Promoting Plurilingual Competence in Polish Learners of English
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Students in all four studies were asked to respond to a Polish language version of a questionnaire which consisted of 7 basic questions concerning their perceptions of the distance between English and Polish and the existence of cognates (Otwinowska-Kasztelanic 2007, 2009). The present paper reports only on the findings concerning the awareness of cognates. Table 1 and Figure 1 present the respondents’ answers to the question How many words are there whose form and meaning are similar in English and Polish? Table 1: Percentages of students’ answers to the question How many words are there whose form and meaning are similar in English and Polish? Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
20–50
29%
11%
50–150
25.5%
31%
26%
12%
150–500
23.5%
27%
28%
33%
500–1000
7%
17%
14.5%
26%
1000–5000
–
6%
13.5%
25%
no answer
15%
8%
9.5%
4%
8.5%
35%
Multilinguals –
Elementary Intermediate Advanced Multilinguals
30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 20–50
50 –150
150 –500
500 –1000
1000–5000
Figure 1: Percentages of students’ answers to the question How many words are there whose form and meaning are similar in English and Polish?