THE TEACHING OF THE BULGARIAN LANGUAGE AS L1 IN THE CONTEXT OF THE "MODERNIZING EDUCATION" REFORM IN BULGARIA. NEW TEXTBOOKS AND INNOVATIVE SYLLABUSES. (5-12 GRADE)

Tatyana Angelova, Krassimira Alexova¹

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0. The idea of multilinguism and multiculturalism is of paramount importance for contemporary language education in Europe. To correspond to the evolving educational context in Europe, various changes triggered by the reform for modernizing education², are being introduced in Bulgarian secondary schools.The core of the new tendencies in the innovation of education and language teaching is the implementation of new state educational requirements (standards). Following the recommendations formulated in the Conceptual Frame of the European Council regarding contemporary language education, the innovative approach to teaching Bulgarian as L1 is accompanied by the application of the new standards into new syllabuses and new textbooks in Bulgarian as L1.

Socio-cultural competence and linguistic competence are the outstanding components of the new state standards. Socio-cultural competence is expressed in the use of words’ use appropriate for the respective communicative events; in the choice of codes adequate and fully corresponding to the social roles performed by the participants in the communicative act. Linguistic competence is realized by the consistent observance of language norms. Literacy is interpreted in the current paper as a necessary and sufficient condition for successful communication. The term is used wide a wider scope to include cultural and intercultural literacy.

1. The changes in the teaching of Bulgarian as L1 exercise direct influence on the literacy of pupils. The acquisition of the literary language and the norms that govern its usage are the main objectives posited for the pupils graduating high school after complete the twelfth grade. The acquisition of L1 (in our case it happens to be the official language as well) provides the grounds for learning other languages as well. The overriding aim of the education in Bulgarian schools is the achievement of full correspondence between the language education and communicative competence of Bulgarian pupils and those of their peers in European countries.

2. In this paper we are going to concisely analyze the essence and functions of a) the new syllabuses and textbooks in the Bulgarian language based on them designed for pupils in the 9 to 12 grades and b) the new syllabuses for the teaching of Bulgarian as L1 to 5 - 8 graders, for which special textbooks will be designed in the near future. We will briefly discuss the most significant problems and outline the prognosis for their settlement.

2.1. Unlike the teaching of Bulgarian in the 4-8 grades, the education of L1 in the high school grades 9, 10, 11, 12 has not received sufficient attention. Since the 40s of the XIX century until the present day, a definite tendency has firmly established itself in the education in L1 - there has been observed a marked preponderance in the teaching of literature, while the teaching of the Bulgarian language has been significantly suppressed. Nowadays the results of this tendency are obvious in the misbalance between the pupils’ linguistic and literary education.Only a unified analysis of the literary and linguistic education in high school as an inseparable whole can prevent and overcome the current disharmony.

There have been a few attempts in the history of our educational system to introduce the school subject ‘Bulgarian language’ in the programs for high school education. Even without a minute analysis it is obvious that the fruitful ides for contemporary language education in high school have not been put to practice.The reasons for this state can be reasonably subdivided into two groups: subjective and objective. The objective reasons concern the insignificant number of classes allotted to the studying of Bulgarian literature and language. For lack of time, it is not infrequent for teachers to devote their class to the study and analysis of literary works (which it has to be admitted excess in numbers) exclusively. The second group of reasons, or the subjective factors, involves the personality of teachers in high schools. Unfortunately, only few of the teachers in the 9, 10, 11 grades ever bother to teach the Bulgarian language instead of limiting the education to literary texts. These are the teachers who perceive themselves as real philologists and not simply as literary people.

In such a gloomy context, the mere fact that the academic 2001-2002 witnesses the introduction of new educational programs for the teaching of the Bulgarian language in high schools deserves considerable admiration and high evaluation. The subject ‘Bulgarian language’ introduced in the 9, 10, 11 and 12 grades of high schools pursuant to the State Educational Requirements for the cultural-educational field of Bulgarian literature and language meets a long standing demand and need. The inclusion of topics and special seminars on the Bulgarian language in high school programs in relation to the sociocultural needs and the sociocommunicative experience of pupils can be considered a significant success in high education. Thus the basis is laid for higher achievement levels for the whole educational process in high school.

This positive evaluation can be justified by three groups of factors concerning contemporary language teaching and education.

The first group of factors stems from the common European framework the teaching and acquisition of contemporary languages, from the guidelines in the adopted by the European Council³. What is more, the newly established European center for the study of contemporary languages in Graats, Austria plays the role of an international factor for the formation of a novel picture of language education in Europe.

