Abstract:

The paper appears as a result of research conducted in accordance with the project “Supplemental instruction as a tool for improving students’ language competence at the Faculty of Philology”. The purpose of this project is to detect students’ weaknesses from their previous education and to overcome them by adding supplemental instruction in the duration of two semesters, two lessons per week. The results from the tests aim at improving language competence of the students from the Department of German language and literature at the Faculty of Philology, “Goce Delcev” University – Stip, the Republic of Macedonia. The results provide an answer to the question whether this supplemental instruction contributes to the improvement of students’ language competence. Moreover, we hope they will define the extent of improvement by comparing them to the results obtained from the initial testing, conducted before introducing supplemental instruction to the experimental group. The instruction focused on explicit learning of grammar and vocabulary of the German language, and on development of language skills by using different exercises and activities in accordance with the communicative approaches to language learning.

Keywords:

Explicit learning, language competence, supplemental instruction.