Teaching Foreign Languages

By Katalin Petneki

Goals and equal opportunity

The aim of foreign language training is to provide students with thoroughly applicable language knowledge for use in everyday life. This has increasingly become a prerequisite for employment as well as entrance to institutions of higher education. Consequently, Hungarian society places an extremely high value on knowledge of languages and public education is expected to provide this key skill to as many students as possible.

Both the National Core Curriculum (NAT) and the Framework Curriculum clearly define the goal of language teaching in schools: to ensure that students acquire a functional knowledge of languages, in turn contributing to their personal development. These curricula do take into account the age-specific needs of students, but they also set a slower and more reserved pace of language learning. Moreover, newer plans stipulate that pupils should reach an acceptable level of proficiency in at least one foreign language before they begin to study another.

Parents expect their children to acquire foreign language proficiency within the framework of public education, and in theory, schools are prepared to provide this opportunity. For the most part, however, this does not occur in practice since the necessary conditions are lacking (professionally trained instructors, lesson framework, level of intensity, technical aids etc.). As a result, families who feel that language knowledge is important – and can afford to do so – will pay for private lessons or language courses to ensure that their children’s foreign language education, and it is these students who will have better opportunities on the job market. Taking this into consideration, foreign language teaching at present does not contribute to creating equal opportunity, and in fact tends to favour those who can afford to pay for extra services.

This study is based on extended research planned in several stages and designed to assess the situation of various subjects taught in schools – including foreign languages – with a focus on the prevalent goals and teaching materials currently used in primary school training. The first part of the survey was successfully conducted and evaluated over the course of the year 2002. Answers to our questions concerning foreign languages were given by 238 teachers from the schools participating in the survey.

The effectiveness of language teaching in schools

Students in many schools learn one or two foreign languages successfully, but in other institutions the quality of language training remains well below the required standard. There are several reasons for this. Language teaching conducted in a small number of lessons over an extended period of time is far less effective than short-term, intensive training, and so it is primarily opportunities for concentrated language study that schools offer when they wish to attract applicants. Bilingual schools operate most efficiently in this regard since they teach a given language not for its own sake, but as a tool for learning.

There has been a long-standing professional debate about how to structure language teaching and the amount of lesson time that can and should be devoted to languages in order to produce worthwhile results. The issue is whether students are capable of motivating themselves to learn the same language continuously in the same number of lessons over a period of 9 or even 12 years. Current European trends advocate the study of several languages for different purposes and with varying degrees of intensity. Although statistics indicate that compared to other subjects it is lessons in foreign language that have increased the most dramatically over the last 10–12 years, many still believe the low rate of effectiveness can only be attributed to an insufficient number of lessons. Tests have shown, however, that students achieve similar results in both a high and a low number of lessons, which means how teachers make use of the time available is at least as important as the quantity of lessons.

In terms of public education, only secondary schools and certain vocational schools (mainly bilingual ones) can demonstrate effective language training, and only rarely are they able to build on what students have learned in primary school.

Which languages do students in the public education system learn?

Students do not learn all languages with the same results, and in addition to many other factors, this may largely depend on which languages they have the opportunity to learn in a given school. Free choice exists in theory, but the availability of language teachers as well as preferences in the family environment often play a major role in determining which language children decide to study. Two foreign languages are dominant in Hungarian public education today: English and German. According to one research study, language learning is influenced by the following factors:

• What part of the country pupils are studying in
• The size of their community
• Their mother’s (parents’) level of education
• The students’ degree of capability
• Their achievement based on test exercises

The researcher goes on to mention that with the exception of two counties in Western Hungary, English is the language of choice throughout the rest of the country. Those students who begin their training in languages other than English or German may face great difficulty in continuing their studies when they enter secondary school, where they are likely to be placed in beginner’s classes. They are “fortunate” in that the rest of their classmates do not possess enough language knowledge to be placed on a higher level either. Under circumstances like these, the freedom to choose languages is nothing more than an illusion.

According to data presented in the Report on Public Education 2000, the distribution of students per language over the last eight school years took place as follows:

  Figure 1
Primary school

  Figure 2
Secondary school

The present curricular system mainly favours English and German – at least for now – but not so with other languages that can be taught in schools: these hardly appear at the primary school level due to the lack of textbooks, and secondary schools generally teach them only as a second foreign language. There is a growing separation between the study of “foreign languages” and the so-called “universal language” – the decisive trend in Hungary points to the fact that English will eventually become the most widely used second language among those with language knowledge, while fewer and fewer people will have either the desire or the opportunity to learn other languages.

Curricula and methodology

The Framework Curriculum prescribes subject content based on an additive approach; it assumes material that has already been taught will not have to be dealt with again. This is a mistake and one of the main reasons why language learners often have to start over when they happen to get stuck at some point along the way and are left with nothing to build new knowledge on.

