GERMAN AS A SECOND FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT CZECH SCHOOLS

The European concept of multilingualism 2+1 poses a great challenge to the Czech Republic. The changing policy of the language education in the recent decades shows that there is a lack of a consistent language policy. At present, the 2+1 concept is officially required only at the lower secondary education level. At the higher secondary education level only one foreign language is usually mandatory - English. Despite the importance of German as the language of our neighbours, German language education does not have an easy position within the Czech schools as German is perceived as harsh, difficult and supposedly unnecessary in today's modern world. This paper presents the results of a qualitative survey research conducted among 100 teachers of German in the Czech Republic aimed at finding out what problems these teachers encounter when teaching German as an additional foreign language. The data was gathered by means of a written response to a question and a focus group interview. The results of the research show that the attitude of the students towards learning German constitutes a major problem for the teachers and presents a great challenge for their work. (C) 2019 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.