ESSAYS AND STUDIES
RESULTS OF EUROPEAN MULTILINGUALISM POLICY IN THE FIRST DECADE OF THE 21ST CENTURY IN MEMBER STATES OF EUROPEAN UNION AND SERBIA
Abstract
The idea of united Europe inevitably brings news also in the field
of linguistics. Growing openness of markets among the member states,
political cooperativeness and new development strategies at the global
level have introduced the need of eliminating the language barriers
among the Europeans. A determination is to give equal chances to all
languages, without division to great and small languages. The goal of
the paper is to present the results of language policies in practice during
the first decade of the twenty-first century, both in case of the member
states of the EU and the Republic of Serbia. Although our country is
not a member state, analysis of the available data shows that the policy
of our state is consistent with the European way of plurilingualism
and interculturalism. There is no doubt that Serbia is determined for
the internationalization of education in general, therefore the concept
of introducing several languages is consistent with that. Such the
educational policy is good and is based on the concept of knowledge
exchange, with the early learning of foreign languages being the way
to the accomplishment of the exchange. However, early learning of
the English language in almost all primary schools in Serbia from the
first grade will not make a contribution to the policy of plurilingualism.
European integrations, the process in which our country has entered,
is based on cultural differences. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce
demonopolization of the English language and introduce other languages
in the first educational cycle that will be the first foreign language (FL1).
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