Poučavanje engleskog kao trećeg jezika: slučaj mladih govornika bajaškog rumunjskog u Hrvatskoj

Multilingual pedagogy has become a popular teaching approach across the world since students are often multilingual speakers. This study focuses on a class of young Boyash Romanian speakers in Croatia who are learning English as their third language. The Boyash are an ethnic minority group living in Croatia, who speak Boyash Romanian as their mother tongue, whereas Croatian is Croatia’s official language, and the official language of schooling. The three languages used in the classroom were English, Croatian and Boyash Romanian, and the study looked into how the three languages were arranged according to the four classroom discourse frames proposed by Pennington: lesson frame, lesson-support frame, institutional-support frame, and commentary frame. The study also aimed to capture the teacher’s perspective related to teaching the Boyash students. The English lessons were observed and recorded, and a semi-structured interview was conducted with the teacher. The results showed that neither of the four classroom discourse frames contained a single language, since the classroom represents a multilingual environment. Extensive code-switching between English, Croatian and Boyash Romanian was present during English lessons. Croatian and Boyash Romanian were used for clarification, disciplining the students and giving feedback, but also for dual-referencing and motivating the students. It was difficult to predict how the classroom would be different if the students had another language as their mother tongue, but the teacher would surely have more access to materials if it were a language that was researched more than Boyash Romanian. Moreover, the students could be more motivated if they came from a community which gave a greater importance to children’s education and encouraged them more than the Boyash generally do