METHODOLOGIES

Week 1 - About the course, about the exam

Exam
- The exam papers will be made available for you on the Moodle platform of the methodology lecture course. When the exam
has started, you have exactly 90 minutes to answer 11 exam items. The exam questions will cover the material of the lectures,
the handouts and the readings. Recordings of all lectures are available in TEAMS and the handouts and readings have all been
uploaded in Moodle.
- In the exam, you will be asked to give a short explanation (5-8 lines) of key terms or issues gleaned from the lectures,
handouts and readings. This might mean explaining an ELT concept, listing characteristic features of a term or a combination
of both. In each case the task rubric will specify what is required.

Week 2 - Dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants: A (very) short history of ELT (by
Christopher Ryan)

People have been teaching English as a foreign language for hundreds of years, and it’s worth wondering what we can learn from our
predecessors in the profession. You may already have asked yourself some of the following questions: ”Has ELT always been like this?”
- How revolutionary is all this Communicative Language Teaching stuff?” - Have the aims of ELT changed at all?” - Why shouldn’t I
teach the way I was taught?” This lecture offers an overview of the main currents in ELT over the past five and a half centuries
which may suggest a few answers

Basic question: are we teaching a TOOL, a SYSTEM, or a HABIT?

1. The Beginnings of EFL ... or was it ESP/Business English?

- William Caxton's Right good lernyng for to lerne shortly frenssh and englysshe (c.1485); Wynken de Worde's A lytell
treatyse for to lerne Englysshe and Frensshe (c.1500) - basically bilingual phrase-books for merchants; model situational
dialogues. English as tool. → used for trading → started off very practical
- → massacre of Protestant by Catholics in France → refugees went to England (educated professional people, arrived with
families)
- Huguenot refugees reach England after 1572: Jacques Bellot's The English Schoolmaster (1580) & Familiar Dialogues (1586):
spelling & pronunciation, basic vocab & paradigms, dialogues for everyday life. English considered "easy" because un-inflected
(!). → very practical, real-life language, no grammar, basic vocab,
- Early attempts to "fix" the language, often by reference to Latin: Ben Jonson's English Grammar (1640), John Wallis's
Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae (1653), Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Robert Lowth's Short
Introduction to English Grammar (1762) → academic embarrassed by English, wanted to make it more like Latin, describing lg
in a scientific way
The Grammar Translation Method
- Valentin Meidinger & Johann Fick's Praktische englische Sprachlehre für Deutsche beiderlei Geschlechts (1793). Textbooks
for secondary schools: intended to make learning easy. A carefully planned, rational approach to teaching, based on
intelligence and understanding, treating language primarily as a system → if you can understand, you can learn, you can speak
it → Grammar-Translation Method
- Graded structural syllabus; grammar points taught in sequence
- Deductive approach to teaching (from rules to texts)
- Model sentences for examples
- Practice through translation → rational approach
- Heinrich Ollendorff's New Method of Learning to Read, Write and Speak a Language in Six Months (1835; English Version
1848) → European Revolutions
The Reform Movement
- Wilhelm Vietor's Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren! (published anonymously in 1882) → lot of followers. Self-styled (and
self-conscious) "movement" which spread through Europe (I.P.A. etc.), culminating in Henry Sweet's The Practical Study of
Languages (1899) and Otto Jesperson's How to Teach a Foreign Language (1904). Ideas included:
- Primacy of Oral Approach → learn by speaking
- Phonetic script for beginners → need to recognise how it sounds
- Connected text (not separate sentences) for modelling → modern idea
- Inductive approach to teaching (from texts to rules) → encourage Ss to understand grammar
- Monolingual L2 classrooms, except for translation and explanation of new vocabulary & grammar
The "Direct Method" → in America, led by business, English is sg you can sell
- Early versions of the L1=L2 Hypothesis; Montaigne etc. - Lambert Sauveur and the "Natural Method" in Boston, An
Introduction to the Teaching of Living Languages without Grammar or Dictionary (1874). Maximilian Berlitz & Nicholas Joly.
1878 → The Berlitz formula: international franchises, young, untrained (= cheap) native-speaker teachers using simple, highly
standardised method, "modular" courses that could be started in one school and continued in another
- Absolute monolingualism; repetition → habit
- Practical, topic based syllabus (parts of body, furniture, etc.)
- Q&A Conversational Technique - "real questions"
- Grammar left out or relegated to self study
"Structural Language Teaching 1" - Britain
- Harold Palmer's (ex-Berlitz teacher) "Ideal Standard Programme" in The Scientific Study of Languages (1917) : combined
Reform Movement ideals with Direct Method experience + Behaviourist attitudes to psychology: language as a habit. 3 main
stages
- Orientation: phonetics and "subconscious comprehension." → S taught phonetics, for weeks only listening
- Drilling & Direct Method Speechwork for accuracy
- Skills Development: Reading, Composition, Literature
"Structural Language Teaching 2" - America
- Leonard Bloomfield and the "Army Specialized Training Program" ("ASTP") started running in 1943: 15,000 participants, 27
languages... → based on 2 principles: Linguistic Relativism + Behaviourism
- Progressive Structural Syllabus → easy to more difficult
- Built-in Contrastive Analysis
- "Senior Instructor" prepares materials & lessons → uses a collaborator →
- Native-speaker "Drill-Master" provides model
- → worked quite well in American army, but was taken over by the business market, private language schools
- Leading to "audio-lingual" etc. methods (R. Lado & C. Fries), tape recorders, language labs, Streamline (last of the great
structural/behavioural coursebook series) etc. → instead of Drill-Master, used records, tapes, cassette
- Mainly in private school, most of the people learned with GTM
- Problems: people questioned behavioural lg teaching
Towards a "Communicative Approach" (See next lecture!)
- Most EFL after c. 1750 concentrated on L2 systems, trying to teach accurate and fluent grammar and pronunciation via
either conscious knowledge and/or habit-formation/ drilling. "Communicative Language Teaching" brings innovations in two
major areas: → Skipper, Chomsky criticised it
- Methodology:
- see other lectures for radical influence of new (esp. digital) technology, humanistic philosophy and SLA theories
(cognitivism, affective factors etc.).
- Radical influence of new (post-behaviourist) theories of Second Language Acquisition (cognitivism, affective factors)
- Note also the spread of humanistic general philosophies of education → humanistic values in education (John Dewey …
Carl Rogers).
- Result: shift of focus from "teaching" to "facilitating learning" → teachers help people to learn
- methodological emphasis on task-based learning: "acquisition through motivated practice"; i.e. learning L2 by using it
to achieve real/necessary/desirable aims. → we learn by doing things, T should give interesting tasks to do, to
achieve desirable aims
- Syllabus:
- spread of "ESP" and "EST" (especially in University Service Depts. and private business-oriented language schools)
since 1945 leads to "Needs Analysis" and raises questions such as "What will this leaner need to talk about?" (answer
= "NOTIONS") and "What will s/he need to do with the language?" (answer = "FUNCTIONS").
 - Attempts to create "international syllabus" with contents translatable into any language leads to e.g. Council of
Europe's "Threshold Level" Categories, which have to be functional/notional ... language treated primarily as a tool. →
does not work with grammar → level of lg acc to what you can do (describe, ask sb to describe, buy, order =
functions)
So...Back to Caxton?
- and the old question remains: do our students need to learn language as a SYSTEM, a HABIT or a TOOL? All three, of
course? - but which is most important?
- → ls as a system GTM, as a habit (Behaviourist), as a tool
Required Reading
- Richards, J. & Rogers, T. (2001) “A Brief History of Language Teaching”: Ch. 1 of Approaches and Methods in Language
Teaching. Cambridge, CUP pp.3-17
- Also recommended:
- Howatt, A. (1984) A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford, Oxford University Press,
- Kelly, L. (1969) 25 Centuries of Language Teaching. Rowley, Mass: Newbury House

