Implementation of Selected Communication Functions in Comparison of Non-native and Native Speakers of Czech
Abstract
The goal of the paper is to present analysis of a personal apology letter with formal features written by Ukrainian examinees during the Examination of the Czech Language for Permanent Residence in the Czech Republic. The study does not present a complex analysis of the letters, but it concentrates on selected linguistic phenomena tied up to the functions of an introductory greeting, apology from a meeting and proposal of a new meeting, expression of farewell.
The investigation presented in the paper aims to (1) make an inventory of linguistic means used by non-native speakers to achieve the task given, (2) analyse their use and to (3) compare the results with those reported on the basis of a similar analysis conducted on a native speakers' corpus. It seeks to answer the following questions: (1) What type of means do non-native speakers use to express the communicative functions under the interest? (2) What is the frequency of the means? Does it create any patter of the interlanguage? (3) How do the non-native speakers express the function in comparison to the native speaker use? The corpus built for the analysis consists of letters selected during the Examination of the Czech Language for Permanent Residence in the CR in years 2013-2014.
The participants selected were the Ukrainian native speakers; all living and working in the Czech Republic for 5 years at least. There are 141 letters finally included into the corpus.
The letters were written on the basis of a short printed verbal and visual prompt in an essay examination. The same task was given to a group of native speakers.
This group included 23 Czech native speakers of various age, level of education and occupation. We analysed the letters of this group at the same way as the letters of the examinees; the result served as the prototype of the Czech native speakers and allowed the comparison and the frame for description of variants in the learners' language.