With regards to the teaching methodology used in practice, we may be able to get some impression from the primary school survey. The use of various methods is best reflected in the activities teachers assign and the learning arrangements students applied in the classroom. Teachers’ responses to our first question on this issue indicate that some progress has been made among language instructors towards implementing a variety of study arrangements during their lessons, although explanation by the teacher still takes precedence over alternative methods, just as in the case of other subjects. This is followed by pair-work, and group activity is also high on the list. Unfortunately, project work is given a low priority.

Also important is the type of language activity students engage in and how frequently they do so. These include the following: reading comprehension, reading texts out loud, listening comprehension, dialogues, situations, oral presentations on specific topics, debate on a given subject, producing written texts, problem-solving tasks, projects, vocabulary practice, grammar exercises, translation, language games, songs, memorisation, written tests. Our data shows that vocabulary and grammar practice are the activities used most often with students in all grades. The frequency of other activities increases somewhat as classes advance, but also decreases in certain cases. The use of songs and language games during lessons, for example, drops sharply: the higher the class level, the more seldom these activities occur. Listening comprehension remains at a low level throughout, while practice dialogues and reading comprehension show little development and are used with almost the same degree of frequency. The production of written texts, oral presentation and debating skills takes place at an even lower rate.

Examined collectively, the data above suggests that the higher the grade level at which students are studying the language, the greater the risk that language learning becomes a formal exercise to the detriment of communicative skills.

Teaching aids

It is not easy to determine whether there are too many or too few language textbooks on the domestic market. The answer to this question depends on the language students are learning, their grade level and the level at which the given language is being taught. The task is made no less difficult by the fact that exact data on the textbooks currently in use is hard to obtain. Publishers create teaching material for many languages, but our study deals only with those mentioned in the Framework Curriculum, and Latin. The following illustrates the quantity of material for each language based on the textbook database for 2001/2002 at the National Institute for Public Education (OKI):

Language	Total*	Grade 1–4	Grade 5–8	Grade 9–12
* This total also includes supplementary material (ex. dictionaries) and is therefore higher than the total for all grades.
English	448	97	126	180
French	38	–	7	22
Latin	28	–	9	13
German	230	41	75	81
Italian	16	–	3	9
Russian	23	–	5	4
Spanish	14	1	3	8
Total	797	139	228	317

At first glance, there seems to be an abundant selection of language textbooks, growing wider with each grade level. The highest quantity of material for all grades is in English, followed by German, which offers approximately half as many textbooks. The supply for other languages – especially on the basic level of training – is exceptionally poor.

English language textbooks notwithstanding, the market primarily consists of materials published by Hungarian firms. There are almost twice as many German textbooks produced in Hungary as those imported from abroad or published on the basis of foreign licence. In contrast, less than half of the textbooks and teaching aids for English language training are produced in Hungary. Language learning is an economic factor, and which language students are learning matters a great deal to publishing companies. Hungarian publishers also make adjustments to suit prevalent trends and strive to produce as much teaching material as possible from the language textbooks most represented in public education, and for the widest possible age group.

Textbooks strongly influence a teacher’s view of the given language as well as his/her methodological approach; hence the professional quality of these materials should be ensured by an approval rating system. On the other hand, language textbooks represent a special category, so the current criteria for judgment may not serve to guarantee a high standard of quality. As of yet, criteria that already exist in language pedagogy cannot be transferred to the official rating system. It would be necessary to make these “official” as well since methodological freedom in language teaching is not always a positive phenomena: many interpret it as an opportunity to preserve the traditional grammar-translation method. Such methods will not achieve the desired goals of language training. Textbooks should be qualified on the basis of how suited they are to professional expectations (linguistic, psycholinguistic and pedagogical).

Harmony between subjects

• In terms of language learning, students’ level of competency in their mother tongue is extremely important. Foreign language teaching can (should) also draw on students’ knowledge of their native language as well as its reading comprehension strategy. Despite compulsory education, the number of functional illiterates is rising, and language-teaching methods need to be reconsidered from this aspect. Hungarian students’ reading comprehension skills in their mother tongue are not very good. The issue is where their native language competency stands in comparison to the ET scale. How much can we expect from foreign language learners who can only express themselves at a low level in their own language? More research in this area is imperative.
• Incorporating other subjects would be important because it is impossible to communicate without content, and students’ knowledge in other areas can serve to create realistic communicative situations during language lessons. Topics in connection with other subjects mobilise pupils’ existing knowledge in the context of a foreign language, enabling them to expand it further with new information about countries (history, geography) and cultural history (literature, music etc.). Naturally, this does not only mean information about the target country, but about the students’ native country and its culture – after all, this is generally what people talk about in a foreign language.
• Language teachers are not yet prepared to incorporate new forms of media. Strangely enough, even foreign language curricula do not contain opportunities to make use of information technology, whereas a tremendous amount of educational software and CD-ROMs have appeared over the last few years, and the role of the Internet in language teaching is not to be ignored either. Post-graduate training in this area deals primarily with technical knowledge and hardly focuses on ways to apply information technology in the interest of language learning.

