find the term self-explanatory. However, seeing that metaphorical collocations a...

The way people are spoken or written about has a critical role in how they are perceived, and this in turn influences how they are positioned within a society – belonging to its core, the majority, or being relegated to the margins, the minority. Various authors have reflected on the role of language in dehumanizing, oppressing, and discriminating...

U radu se raspravlja o nazivima koji se koriste u hrvatskome jeziku kako bi se imenovali Amerikanci afričkoga podrijetla, a među najprimjerenijima se ističu "Crnci" te "Afroamerikanci". Čitatelje se također upućuje na problematične definicije u hrvatskim rječnicima na temelju čega se i donose se smjernice za daljnji leksikografski rad.

Language learning strategies (LLS) have been in the focus of researchers for the past five decades. However, few studies have explored young learners’ LLS. Starting with the assumption that the intensity of second language (L2) exposure is one of the factors in the use of LLS, the aim of this paper is to investigate whether there is a difference be...

U ovome se radu na temelju istraživanja uporabe paronima promišlja o odnosu norme i uzusa te o izazovima istraživanja norme i uzusa. Naime, paronimi su kao riječi sličnoga izraza i različita značenja zanimljivo standardološko pitanje – ali i jezikoslovno s obzirom na to da je paronimija vrsta leksičkoga odnosa. Izazov pri istraživanju paronima kao...

In this paper, based on the research of paronym use, we discuss the relationship between the norm and usage, and the challenges of researching norm and usage. Paronyms, as words that look similar but have a different meaning are an interesting standard language issue - and a linguistic issue as well because paronymy is a type of lexical relationshi...

Ovaj je rad nastojanje da se opiše utjecaj hrvatskoga kao materinskoga jezika na engleski kao strani jezik kroz kvantitativnu i kvalitativnu analizu leksičkih i gramatičkih pogrešaka zabilježenih u pisanome ostvaraju učenika osmoga razreda. Istraživanje je provedeno na uzorku od 500 učenika, izvornih govornika hrvatskoga jezika, koji su engleski je...

The focus of this paper is the stance of Croatian language policy (LP) toward foreign languages (FLs) in the education system, which we call Croatian foreign language policy (FLP). By analysing current curricula, which define the place of FLs in primary and secondary school explicitly or implicitly, we gain insight into Croatian FLP in primary and...

The aim of this paper is to suggest a possible order of teaching English tenses in Croatian primary schools. After a short introduction in which we explain why such an order might be needed in the Croatian context, and after a brief look at possible foundations in scientific research, we review grammar teaching from the methodological aspect and di...

U ovome se radu istražuju razlike u uporabi pravopisnih znakova u hrvatskome i engleskome jeziku, a posebice s obzirom na utjecaj engleskoga kao stranoga jezika na govornike hrvatskoga kao materinskoga jezika. Naime, posljednjih je desetljeća engleski jezik u Hrvatskoj toliko prisutan u raznim medijima da je počeo utjecati na hrvatski jezik. Stoga...

The aim of this paper is to explore differences in the usage of punctuation between Croatian and English, especially regarding the influence of English as a foreign language on native speakers of Croatian. In recent decades, English has been such a large presence in the media in Croatia that it has begun influencing the Croatian language. Therefore...

The aim of this paper is to suggest a possible order of teaching English tenses in Croatian primary schools. After a short introduction in which we explain why such an order might be needed in the Croatian context, and after a brief look at possible foundations in scientific research, we review grammar teaching from the methodological aspect and di...

U ovome se radu nastoje utvrditi značenja riječi čitak i čitljiv. Naime, norma nije usuglašena što znači prvi, a što drugi pridjev; rječnici daju suprotna značenja pa nije jasno koja se od tih riječi odnosi na razumljivost i lakoću čitanja teksta, a koja na razumljivost i lakoću čitanja rukopisa i tiska. Takvo se semantičko kolebanje javlja i u upo...

U ovome se radu donose jezični savjeti i prijedlozi rješenja za pravopisne dvojbe s kojima se susreću učitelji i nastavnici pri vođenju pedagoške dokumentacije. Iako zakoni, pravilnici i pedagoški priručnici propisuju i opisuju pedagošku dokumentaciju, oni se ne dotiču pitanja pravopisa odnosno standardnojezičnoga izražavanja kada je posrijedi, pri...

In this paper, we try to establish the meanings of the words čitak and čitljiv (readable and legible, respectively). It seems that the norm is not clear on what these words actually mean; different dictionaries give different (and opposite) definitions so that it is not clear which of the words refers to the comprehensibility and ease of reading a...

U ovome se radu razmatraju razvojna obilježja djece srednjega djetinj­stva u kontekstu nastave stranoga jezika. Srednje djetinjstvo započinje oko šeste i završava oko jedanaeste godine života. Te se krajnje vre­menske točke u hrvatskome obrazovnom sustavu poklapaju s polaskom u osnovnu školu te s prelaskom iz razredne nastave u predmetnu pa stoga o...

U ovome se radu propituje međujezični utjecaj reda riječi u hrvatskome jeziku na ovladavanje engleskim kao stranim jezikom. Naime u hrvatskome je jeziku red riječi u rečenici prilično slobodan, a u engleskome je relativno fiksiran. Riječ je dakle o jednoj od razlika koja bi govornicima hrvatskoga jezika mogla predstavljati izazov pri ovladavanju en...

U ovome se radu problematiziraju strategije slušanja u nastavi stranoga jezika. U prvome se dijelu daje kratak pregled povijesti slušanja kao vještine, a proces slušanja opisuje se na temelju kognitivnoga okvira razumijevanja pri slušanju. Pregled istraživanja donosi znanstvene radove koji ukazuju na probleme i zahtjevnost slušanja na stranome jezi...

U ovome se radu donose rezultati istraživanja morfoloških pogrešaka (inovacijskih gramatema) u govoru desetogodišnjaka kojima je hrvatski materinski jezik. Tijekom tromjesečnoga opažanja 20 učenika četvrtoga razreda u slobodnoj komunikaciji (s vršnjacima i s učiteljicom) u produženome boravku bilježene su pogreške u njihovu govoru. Najčešće su se j...