Culture in lecturing of Croatian as a foreign language

Sažetak Hrvatski jezik, iako tzv. mali jezik, sadrži velik kulturni potencijal. Kulturni potencijal znači mogućnost da se hrvatski jezik, unatoč svojoj ‘malenkosti’, otvori prema drugim kulturama pa posredno i prema većim jezicima. Drugim riječima, jezik kao zatvoren i statičan sustav gramatičkih struktura svojom kulturnom baštinom postaje otvoren i dinamičan sustav okrenut svijetu i njegovu tržištu znanja. Kultura sadrži i prenosi kulturne vrednote jezika, u našem slučaju hrvatskoga, i tvori njegov kulturni identitet. Spoznaja je to koja je uvelike inspirirala poučavanje stranih jezika pa tako i ovaj članak o nastavi hrvatskoga kao drugog i stranog. U današnje vrijeme, kada se mnogi filološki studiji pretvaraju u kulturološke studije, nastava kulture dobiva posebno značenje i zaslužuje veću pozornost. Poučavajući i učeći hrvatski jezik, lektori predstavljaju, a korisnici programa hrvatskoga jezika u svijetu usvajaju hrvatske kulturne obrasce i stvaraju sliku o Hrvatskoj i Hrvatima. Dobro poznavanje kulture osnovni je preduvjet za prevladavanje kulturnih stereotipa te ispunjavanje jednog od temeljnih nastavnih ciljeva u suvremenoj metodici poučavanja stranih jezika – interkulturalnosti. Zato su pomno i sustavno osmišljeni programi kulture u nastavi hrvatskoga jezika u inozemstvu i nastavnici koji posjeduju kulturološke kompetencije u hrvatskome jeziku vrlo važni jer ujedno pridonose promociji Hrvatske u svijetu i jamče budućnost hrvatskoga jezika.The Croatian language, although a so called small language, contains a huge cultural potential. It means that there is a possibility for opening towards other cultures and indirectly towards world languages. In other words, a language as a closed and static system of grammatical structures with its cultural inheritance becomes an open dynamic system orientated towards the world knowledge market. Culture as such in fact contains and transfers cultural values of a language, in this case Croatian language, and builds its cultural identity. This idea inspired the teaching of foreign languages and this article Croatian as a second and foreign language as well. Today, when philology studies grow into cultural studies, the culture lecturing deserves a special importance as a part of teaching Croatian as a foreign language. In teaching Croatian language, the lecturers present and the users of programs on universities abroad get the patterns of Croatian culture and the picture of Croats and Croatia. Good knowledge of culture in the main condition for outgrowing cultural stereotypes and fulfills the main goal in modern foreign language teaching methodic – interculturality. Empiric research done on the universities abroad shows that cultural competence of program users croatics and slavistics students) does not follow their language competence, but it is minor to it. By questioning the sample of hundred students, who are, according to their knowledge on the highest level of language competence (C1 according to the Common European Referent Framework for Languages), we got the results which show that their knowledge of Croatian culture it an adequate and it is based on cultural stereotypes of Croats and Croatia. Foreign students who are studying Croatian language at the universities abroad have the perception of Croatia as a small tourist country on the mountains of Balkans (i.e. primitive, with no culture). For them it is a country of natural beauties, folklore and folk music, where there was a war, catholic country, the country of successful sportsmen, divided between nationalism and Yugoslavian nostalgia. The Croatian cultural identity is not recognizable. There are many reasons for this situation in practice, but only a few of them define the nonexistence of unambiguous definition of culture, moving the borders between so called elite and popular culture, the complexity of Croatian cultural identity, not adequate competence of the lecturers teaching Croatian culture abroad, nonexistence of systematical methodic of Croatian as a foreign and second language, the diversity of functioning of high school institutions abroad, the teaching of wider philological slavistics programs so called Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, insufficient number of lexicons and manuals on Croatian culture abroad etc. To improve this situation into raise level of cultural competence on the level of language competence, the programs of Croatian language abroad should be dedicated to the enclosure of the Croatian culture in the teaching of Croatian language from the very beginning with the special accent on the Croatian history in its continuity. Only such programs of Croatian language which contain a clear concept of Croatian culture and which are performed by lecturers with an adequate cultural competence are the guarantee for the conserving of Croatian language and its way to interculturality in multilingual and multicultural community of European languages