The Role of Czech-English Interlanguage Homonyms in Second-language Acquisition

This bachelor thesis is concerned with the role of Czech-English interlanguage homonymy in the process of second-language acquisition. The aim is to prove or disprove that the Czech learners are not in general very well acquainted with Czech-English interlanguage homonyms and that various factors heavily influence the depth of their knowledge. The theoretical part provides a brief overview of the synchronic and diachronic development of both the Czech language and the English language, including the influence of the English language on Czech and their mutual history. A further focus is on explaining homonymy and the theory of interlanguage and its influence on second language acquisition. The practical part is based on a questionnaire and attempts to discover whether Czech learners are aware of the phenomenon of "false friends" and the differences between particular instances. Special emphasis is put on the individual factors that impact the learners' command of knowledge, such as depth and quality of knowledge, work or educational experience in an Anglophone country, length of learning English, and frequency of using English. The analysis and evaluation of the results confirmed the hypothesis as valid. KEYWORDS interlanguage, homonymy, second language acquisition, treacherous word