Untitled

saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi:
problemebi da gamowvevebi
Issues of State Language Teaching;
Problems and Challenges
tion – to develop curriculum and teaching – learning materials and organize the teaching based on the findings
of contrastive analysis of the target languages. Even more, language comparison in the case of Latvia is historically
deep rooted – the first Latvian grammar descriptions were developed by German linguists in German.
I would like to mention the ABC by Jakob Gogebashvili which is beloved by all Georgians. (Figure1.)
When I started learning Georgian and my teacher used this book to teach me letters I wondered why the book
starts with the letters “a” and “i”. “Isn’t it exciding that after the first lesson student can read the sentence and
understand the utterance” was the explanation. Even though this ABC was not very appropriate for my adult
second language learner needs (and in fact was not meant for it) I would like to positively recognize the message
received from the first page - we are learning language for functional reasons.
There is no so beloved ABC for Latvians. To find the most effective way of learning the alphabet during
the years from 1945 to 1997 ten text books were developed. However, second language acquisition for decades
was started with letters “k” and “a” (Figure 2). Why? These are the letters that are in the Slavic alphabet,
therefore already known to students with Russian as first language.
Constructive analysis can be used on different levels – as a study course in teacher education programme,
as a curriculum and text books structure, as well as in everyday teaching practice. In Latvia, language tests for
years were based on typical errors, thus students “trained” by private tutors passed them exceptionally, creating
an illusion of language competency. During the time when such tests became popular, second language
learners were more successful and presented better results than first language speakers because they were
trained purposefully.
A straight comparison to the first language hinders acquisition of target language as an independent system.
An unnecessary battle occurs all the time whether “it is the same or different” in the first language. Error
analysis is related to learning language as a system, that is, grammar – translation approach – to prevent errors
language rules are explained explicitly. The prepared materials become useless in an environment with an audience
that has a different first language.
.
This misleadingly effective temptation has been tried out also in Georgia (for experts I would like to remind,
for example, teaching materials developed by L. Tushuria), even though a direct comparison of two
languages in the multilingual Georgia has an even smaller target audience than in Latvia.
Markedness and error analysis concepts
Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual
structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one. The domi-
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