The second group of factors reflects the achievements of the contemporary sciences devoted to the study of language. The third group of factors relates to the national educational tradition, connected to the learning of the Bulgarian language. The way the three groups are presented here is arbitrary and does not represent a ranking scale of significance.

The contentions underlying the new educational programs could be presented using the approach of considering two separate objects of study - language and metalanguage. Language is understood as an activity, a process of use, as communicative behavior and the summative results of this behavior. Metalanguage is conceived of as a unity of methods for the description of language and the use of metalinguistic knowledge for communication (a typical example is written communication marked by its considerable conditionality and preliminary preparation)⁴.

A question of key importance for the education in high school is ‘What does it mean to study a native language in high school (or L1 as it is termed in the specialized literature on socio- and psycholinguistics, i.e. the language that comes first in the hierarchy of languages that a speaker knows)?’

It is common knowledge that contemporary language education is dominated by a communicative orientation. In the theory of foreign language education this is known as communicative language teaching. There is hardly any need to justify the fruitfulness of such a tendency. What is of importance here is the understanding of what lies behind the concept of communicative orientation.

The approach based on communicative orientation should be tightly linked with the application of interactive methods. Put differently, the teaching interaction is so structured as to be maximally productive, bringing as close together as possible educational communication and natural communication. An analysis of the relevant literature points to a host of striking similarities in the works of specialists in the teaching of L1 and those specializing in problems of second or foreign language education.

Communication in an educational context has its specific characteristics. The teaching person is the one who defines the needs and aims, he is the one who structures the interaction, sets the communicative topics and evaluates, etc. Not infrequently, a restricted set of communicative roles is left open for the person being taught - to perform but not to initiate speech acts, to be evaluated in his performance and production but not to evaluate corresponding speech and communicative acts, to be informed but not to inform (the elicited students’ answers do not actually inform the teacher, they function as feedback that demonstrates the level of acquisition of the student). So if we have to be precise, we should admit that language education has a highly restricted interactivity. It could be defined as a reproductive type of interaction - the student reproduces but does not generate mental schemas or frames (senses).

To this type of language education we can juxtapose the type of language education marked by pronouncedly higher interactivity. The speaking and writing student is the initiator of the communicative interaction in class. He is free to perform a greater number and more diverse communicative roles - he can give or ask fro information, is even allowed to evaluate speech acts, etc. we could safely say that the student is acquiring an ever more conspicuous autonomy in the process of teaching and learning the Bulgarian language. This autonomy is a prerequisite for a genuine participation in the communicative act - a participation based on partner-to-partner relations and not on inequality in terms of communicative contribution. The outlined correlations are most pronounced with students in high school because of their psycho-physical specifics. The teaching programs for the Bulgarian language for 9-12 grades fully reflect the tendency for greater communicative orientation and are entrenched in the context for language education outlined by the common European concept of contemporary language education.

If we stick to the dichotomy of language vs. metalanguage introduced above, we could analyze the linguistic ideas underlying the programs, the pedagogical and methodological dimensions of these ideas.

The teaching programs for the teaching and learning of Bulgarian as L1 for the 9-12 grades are based on the newest scientific ideas and concepts concerning communication theory and the direct dependence between the type of discourse and the socio-cultural context. A new, functionally oriented understanding of language is employed for explaining language use that is fully corresponding to the existing socio-cultural spheres and the communicative practices they seem to favor (ways of using linguistic means for the realization of social acts). This tendency is characteristic for the theory and practice of language education in Europe. The new Programs display an insistence for full correspondence to the guidelines formulated in the documents adopted by the European council for the education in contemporary languages. Very positive about this process is the fact that the guidelines are creatively implemented and not indiscriminately copied taking into consideration the peculiarities of the Bulgarian socio-cultural conditions.

Special attention deserves the attempts to introduce in the Programs the concepts of an institutional sphere, civic sphere and media sphere. Such an approach naturally overcomes the limitations imposed by an artificial division of the functional styles.

A central place in the teaching of language in high school occupies the functionalist approach to the usage of language conditioned by the communicative sphere and its relevant features - thus the students acquire the peculiarities of using language in the scientific sphere, in the administrative sphere, in the sphere of creative language use for the purposes of art, etc. In this way they attain the awareness of the phenomenon of functional style. Practically, as it is general knowledge that not a single text contains the features and characteristics of a single style. The approach that takes into account the influence of social roles performed by the participants in a communicative act is functional. The participant in the communicative act is to a large extent an actor on the social scene, so that it is appropriate for the pupils (in this case students in the 11^th grade) to be adequately prepared for different social roles, which he has performed or he is anticipated to perform. That is why the Programs make use of the concept socio-cultural sphere.

