This paper investigates how successful B2 level English language learners (ELLs), high school students are in translating a group of most common false friends (FFs) from English to BCS and vice versa and examines whether they are more successful in translating absolute or partial FFs. In line with the classification by Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (2015), false friends are considered to be a class of cognates. They are further sub-classified into absolute FFs, which have the same or similar form and dissimilar meaning in two languages (e.g. eventually, meaning finally in English and eventualno, meaning possibly in BCS) and partial false friends with the same or similar form and one same and another dissimilar meaning. (e.g. argument in English, meaning reason, the same as argument in BSC and disagreement, the meaning for which a different word is used in BCS, rasprava). Due to their deceptive nature, FFs have been researched within different theoretical frameworks - theoretical, contrastive, applied linguistics, semantics, pragmatics and translation studies. By means of a survey and descriptive and inferential statistics, this paper confirms the hypothesis that there is a statistically significant difference between correct translation of FFs from English to BCS and their correct translation from BCS to English. Furthermore, the second hypothesis was also confirmed, namely that the B2 ELLs are more successful in translating partial than in translating absolute FFs. The research results suggest that in teaching FFs as items of deceptive vocabulary both explicit and implicit methods need to be applied

The paper presents a research into the use of collocations by B1, B2 and C1 level students of English at the University of Zenica conducted by analysing student's examination papers. Collocations represent an important segment of the knowledge of a foreign language and its vocabulary. They appear in many different forms and learning them might be seen as the most difficult task of L2 learning. Difficulties in using collocations appear even at advanced levels of language learning. A preliminary study into the use of collocations by B2 level students of English showed that the students used proper lexical collocations in about 60% and proper grammatical collocations in about 50% of the cases. In view of those results, a research was conducted among B1, B2 and C1 level students of English at the English Department of the University of Zenica to investigate their use of collocations. Student translations were analysed with a focus on the different types of collocations. The translations were produced as a part of their final examination in the Contemporary English courses 1 through 8 corresponding to the different CEFR levels analysed. We assumed that the results of the students in all four years of the English studies would be consistent with the results of the preliminary study, and that there would be no significant difference between the use of grammatical and lexical collocations.

This corpus-based study focuses on the nine English central modal verbs (can, could, will, would, may, might, shall, should, and must) across the two chosen genres of the COCA corpus – Spoken and Academic genres, which show the greatest number of differences in terms of genre characteristics, such as formality or intended audience. Because research on modal verbs across genres, especially one inclusive of the spoken genre, is limited, this study investigates these two genres to test the hypothesis that the general genre characteristics influence the choice of modal verbs. As a result, the distribution of modal verbs across the different genres differs too. The results suggest that genre can indeed be indicative of the frequency and use of modal verbs, which may be ascribed to two language processes colloquialization and democratization.

Corpus-based activities (CBAs) have been used in FLT in recent decades, especially in countries where educational systems are well developed. However, this is not the case in Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is why a case study was conducted in a primary school in Bosnia and Herzegovina including 48 7th grade students divided into an experimental and a control group to investigate the effect of the use of corpus-based activities on vocabulary acquisition. In both groups blended learning methods were applied due to COVID restrictions. The aim was also to determine whether the use of CBAs had any impact on the students' motivation for participating in vocabulary learning activities. The students' results achieved in the pre- and post-tests which included new vocabulary items were analyzed and compared. The students' responses in the five-point Likert scale motivation questionnaires completed prior to and after the use of CBAs were also compared and discussed. Statistical analysis of the results confirmed that there was a positive effect of the use of CBAs on vocabulary acquisition of A1 – A2 level seventh graders, as well as on their motivation for participating in such activities. Contrary to statistically significant improvement in vocabulary acquisition, there is no statistically significant increase in the motivation to learn new vocabulary items in either of the groups, for which some possible explanations are also discussed in the paper.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0473/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>