A NEW APPROACH IN TEACHING ROMANIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE – COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING

ABSTRACT

Teaching Romanian as a foreign language has a long tradition at the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest and the course is devised for the Preparatory year students who want to study Romanian intensively for 2 semesters. After they graduate the Preparatory year and they obtain a certificate of attendance, they follow differents faculties or universities. What brings them together is the Romanian language, general Romanian on the first semester and on the second semester they follow the Romanian for Specific Purposes program. Even though Romanian as a foreign language is very much in demand lately, teachers are facing many challenges and one of the most serious one is too much focus on the traditional methods rather than the approach of a more communicative perspective on teaching Romanian to foreign students. In this regard, I have considered several aspects that must be taken into account along the whole process, i.e. the cultural background, the education/methods students have been used with previously. Since the majority of students comes from Arab countries where students have been used to a more traditional approach in terms of learning languages (mainly involving memorization), I see a great challenge in changing the perspective and focusing more on dialogues, roleplays and engaging learners in communication.

Keywords: foreign, language, challengers, traditional, communicative