The programs for teaching the Bulgarian language in the 9-12 grades fully reflect the efforts of the European educational workers to design a unified conceptual framework for the teaching of language and for evaluating the results of the processes of language teaching and language learning. The relation between language and culture forms the hard core of this common European framework for the learning of contemporary languages (cf. Byram M., G. Zarate and G. Neuner 1997. Central for this framework is the notion of national identity, as well as the influence of the immediate socio-cultural context ). Of particular importance are also the opposition - public - private and the cultivation of tolerance to socio-cultural differences and ethnic and religious peculiarities.

The new educational programs for the 9-12 grades and the textbooks written after them try to answer a few important questions: What are students expected to know about their native language? What skills are they expected to demonstrate in their communicative behavior? What level of literacy are they expected to show in the reception and production of texts they work with?

We are not going to expound on the paramount importance of learning the native language for the personality development of the student, for the formation of his patterns and abilities for analytical thinking, for the possibilities its opens for the student to participate in the social life of the school and beyond, in his own country and abroad... We will just mention something well known but often neglected - at the center of the process of language teaching and language learning is the student. The student who communicates freely, who is able to understand the others, who feels a citizen and has an individual personality. The student as a personality that expresses itself and develops its potentials through speech.

The programs for teaching the Bulgarian language designed for 9-12 grades (referred to later on as the Programs), the student is put in the center of the process and is conceived of in the manner described above. We should highly assess the effort to turn the future graduate not only into a well prepared cultural reader, able to interpret Bulgarian and foreign works of literary art, but also a complete person, able to use language freely in all circumstances. In other words to make him a person capable of successfully participating in all types of social activities. We should never disregard the fact that there is hardly any human activity of which speech and language are not major components. The attainment of such a competence, as Del Hymes minutely clarifies, “is procured by the accrued social experience, needs and motives” (Hymes 1972, 277)

The so-called cores of the state educational requirements for the cultural and educational field “Bulgarian language” have been set up so as to provide the prerequisites for the presentation of the educational potentials of the respective teaching program. The acquisition of the linguistic concepts and regularities, spelled out in the Programs is a necessary condition for the comprehension of the metalanguage by the students. The transformation of such concepts as socio-cultural sphere - civic, institutional, media, etc. into part of the students’ knowledge of the world (the thesaurus of the linguistic personality) allows the students to become conscious of and to regulate their speech behavior in a given socio-cultural context. It is easy to detect among the linguistic contentions underlying the Programs the one of an outstanding functional significance - the concept of the obligatory and optional nature of linguistic means. Postulated by M. A. K. Halliday as early as 1971, this concept provides the basics in most conceptual frameworks for language education.

The speech genres and activities included in the Programs represent all contemporary tendencies in language teaching and learning. Working with the speech activities and types of texts included in parts three and four of the Programs (socio-cultural and linguistic competence in written and oral communication) leads to the creation and perfection of skills and competences for acceptable participation in argumentative types of discourse, skills that guarantee full expression of the person in the social and personal life. Thus the educational aims related to the formation of civil self-consciousness are achieved. The educational potential of the Programs is raised by the special attention focused on text documents. The use of such texts occupies a special place in the hierarchy of socio-communicative skills, since in this way the individual gets prepared for his/her future professional realization, for his/her genuine participation in social activities. Of no less importance is the methodological information envisaged in the Programs concerning communication in the sphere of the media. This is the sphere that undoubtedly exercises the greatest influence on the acquisition of socio-communicative experience.

We could safely conclude that the Programs set up the prerequisites for the attainment of high quality language education, since the judgment on the wholesomeness of language teaching and learning is pronounced on the basis of estimating how much this type of education cares for the individual development of the student as a personality. In this line of thinking, Morris Merlau-Ponty’s contention that the acquisition of new skills leads to the enrichment of the humane potential of the individual and the society as a whole, acquires special importance.