Assessment – requirements

As society has strong expectations in connection with language learning, the demand for achievement places a tremendous burden on both teachers and students. The language knowledge of young people completing their studies in the public education system is primarily judged on the basis of whether they have managed to successfully pass independent, state-approved language exams. Tests currently used within the framework of the public education system (final exams, national competitions, entrance exam exercises) are not suited to the goals of either the Framework Curriculum or the NAT system: they do not reflect a communicative approach i.e. they do not strive to create genuine or realistic language situations, they do not use authentic texts, or if they do, those are heavily altered, they neglect receptive skills, including listening comprehension etc. Furthermore, the correction and assessment guidelines for these exams are not thoroughly established, and so the results cannot even be compared.

It is also worth mentioning problems in connection with the transition from primary to secondary school. Primary schools are practically forced to meet secondary school requirements, which often include entrance exams in foreign languages with tricky, grammar-oriented test exercises. If secondary schools use methods like this to select students, primary school teachers have no choice but to comply, which means they begin to train students for this type of testing as early as the 6^th grade level instead of assigning them playful tasks designed to promote cooperation and problem-solving skills.

In the area of assessment and evaluation, serious steps must be taken to ensure that the methods in use are adequately suited to the goals of language learning in schools. And this is especially true with regards to the upcoming introduction of a new final exam system in 2005.

Teacher-training and post-graduate study

While the beginning of the 1990s saw a sudden rise in the demand for teachers specialising in Western languages, many instructors who teach so-called “less studied” languages cannot work in their own area of specialisation and are forced to switch. Only English and German still experience an occasional lack of instructors, which means that today there is much less of a need to train large numbers of language teachers than there was ten years ago. For this reason, efforts should be made to raise the quality of training as opposed to the quantity.

In the case of Western languages, teacher training at the university level for a long time focused solely on language instruction in secondary schools, with only a modest number of lessons devoted to pedagogical issues. More recently, the appearance of new schools (6-8 year high schools) and the rising expectations of parents dictate that language instruction must take (should have taken) into account the age-specific needs of much younger students – even those only 6 years of age – something that a significant number of teachers were/are not at all prepared to do.

Teachers are required to take part in post-graduate training, which is basically a good thing. It was not a good idea, however, to create an open market for training courses. At present, a vast number of different educational service companies offer an extremely heterogeneous assortment of programs. Teachers can “check off” their training obligations by completing any of these courses, but if someone attends an academic conference (as either a lecturer or a student), this does not count as post-graduate training. During the 2000-2001 academic year, there were 101 accredited training courses for language instructors to choose from, conducted by a variety of organisations: universities, public education institutions, foundations, associations, companies etc. Even so, foreign cultural institutions such as the British Council, the Goethe Institute, Österreichisches Institute, Allians Française etc. are missing from the Hungarian registry despite the fact that the majority of professional training programs are organised by these establishments.

More attention should also be paid to the needs and expectations of teachers. Our survey tells us that methodological training and the opportunity to practice languages rate high on the list of activities teachers would like to participate in. Many of the topics listed are related to professional methodology, and yet this is precisely what most training programs deal with the least. There is also a need for appropriately developed post-graduate training to suitably prepare teachers for upcoming changes in educational policy.

Expectations of the labour market

One survey aimed to reveal the expectations of employers with regards to language teaching in schools and in connection with the effectiveness of exams conducted in public education. The data indicates that many companies require language skills in occupations where secondary education is a prerequisite. The language knowledge of employees dealing with this type of work is satisfactory at approximately half of the companies we examined, but not everywhere. Firms generally check for language skills based on documentation, hence language exam certificates are still the most important form of proof, although there are now companies that also conduct verbal interviews to assess the quality of language knowledge.

If we compare language activities with the requirements of the Framework Curriculum, it turns out that the expectations of the workplace and school requirements are not always compatible.

In Summary

Concerning the most serious problems that foreign language teaching faces today, responses provided to us by primary school teachers can be grouped in three categories:

1. The necessary conditions are lacking (time, classrooms, teaching aids, native speakers, direct language exposure).
2. The work of students is unsatisfactory, and their capabilities are insufficient (indifference, lack of diligence, mixed classes).
3. The teaching material is inappropriate (poor quality, expensive, grammar and vocabulary are over-emphasised).

The general trend tends to reflect the problems at hand, namely the lack of appropriate conditions for language instruction, although the responses to our questions are not a sound basis for conclusive results. In order to clearly ascertain the causes behind learning problems, a deeper analysis should be made of the work that occurs during lessons in each foreign language, regardless of how many pupils are studying them. Furthermore, this may also shed light on the issues that should be dealt with in the area of teacher-training and post-graduate study. Teacher training takes place within limited framework of lessons where many topics cannot be addressed due to the lack of time. In spite of this, training programs today are not based on providing knowledge that is missing so as to meet the needs of teachers. Instead, they are designed on the basis of which training institution can offer what, to whom, and for how much.

Many see the past decade of foreign language teaching in Hungary as a success story, and this is certainly true if we consider the tremendous changes that have taken place in the profession. At the same time, these changes came about on a spontaneous basis with little advance preparation, and when the NAT system and the Framework Curriculum were introduced, the process came to a sudden standstill.