Limba română ca limbă străină în noua Europă
Romanian as a Foreing Language in Present-day Europe

Summary/Abstract: Although Romania’s adherence to the EU was received with great enthusiasm, the long-hoped for benefits did not come along overnight. We were compelled to reorganize our society faster than we would have expected, to reconfigure a way of thinking, a mentality that should allow us to adapt ourselves to a new order. These overall changes have also brought along a new approach of our field, teaching Romanian as a foreign language (RFL), resulting in its reorganization, since ever more people are willing to learn the Romanian language. The implementation of the linguistic policies promoted by the EU organisms has come naturally. All the high-level meetings have approached multilingualism and the importance of linguistic diversity, on the one hand, and the means of promoting multilingualism in Europe, on the other, based on strengthening the principle that stipulates the equality of all the Union’s languages.For maintaining and further promoting “the unity in diversity” successfully, fine diplomacy and a lot of perseverance are needed, the more so provided the obvious tendency towards monolingualism.Even though it would be easier for us to learn one single language, we would certainly be much poorer if we contented ourselves with it. Moreover, nationalism and xenophobia could increase, and history has proved that the bloodiest ideological experiments of the twentieth century – Nazism and communism – used this type of discourse. Considering the aforesaid, it is but natural to wonder whether we are prepared to cope with this challenge and what is to be done in order to ensure the Romanian language the place it deserves among the European languages.In teaching RFL, one should keep in mind that Romanian is not less Latin than other languages, but “differently Latin” – its entire grammatical system is inherited from Latin. Learning a language also implies studying its grammar.Through our activities, we especially strive to teach the willing learners the Romanian language as fast as possible; our endeavour is not grammar teaching but getting our students to speak and write observing grammatical correctness. Teachers and students equally benefit from the RFL textbooks. Analysing and briefly presenting them, we realize that they are not harmonious and that each author conceived their work differently; the levels of beginners (A), intermediate (B), advanced (C) do not mean the same for all of them. Ideally, following the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), a Common National Framework of Reference ought to be established, which should function as a unitary curriculum, underlying all the handbooks, courses, auxiliary materials and the tests that certificates for a certain competence level are based on. A modern linguistic policy, rightfully promoted and adapted to the new requirements of the EU, will ensure us the place we deserve both in Europe and all over the world.

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