ИЗУЧЕНИЕ ГРАММАТИКИ АЛБАНСКОГО ЯЗЫКА В РЕСПУБЛИКЕ КОСОВО

Introduction

As time goes by, the opinions of people change,  and they will continue to do so uninterruptedly. These opinions have been expressed through different components - a word, its meaning, its part of speech,  its concept of time, space, number, etc.; a phrase (text later as an approach); etc. A language depends on and is born from human opinion and from the capacity to understand. The concept of normative grammar, which differentiates what is exact from what is not exact, has been preserved during the last three centuries, until the second half of the 20^th century. Latin grammarians considered the grammar of a language as given and unchangeable. This approach towards grammar is supported by the normatives, but it is opposed by the scholars who think that the use of a language changes with time. These scholars  consequently believe that grammatical systems also change and that they are continuously in the process of evolution.

The concept of the term “grammar” experienced a deep review both from the theoretical side and from its practical side during the middle of the last century. This word  no longer represents only the morphosyntactic rules of a language, but it is considered to be a comprehensive set of rules that allow the speaker to understand and reproduce coherent phrases to exhibit linguistic competence.

In 1971, the American sociolinguist, Dell Hymes, reacted against the concept of Chomsky [14, P. 3], according to which every individual is born equipped with a grammatical competence to produce sayings unheard of before. Hymes' critical view against Chomsky is related to the fact that the latter does not take into consideration concrete communication situations where the rules of language use are appliedand that these rules change in different situations. In order to point out this sociolinguistic perspective, Hymes [10, P. 273] suggested the concept of communicative competence, including true grammatical knowledge,  as well as the cognition of the rules of language use, which the speakers of each language understand.

Grammar is already distinguished for its communicative character to be used more as a means for language use. This concept refers to various fields of language, such as phonological, morphosyntactic, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, lexical, and text field. Therefore, today, the concept of grammar is quite broad. It is seemingly a relatively complete system, but at the same time, it is almost difficult to be presented and completely understood during the teaching process. Grammar must include everything that has to do with the description of language function, such as the rules that arise out of different communication situations or customs, which are obtained or absorbed by people. It must also include everything that has to do with habits or declarations having pragmatic values. Thus, it can be said that the command of grammar is equal to the absorbance or acquisition of language competence an individual obtains.

In the second half of the 20^th century, a subdiscipline of linguistics was developed, known as applied linguistics.This term started being used to refer to each field of study that is linked with language. Widdowson [15, P. 1] specifies that applied linguistics is a spectrum of research that is spread from theoretical studies of language to the practices in the classroom. Davies [8, P.  1], however, expresses  that applied linguistics includes what we know about language, how it is learned, and how it is used. With a slightly different view, McCarthy [12, P. 9] expressed that applied linguistics has to do with the relationship between learning, theory, and practice in the field of language. The main issue with applied linguistics is the application of language theories, methods, and findings about the explanation and clarification of linguistic problems that have been raised in other fields. Wilkins [16, P. 3] thinks that the value of linguistics is found in increasing the the teacher’s consciousness of  language, making him more competent anda better teacher of language.

Recent developments in this field show that the term also represents research in the use of language in education, in the strategies of learning a mother tongue (native language), as well as in lexicography, translation, and stylistics. Furthermore, it represents research in the use of language by different genres, in the social stratification of the language and its varieties, in neurological factors, in linguistic nonfunctioning, and in linguistic analyses of language disorders.

According to Grabe’s viewpoint, applied linguistics initially developed more from the problems of the real world rather than from theoretical explorations.He suggests that applied linguistics is designed to deal with the following problems: language acquisition (rules, use, context, etc.); language teaching (practice, interaction, meaning, use, context, motivation, etc.); reading-writing (issues of learning and issues of language); language contact (language and culture); language irregularities (ethnicity, class, gender, age); language planning and policy; language evaluation; language use (dialect, registers); technology and language (learning, evaluation, and use); interpretation and translation problems (technology); and pathological language problems (aphasia, dyslexia, physical incapability) [9, P. 38].

