Difficulties in learning paremiological competence in a foreign language (FL)

Abstract

The article contains a study on the existing difficulties for the teacher and the learner during the process of learning the paremiological competence in a foreign language due to the progressive disuse of the paremias in the native language wich makes the acqui-sition in a foreign language difficult. The aim of this work is to determine how the lack of paremiological competence together with the linguistic, socio-cultural and didactic complexity of paremias hinder their teaching/learning in a foreign language and compli-cate the transfer between languages. All this causes a fracture in the chain of language learning and acquisition processes between native language and foreign language. Bear-ing in mind that languages are independent and that the common underlying proficiency (CUP) present in all individuals facilitates the transfer of knowledge and concepts be-tween them, we address two questions: a) to what extent a solid basis of paremiological competence in native language would contribute to the significant understanding of paremias in foreign language class; b) how this phenomenon represents a pedagogical challenge, since learning strategies and didactic proposals must be designed to revitalize the paremiological competence in native language itself so as to facilitate its acquisition in foreign language.