The educational potential of the Programs is realized in the possibilities they open for writing textbooks⁵. The good conceptual background of the Programs is well matched by they excellent structuring. The cores (socio-cultural competence, linguistic competence and socio-cultural and linguistic competence is written and oral communication respectively) play a considerable role for achieving that, as well as the detailed account for the relations with other subjects and the outlining of the expected results. The attempt to integrate linguistic and literary education and the desire to unify into one the components of the socio-cultural competence of eleven graders and their literary competence deserve deep appreciation.

Despite its unquestionable merits, the Program has features that rise some pertinent questions.

The Program leaves unsolved the following questions: information overloading. A tendency has settled in for an ever increasing volume of the taught information, while the number of classes allotted for its dissemination is reduced. Closely connected to this problem is also the question of the limited incorporation of new realia like the Internet and electronic books; the lack of a holistic framework for incorporating the language and literary education within the new communication and information technologies. Special attention should be devoted to the work focused on enhancing students’ motivation, to the betterment of their communicative competence - how should they gather and comprehend the vast volume of information, how to realize their own expectations for success in the process of language education. An urgent need is felt for the operationalization of the teaching activities at various levels: with overachievers and underachievers, with highly motivated students and ones that lack sufficient motivation and on a regional basis (working with students who know the official language at different levels). The problems of diglossia and bilingualism do not figure sufficiently. We cannot possibly foresee all the difficulties that a teacher of the Bulgarian language and literature might experience: difficulties arising because of the reduced number of classes, difficulties arising from the fact that he is entirely on his her own in his/her scientific preparation, from the total disinterest that the students demonstrate and their unwillingness to read, from the extreme differences in socio-cultural characteristics of the students.

Unsolved also remain problems concerning the assessment of communicative achievements and failures of students. There are no standards (state educational requirements) for assessment.

We could briefly summarize: The linguistic ideas developed in the programs fro teaching Bulgarian function as evidence for the productive relations between tradition and innovation. The programs are characterized by methodological significance in the context of the Bulgarian and international educational practice. The problem with the opposition own - other has been successfully settled. The same could be said of the questions concerning functional - unmotivated, significant - eternal - transitory. All in all the Programs have answered the question what does it mean to study the Bulgarian language in the 9-12 grades in the contemporary socio-cultural context. Meanwhile a number of questions are left open. Their answers will probably be found by other authors, under different conditions in new programs for the teaching and learning of Bulgarian.

2.2. The teaching of the Bulgarian language in secondary schools (V-VІІІ grades) occupies a mediatory place in the process of acquiring the knowledge about the native language. At this educational level are introduced the basics of knowledge about language as a structured sign system, the concept of invariant meaning and the functions of the linguistic categories, the notions of situationally adequate use of the linguistic units and the rules for applying the norms of the standard Bulgarian language. This period of school education is of paramount importance for forming the language competence of the students, for the solidification of their language culture and the formation of a language instinct, as well as for the improvement of their socio-cultural competence.

A prerequisite for the acquisition and application of the linguistic and socio-cultural competence are the educational state requirements for the teaching of the Bulgarian language at that period, which have been developed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the republic of Bulgaria. They are at present subject to endorsement.

We, the authors of the programs for the V, VІ and VІІ grades, in the formulation of the specific conception and volume of the programs, were led by the communicative needs of adolescents, which are related to the ideas of the communicative directedness of language education. We paid particular attention to the types of communicative activities and communicative situations into which the development of young students at that age helps brings them in. The choice of units in the educational content for each grade, and its respective structuring, was designed to fit the age-conditioned abilities of the students. The young generation nowadays is characterized by significantly changed age and psychological features, the result of the accelerated technical progress, the socio-economical dynamicity, of the information oversupply and the process of globalization that are presently gaining force.

The accomplishment of the communicative competence of students in secondary school (V-VІІІ grades), as the major aims of the education in the Bulgarian language, is impossible without the consideration of the disparate socio-cultural characteristics of the students in the different regions of Bulgaria. В този In such a context the new programs envisage the acquisition of a basic complex of necessary skills and knowledge that would guarantee equal achievement level to all students in their attainment of language and communicative competence in the overall process of socialization of the students.

In the organization of the material for the V-VIII grades the spiral principle has been observed. This principle provides cyclicity in the process of education and allows the solidification of the acquired material and makes it possible in each higher grade to develop further and wider the acquisition of skills and knowledge

Let us go into the details of some of the cores within the programs.

In the first core of the state educational requirements on teaching content - “Socio-cultural competences”, the program follows the principles of direct and multilateral connection to the different communicative spheres of life and the principle of satisfying the differentiated communicative needs of people.

