Standard spoken language did not get its current form until the second half of the 19th century; it had been divided into regional variants before that. Formation of the literary language brought about the need for a language representative of most Slovenes. When the language started to become codified and standardised, it also made its way into schools. This paper focuses on the role of mother-tongue teachers and the problems they face in their pedagogical process, such as lack of modern orthoepic reference works. It discusses the role of schools as institutions in which the Slovene language is taught, and it describes the criteria that help teachers improve their oral performance in pedagogical practice. The introduction of this paper contains some questions that are later on answered by teacher Vesna Gubenšek Bezgovšek, who works at the First High School in Celje as a teacher of the Slovene language.
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