Because there are different definitions of applied linguistics, in the pre-university textbooks of the Albanian language, it can be observed that the knowledge of languageis not satisfactorily integrated. The textbooks are predominantly theoretical in nature, withinsufficient training regarding speaking and writing, language exercises, or creation of written or spoken texts. There should be a more natural intertwining of these two concepts in order for the material to be richer and more diversified. This will better allow the pupils to create their experiences and communicate freely and meaningfully for different purposes  and in different situations.

It is vitally important that the material chosen for pre-university textbooks is expressed in a manner that allows the teacher to transfer knowledge to the pupils successfully. This material should further develop the pupils’ language capacities, as well as meet the learning goals that were stated above.Plangarica [13, P. 375] sees the current situation regarding school textbooks as incomplete in two aspects.According to him, these areas of incompletion must be completed with the concepts, categories, units, and elements of knowledge that come from the interpretation of cognitive and pragmatic linguistic nature of language use and, in didactic viewpoint, from its appropriation in the process of interaction with others. He emphasizes that, in the teaching of the Albanian language, the methods of traditional grammar analysis have occupied considerable space, even to the detriment of today’s methods of text analysis and in contradiction with the new objectives that are to be reached. The attraction that the traditional attitude exercises in relation to text and text analysis has not yet been avoided. This is an attraction from which experiences of language teaching in other countries are spared. Therefore, he encourages presenting “school grammar” in a pedagogic plan, outlining it in a contemporary pedagogic principle.According to this principle, learning and  knowledge would be selected, adapted, and formed in accordance with the three prevailing forms of knowledge formation with a didactic function. These three forms include descriptivism, constructivism, and pragmatism. These three forms represent the achievements of classical and logical positivism, of constructivism and presenting mental methods of cognition, and of pragmatism, where cognition is obtained as an interaction of entities [13, P. 368). Also, Carson [4, P. 14]  states that language and speech should not be tackled only in morphosyntactic aspects, which is to be observed only as a formal object that is isolated from the other part of mental activity. Instead, he states that language and speech should be closely related to the semantic aspects and extralingual knowledge of entities. To form the linguistic/discursive competence of a pupil as completely as possible, Tamine stresses (in T. Plangarica) [13, P. 374] that attention must be paid to the teaching of grammatical knowledge, which will be disciplined and classified in today’s time in discourse grammar. The first concept relates to the study of the types of phrases and their component units.The second deals with the coherence and progression of texts, as well as the methods of their outlining and their genres.The third one, the enunciative aim of the speaker, relates to the connection with fellow speakers and the situation in which and through which the speaker expresses themself.

The goal is the appropriation of grammatical and textual notions in the function of social use of language through a direct work with notions with which the grammatical and textual notions are linked and interdependent [3, P. 52].

In these texts, grammatical knowledge, lexical or spelling knowledge,  and central axial and linear expansion should all be in harmony.Therefore, these communicative abilities and habits are not considered a goal in and of themselves, but they serve to further develop the communicative abilities of pupils and to increase the awareness of pupils for practical applications.

Methods

In order to support the hypothesis presented in this paper, we have conducted a poll with pupils in the 12th grade in Kosovo. In addition to the theoretical concepts presented in this paper, we will present quantitative results based on polls conducted to determine how  well  pupils master grammatical knowledge of the Albanian language. These results represent all 12thgrade pupils in Kosovo for the academic year 2019/2020. Therefore, for the accomplishment of this research, we were forced to choose a sample in prior. A sample of this research consists of 500 pupils of some secondary schools in several  municipalities in Kosovo. The poll consists of grammar-related questions and problems.  The questions are presented in multiple choice form, with one correct answer out of four possible options.

By conducting this poll , we intend to determine the following:

- What is the level of grammatical knowledge of12th-grade pupils in Kosovo?

- What are the factors that could have influenced the results of the poll?

- Are the results of the poll consistent with the objectives expected to be mastered by the pupils after having completed this level of education?   

Results

The poll includes tasks from the noun and verb systems of the Albanian language, as well as word formation. More concretely, this aspect was related to the formation of a word.

Question 1: The word “hekurudhë” (“railway”) is formed by means of:

15% of  pupils answered a) derivation. 47% answered b) agglutination. 36% answered c) composition. No pupils answered d) conversion. 2% abstained from answering the question.