The attainment of socio-cultural competence is interlinked with the acquisition of skills and knowledge for adequate communication in the different communicative spheres. Since the text as a central means for communication lies at the heart of the teaching programs for the V-VІІІ grades, the main aim of the language education is the comprehension of the specifics of the texts in the different communicative spheres and the formation of adequate communicative behavior. The order of text presentation of texts from different communicative spheres in the programs for the separate grades fully corresponds to the communicative needs of the students at the respective age: the text in the conversational, everyday life sphere and the official-public sphere - V grade; the text in the scientific sphere - VI grade, VII grade - the text in the media sphere and in literary works. In the VIII grade the emphasis is laid on the comprehension of the relation communication-language-text, on the analysis of the functioning of the text in different spheres of communication.

In the fifth grade the focus is centered round the appropriate use of linguistic means adjusted to the elements and requirements of the communicative situation (the aim, the topic, the participants, the conditions, etc.), round the acquisition of skills for adequate communicative and speech behavior in the official and non-official public sphere, which includes the formation of skills for appropriate use of the speech formulas of social etiquette (V grade). In the sixth grade, the attainment of socio-cultural competence prescribes concentration on communication in the scientific sphere, on the formation of skills for answering scientific questions, discussion and argumentation skills, of skills for summary-making. The program for the VІІ grade expects as a natural result not only the full comprehension of peculiarities and functions of the oral and written text of public interest, but also considerable development of the skills for adequate use of language means corresponding to the specifics of contemporary media. In the seventh grade the first main topic in the first core is focused on the characteristics and functions of the literary text, on the formation of skills for the understanding and interpretation of literary texts, on the knowledge of and free use of various types of means of expression (phonetic, lexical, and syntactic). In the VIII grade the students study the functional styles of the Bulgarian language and the specific features of the texts designed for different socio-cultural spheres.

The second core encompasses the system of linguistic competences. In the introduction and structuring of the system of knowledge in secondary school the leading principle is the spiral principle. This principle provides cyclicity in the process of education and allows the solidification of the acquired material and makes it possible in each higher grade to develop further and wider the acquisition of skills and knowledge.

The programs are based on linguistic ideas that are well accepted in the Bulgarian linguistic tradition and adequately reflect all contemporary developments in the sciences of language. At the center of the programs, from a methodological point of view, lies the principle about the systematicity and functionality of language phenomena.

The main objective of the programs, as far as the second core is concerned, is the acquisition of the norms of language at the main language levels: phonetic, lexical, morphological and syntactic.

In the fifth grade the grounds are laid of the theoretical course in morphology, lexicology and syntax, which is a prerequisite for the acquisition of speech, writing and punctuation norms. An object of study is the systematic relation in the lexical layer of language. Knowledge of the system of pronouns and their appropriate and correct use is enlarged. Central attention is paid to the major verb tenses and some metaphorical uses of them. At the syntactic level at the center are placed studies about the simple sentence, the types of simple sentences and their codification. The authors of the program rejected the conception of the parallel introduction of the simple sentence and subordinate clauses whose functional equivalents they are, that used to be incorporated in the previous program. The arguments for such a decision concern not only the age specifics of fifth graders and their abilities to comprehend specific levels of scientific abstraction, but also the requirement for the consistent application of the spiral principle for organizing the material and the principal for logical succession in in the acquisition of syntactic structures (knowledge about the different types of subordinate clauses is introduced parallel to their corresponding parts in the simple sentence, before the paratactic relations in the complex sentences are analyzed, and only later would the introduction of hypotactic relations be justified).

The main notions from the fields of phonetics, lexicology, morphology and syntax that are introduced correspond to the Bulgarian linguistic tradition and are representative of the contemporary state of development of the science of language. Their acquisition rate has been approbated in school practice.

In the sixth grade the students are introduced to phonetics as a science and develop their skills to apply consistently the standard norms of language use in the field of phonetics. The new program envisages enrichment of the knowledge of the vocabulary of the Bulgarian language, the formation of an acute awareness of the functioning of scientific vocabulary and terminology. The study of the complex system of Bulgarian pronouns is developed further on by focusing on their appropriate use in connected texts. Deeper knowledge is offered concerning the subsystem of indirect tenses with a strong emphasis on their metaphoric and modal uses in different texts depending on the requirements of the communicative situation. The main objective is the acquisition of the norms for sequence of tenses in a connected text. The grammatical category ‘voice of the verb’ is introduced whose study was not included in the previous program. The necessity to introduce this category springs from the requirement for scientific authenticity and wholesomeness in the learning of the verbal paradigm and the grammatical system of the Bulgarian language as a native language. Besides, the voice system of the Bulgarian language is characterized by specific peculiarities and free competitiveness of the forms that express passivity in dependence of the tense and aspect of the verb and the features of the initiator and recipient of the activity, which could hardly be learnt by the students without their systematic and aim-oriented teaching.

