Abstract

This paper analyses similarities and differences in attitudes and beliefs towards learning the German and the Italian language. The testing tool used for evaluating the attitudes is a questionnaire composed in accordance with the questionnaires used for examining attitudes towards foreign languages. The obtained results indicate that the students of both languages highly agree with the statement that the knowledge of foreign languages leads to a better social status, more successful socialisation and benefit in one’s professional career. In addition, they highly agree with the statement that the teaching materials are miscellaneous, but would nevertheless want the materials to include more elements of the domicile culture. Furthermore, the results also indicate a high level of confidence in speaking both languages and a substantial level of awareness regarding the need to speak both languages. The analysis confirmed a significant difference between the learners of Italian and German; the learners of German perceive the language as more difficult than Italian. However, such subjective evaluation does not have an adverse effect on the attitudes towards the German language.

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