ASPECTS OF THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE IN THE LUXEMBOURGISH SCHOOL SYSTEM

We judged that the most efficient way to gather a considerable amount of language production by many students from high schools
around the country was to use an online survey. Further advantages of the online survey were the ease with which potential candidates could participate during their respective English lesson as well as the collection and processing of the gathered data. The large amount of participating students and the varying types of questions offered the opportunity to analyse the data both quantitatively and qualitatively. Our observations suggest a considerable difference in ability between students of the two school systems (‘classique’ and
‘technique’) teaching English in Luxembourg. Furthermore, gender and nationality also proved to be influencing factors in secondary
school English language acquisition. Through common error analysis, however, we deduced that the most telling factor in assuring a successful acquisition of English seems to be the students’ proficiency level in both mother tongue and other previously acquired languages.