Abstract:

Knowledge of foreign languages is very important, and its importance has been growing in recent years. During their course of life, a majority of human beings get into contact with more languages, inputs of other languages appear quite soon in the present multi-cultural environment and come from media, films and contacts established with foreigners on the private or business bases. The present educational policy of the European Union requires the knowledge of at least one foreign language. In a big number of European countries, learning of at least two foreign languages is obligatory for secondary school and university students. The process of learning more foreign languages is quite demanding - the knowledge of the mother tongue and at least one foreign language acquired before has definitely an impact on learning and understanding of other languages. Students´ previous experience with and skills gained from learning languages must not be ignored. Not only teachers should be aware of the existence of the issues of language interference and positive transfers. The main objective of the text is to present findings resulting from the research currently carried out at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Kralove (Czech Republic). Various groups of university students express their opinions on the issue of learning more foreign languages. The aim is to find out whether students are aware of factors influencing their learning process. The findings will be used for making proposals of potentially improved ways of teaching foreign languages.

Keywords:

Foreign language learning, linguistic competence, language interference, positive transfer.