Using English as a gateway to Romance language acquisition

Abstract

The paper focuses on Romance language acquisition through English acquired as the first foreign language. A conscious
approach to relations between languages enables learners, who acquired certain knowledge, attitudes and skills while
learning one language, to learn other languages more easily. Research is based on contrastive analysis of two Romance
languages – French and Spanish – and their relations to English. Learning those two Romance languages was carried out
through the knowledge of some principles of how languages function and are related to each other. The analysis of
vocabulary and grammar focuses on similarities between the three mentioned languages, emphasising the level of intensity
in similarity on one hand, and possible problems related to spelling, pronunciation and meaning on the other hand. The
research supports the idea of language plurality in education, and the necessity to help learners construct and continuously
broaden and deepen their own plurilingual competence.

Keywords: plurilingualism, multilingualism, FREPA, contrastive analysis;