Question 2: In the sentence: “Poezinë që do ta dëgjoni në vazhdim e ka shkruar Ismail Kadareja” (The poetry you will listen to in the following was written by Ismail Kadare), the “e” is:

23% of pupils answered a) prepositive article. 16% answered b) particle. 44% answered c) conjunction 16% answered d) a shortened form. 1% abstained from answering the question.  

Question 3: What features does an ending give?

35% of pupils answered a) the grammatical features of a word. 21% answered b) the grammatical features of a syllable. 13% answered c) the sound features of a phoneme.29% answered d) the root. 2% abstained from answering the question.   

Question 4: What word group is “libri i një nxënësi” (“the book of a pupil”)?

18% of pupils answered a) noun + adjective. 41% answered b) noun + definite noun. 36% answered c) noun + indefinite noun. 4% answered d) noun + infinitive. 1% abstained from answering the question.   

Question 5: Identify the pronouns in the sentence, “Konstandin, biri im, ti po flet kështu?” (Constandin, my son, you are speaking like that?) 

41% of pupils answered a) possessive pronoun, first person and personal pronoun, second person. 29% answered b) personal pronoun, first person and possessive pronoun, second person. 17% answered c) possessive pronoun, first person and personal pronoun, first person. 5% answered d) possessive pronoun, third person and personal pronoun, first person. 1% abstained from answering the question. **THESE FIGURES ONLY ADD UP TO 93%**PLEASE CORRECT FIGURES TO EQUAL A TOTAL OF 100%**

Question 6: In what mood is the verb in the sentence, “Mësuesi ua dëshironte të mirën nxënësve.”(“The teacher wished good luck to the pupils.”)?

65% of pupils answered a) optative mood. 32% answered b) indicative mood.2% answered c) admirative mood.No pupil answered d) imperative mood.. 1% abstained from answering the question.

Question 7: The verb has the grammatical category:

35% of pupils answered a) of tense, of person, of case, of voice, and of mood. 31% answered b) of person, of number, of voice, of mood, of time. 21% answered c) of number, of person, of definite form, of mood, of tense. 11% answered d) of voice, of person, of number, of gender, of tense. 2% abstained from answering the question.

Question 8: The sentence, “Mbasi ka ra nana me fjetë, kam marrë Dilocën n’odë teme.” (“After mother went to bed, I took Diloca to my room.”) is:

18% of pupils answered a) grammatical. 81% answered b) not grammatical. 1% abstained from answering the question.

Question 9: For the sentence: “Unë jam nxënës shembullor.” (“I am an exemplary pupil.”), which option uses the subject in the plural form while expressing the predicate with a verb in simple past tense?

9% of pupils answered a) Unë qeshë nxënës shembullor (I was an exemplary pupil). 23% answered b) Unë isha nxënës shembullor (I used to be an exemplary pupil). 15% answered c) Ne qemë nxënës shembullorë (We were exemplary pupils). 53% answered d) Ne ishim nxënës shembullorë (We used to be exemplary pupils).

Question 10: In the sentence “Më vonë Artanit ia kishin treguar të vërtetën.”(“Later, they told the truth to Artan.”), the verb is in:

33% of pupils answered a) the simple past tense. 25% answered b) present perfect tense. 22% answered c) pluperfect. 20% answered d) past perfect.

This interpretation proves to us that the grammatical knowledge of pupils in the 12^th grade in Kosovo is at a low level.

Conclusions

After a critical consideration of pre-university textbooks of the Albanian language in Kosovo, and after drawing results from the polling conducted in the field, we have come to the following conclusions:

- An organic harmony between the knowledge of the systems of language, grammar, and the act of speech has not been achieved

- Grammatical knowledge of pupils is at a low level;

- The extension of grammatical issues is not uniform in the twelve-year school cycle of the subject of the Albanian language. Some new grammatical knowledge is being introduced in the 12th grade without being included in the previous grades;

- There is a lack of detailed explanations about the distinction of two phenomena that pupils may perceive as similar;

- At the end of the teaching units, the part that includes exercises for the pupils, which is meant to help them be more active in the learning process, includes activities such as answering the questions. Thus, these grammatical textbooks do not enable the pupils to understand and apply with difficulty their grammatical knowledge, consequently resulting in the pupils having a limited use of the language;   

There are only a few units for the development of oral and written communication abilities (skills). Depending on the communication situation, the language structure should also change.