The Place of the Polish Language in the Multilingual Repertoire of Students from Polish Schools in Lithuania

Abstract

The aim of the article is to clarify the place of the Polish language in daily communication and consciousness of young people, who attend Lithuanian schools with the Polish language of instruction, in respect to other languages (Lithuanian, Russian, English) learnt and used by them. The empirical material for the research was based on collected in 5 schools questionnaires (116 students) and interviews (37 students) from May to June 2019. The school students were requested to self-assess their own level of command of various languages, to reveal the way of their acquisition, areas of their use in communication and various activities considering new communication technologies as well as to express their own attitudes towards the languages mastered by them. The obtained data and the results of analysis of pupils’ responses disclose a highly complex picture of co-existence of various languages in the multilingual competence of young pe ople with a multi-dimensional role of the Polish language in it.