The role of popular media in shaping adolescents' socio-pragmatic competence in English: a Polish-Norwegian comparative study.

The project addresses the relation between the the form of media transmission and recipients' language competence and attitude formation. In particular, the role of adolescents' extended exposure to subtitled foreign broadcast in the development of socio- pragmatic competence in English will be investigated. The comparison between the practices of Polish and Norwegian television (voiceover vs. subtitles) is supposed to indicate the distinctness of language skills developed by adolescents in both countries. The empirical part the project will intend to: a) investigate the relation between AVT (audio-visual translation) and the development of socio-pragmatic competence in English; b) compare the use of media between Polish and Norwegian youth with respect to the reliance on English; c) compare conditions for learning English in Poland and Norway; d) compare attitudes among Polish and Norwegian youth towards English as a lingua franca; e) investigate the role of popular media in shaping the linguistic/cultura l identity of young people in Poland and Norway. The empirical part has been accepted as a contribution to ADOPOLNOR® project and as such will be disseminated with the project's results. The most critical R&D challenges anticipated include delimitations d ue to restricted time and financial resources, methodological limitations related to the scarcity of comparative data, difficulties in establishing rapport with the respondents and, finnaly, data collection in English, i.e. non-native language to both th e respondents and the interviewer. The findings of the project are expected to be of relevance to: a) the promotion of AVT in education; b) the incorporation of young people's perspective into the discourse on the role of English in Europe; c) education al policy making in Poland by establishing the prospective relation between language proficiency, global culture participation and well-being of Polish and Norwegian teenagers.