English – the bridge to the Romance languages

The purpose of this textbook is to show how useful it is to know English when it comes to understanding Romance languages. It demonstrates the similarities between English and the Romance languages so that the learner will be able to use them. The systematic nature of these bases of transfer is clarified and the regularities are made transparent. Intercomprehensive strategies are learnt through the exercises. In this way knowledge already present will be activated and used to its full potential. Hence learning to understand Romance languages will be speeded up a great deal. This book is intended for speakers of English, who despite very little or hardly any knowledge in one Romance language will be able to gain reading comprehension skills in several Romance languages by means of the EuroCom method. The present learning materials are based on the EuroCom method, aiming at conveying receptive skills in Romance languages, originally building on French as a bridge to the other languages. The contents are based on the linguistic materials developed in the “Seven Sieves” (Klein/Stegmann 2000) and on the English adaptation by McCann (2002) of the reference work. In addition, the investigations in the Master Theses by Isabel Marx (2003) on the role of English and by Bahadir Aksit (2002) on AmeriCom, constituted an important confirmation of the hypothesis of the transferability of the English language. The exercises are mainly derived from the introductory course in Romance Intercomprehension by Klein, Europa International (2004).