L2 acquisition is an extremely complex process in which four skills are to be ac-quired: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. For a certain amount of time, writing was an unjustifiably neglected area of research on L2 acquisition. Ac-quiring this skill, especially its phonological component, at the beginner levels of learning the Croatian language is quite a challenging task, becoming even more of a challenge when the writing system of the target language differs from the writing system of the student’s L1. The initial writing in the target language is also important for the development of other skills, as well as language competence as a whole. In order to determine what causes the majority of difficulties to the students, an analysis of deviations in the written discourse of Farsi speakers at the beginner level of learning Croatian language was carried out. Deviation analysis was con-ducted at the phonological level, which was further divided into subcategories. The aim of this research is to identify the phonological deviations that occur in written discourse, to single out the phonological subcategory with the majority of those deviations, and to indicate the possible causes of certain deviations in order to eliminate them while teaching. The paper starts with the assumption that the reasons for phonological deviations can be sought in the phonological system of the native language. The results of the analysis show that the majority of deviations that occur regard substituting, omitting, and adding phonemes. The omission and adding of vowels can be singled out as a special subcategory in accordance with the linguistic norm of the respondents’ L1.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.