In the field of syntax, the program envisages activities that will help the sixth graders to enrich and diversify their expression skills on the basis of knowledge of the types of simple sentences, their constituents, the appositive parts and the various kinds of compound sentences.

The teaching of grammar in the VII grade is of particular importance, since it rounds up the theoretical course, including phonetics, morphology and syntax.

In the seventh grade the students are made aware of the different functions of simple sentences as constituents in the structure of complex ones. The students are taught how to use appropriately the different types of subordinate clauses and sentences and their attention is drawn to the peculiarities of punctuation. New knowledge is acquired on direct, indirect and reported speech. Skills are attained for the transformation of direct speech into reported speech, paying acute attention to the use of verbal tenses and modal verb categories.

The study of the morphological categories “aspect”, “mood” and “evidentiality” is motivated by the necessity to be familiar not only with the invariant meanings of the gramemes, but with their speech variants. The teaching of morphology in the VІІ grade is organized round the main aim to help the students enrich their skills for appropriate use of the different tenses and modal verb forms in different types of texts: scientific, literary, documentary and colloquial. With the introduction of the concept of language system, the cycle of learning the standard language is complete. For this reason most of the topics have revision-like or summative character.

The teaching of lexicology presupposes the acquisition of different strategies for enlarging the vocabulary, with the emphasis laid on collocations and combinatorial possibilities.

In the eighth grade the grammatical expertise of the students is finally solidified and their use of the standard norms of language use are actualized - propriety of speech, spelling, punctuation, grammatical, lexical, etc. A more systemic character is rendered to the knowledge of the standard use of the grammatical means of language by studying the major diversities of the Bulgarian language - standard language, territorial and social dialects.

The third and fourth cores unite into a single whole the socio-cultural and linguistic competences in oral (the third core) and written (the fourth core) communication.

According to the requirements of the program, the students develop their skills for oral communication by acquiring the peculiarities of dialogue and the etiquette formulas. In the fifth grade the work from the primary school level connected with retelling stories and composing stories goes on. Acquiring the characteristics of description and narration, the students produce their own descriptive and narrative texts. An elaboration of the skills for narration, description and analytical thinking continues in the sixth grade. The peculiarities of sound reasoning are comprehended; the skills for answering scientific questions are developed as well as the skills for condensing information and presenting it concisely. In the seventh grade the genres studied in the V grade are presented in a more elaborate manner. The peculiar characteristics of discussion and response are studied. New types of written texts are introduced - composition on a freely chosen topic and composition-interpretation. The students produce texts that they use in official and social communication. In the eight grade the skills for producing narrative, descriptive and argumentative texts.

Conclusion: The creation of new educational programs and the designing of new textbooks are aimed at the gradual enhancement of literacy, the enrichment of interpersonal and intercultural contacts and ultimately the construction of a Europe where students become individuals, creating a multicultural society.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Byram M., G. Zarate and G. Neuner Sociocultural competence in language teaching and learning. Studies towards a Common European Framework of reference for language learning and teaching. Council of Europe. 1997

Hymes, D. On communicative competence. In: Pride, J. B., Holmes, J. eds. Sociolinguistics. Harmondsworth, 1972

Sheils, J. Communication in the modern languages classroom. Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 1998

NOTES:

1. Krassimira Alexova is one of the authors of new syllabus for 5-8^th grades and Tatyana Angelova is one of the authors of Bulgarian language textbooks for 5-12^th grades. [обратно]

2. The reform is implemented with the financial help of the World Bank. [обратно]

3. For reference see the bibliography at the end of the paper. [обратно]

4. The idea for this approach - to distinguish between two objects of study, language and metalanguage, was suggested to me by Ass. Prof. Juliana Stoyanova in a personal conversation. [обратно]

5. The realization of the possibilities can be traced in the textbooks issued pursuant to the Programs. [обратно]

© Tatyana Angelova, Krassimira Alexova, 2002
© Publisher LiterNet, 25. 10. 2003
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First edition, electronic.