Promoting Plurilingual Competence in Polish Learners of English
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Table 2: Percentages of students’ answers to the question How many cognate words do YOU know? Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
Multilinguals
ca 10
64%
43%
25.5%
2%
ca 50
10.5%
32%
33%
25%
ca 100
5.5%
12%
18.5%
37%
7.5%
20%
ca 500
–
2%
ca 1000
–
1%
–
11%
20%
11%
15.5%
5%
no answer 70%
Elementary Intermediate Advanced Multilinguals
60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% ca 10
ca 50
ca 100
ca 500
ca 1000
Figure 2: Percentages of students’ answers to the question How many cognate words do YOU know?
Moreover, the conscious reliance on cognate words of Latin and Greek origin should improve their fluency and style in productive tasks. The research was meant to determine whether exposure to and activation of English-Polish cognate vocabulary would help students recognize cognates while reading an English text and use cognates more often in productive tasks, as compared to the control groups. As Swan (1997: 178) points out, ‘the more aware learners are of the similarities and differences between their mother tongue and the target language, the easier they will find it to adopt effective learning and production strategies’. On the other hand, Jessner (1999: 207) states that ‘metalinguistic awareness can be increased through teaching similarities between languages’.