Recent years have witnessed many developments in the use of the communicative approach in language teaching. This approach aims at developing students' ability to communicate with native speakers of the target language. To achieve this ability, students are required to have not only linguistic competence but also communicative competence. That is why the students need not only the linguistic knowledge but also the background knowledge of the culture in which the language is spoken. Language is a part of culture. Cultural differences always cause problems for speakers of different cultures while communicating. Therefore, the " learning of a second culture is often a part of the learning of a second language " (Brown, 1980: 242 ) . Background Studies, including culture, used to be neglected or taught improperly in the curriculum of the Hanoi Foreign Languages College. In consequence, Vietnamese E.F.L students at the College have a poor background knowledge of the English speaking countries and their people's patterned ways of life. This causes difficulties for them when communicating with native speakers of English, even when they are studying at the College where culture-based textbooks and materials are commonly used. Therefore, Background Studies, including culture, must be seen as a separate and indispensable component of the curriculum of the College which aims at providing the students with the background knowledge of English speaking countries and with an awareness of their people's ways of life, their customs and habits and so on. Various techniques for the teaching of this subject are examined.

This dissertation is dedicated to the Ukraine writter Oksana Zabuzhko. At the beginning I'm describing literary-historical and biografical circumstances which led to the birth of her creation. Then I'm focusing on the charasteristic of her prosaic work and her style of writing including the very detailed analysis of her collections of stories named " Sister, sister". This dissertation is as well describing the position of female literature in the present Ukraine literacy process and Oksana Zabuzhko 's part in its development. Second part of my dissertation is focused on the analysis of the translated story called "Girls", from the collection of stories "Sister, sister". Evalution criterions are in this case the questions of equivalence - adequacy of the translation, translation of (un)translatable lexical units in Czech, the problems with translations of facts, translation of foreign languages' parts in original text and reproduction Olga Zabuzkova's style in all levels - syntactic, lexical and expressive as well. Minor mistakes in the translation to the Czech version were revealed during the research, but overall the translation is rated as a very successful one. The translator succeed in transfering of artistic values and pragmatic effect of the original work into Czech language.

This diploma thesis focuses on the Czech language and the Czech cultural background studies teaching in the 5th grade of the Czech division of the Czech and Slovak School & Community Manchester (CSM). Initially, based on the available data, this thesis provides a characterization of the Czech community in the United Kingdom. What follows is a description of the Czech and Slovak School & Community Manchester (CSM) organization, which focuses predominantly on its aims and the form that the Czech language and the Czech cultural background studies teaching of children and adults takes. Subsequently, this thesis provides an analysis of the content of the CSM's School Education Programme and, furthermore, it evaluates the possibility of realizing this programme to the fullest extent within the bounds of the school year. The following parts concentrate on the description of a fifth-grader from the point of view of developmental psychology and the specifics of the CSM students and the teaching of them. The concluding part contains teaching materials created and applied in the 5th grade of CSM by the author of this thesis. The materials take into consideration the uniqueness of the teaching of the CSM students. Concerning the teaching materials, this thesis elaborates on the purposes of their creation,...