Reading - A Brief History of Language Teaching Ch 1: Approaches and methods in language teaching
A brief history of language teaching:
- Proficiency learners need to move toward oral proficiency rather than reading comprehension
- 60% of today's population is multilingual → it is the norm
- English is the world’s most widely studies foreign language → 5 hundred year ago it was Latin
- In the 16th century, French, Italian and English gained importance → status of Latin diminished to school subject
- 17-19th century: analysis of grammar was the model for foreign language study
- 16-17-18th England: grammar schools → learning rules, translation, writing sample sentences + brutal punishment
- Alternative approaches to education: Roger Ascham and Montaigne in 16th c, John Locke in 17th c
- 18th c: modern language enter the curriculum in Europe, taught using the same basic procedure as Latin: abstract grammar
rules, lists of vocabulary, translation, <-> speaking is not the goal
- 19th c: oral work reduced to minimum, rules of morphology and syntax to be memorised → 2 parts of textbooks: 1. Giving
rules, 2. Translation → this approach became known as the Grammar-Translation Method
Grammar-Translation Method
- Known in the US as the Prussian Method
- Principles
- Learn language in order to read literature
- Major focus is reading and writing (little or no attention to speaking and listening)
- Vocabulary selection based on reading texts, dictionary study and memorisation
- Sentence is the basic unit of teaching
- Accuracy is emphasised
- Grammar is taught deductively
- Ss’ native language is the medium of instruction
- Dominated foreign language teaching from 1840s to 1940s
- It is a method for which there is no theory
- No rationale justification
- Mid- and late 19th c: opposition to GTM → Reform movement
Language teaching innovations in the 19th c
- Questioning and rejection of GTM → increase oral proficiency
- Germany, England and France - individual language teaching specialists: C. Marcel, T. Prendergast, F. Gouin did nor achieve
lasting impact
- C. Marcel (French): child language learning as model for language teaching, importance of meaning in learning
- T. Prendergast (English): first to observe the children use contextual and situational cues to interpret, routines in speaking,
proposed the first “structural syllabus”
- F. Gouin (French): mid-19th c reformer, observation of children's use of language, used situations and themes to organise and
present oral language, established schools
- His practises later became part of Situational Language Teaching and Total Physical Response
- Failed to receive widespread attention and support
The Reform Movement
- 1880s: Henry Sweet and Wilhelm Vietor (German), Paul Passy (French) reformist ideas with greater acceptance
- Phonetics: new insight into speech, speech is the primary form of language
 - International Phonetic Association founded in 1886, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - accurately transcribe → improve
teaching
- Study spoken language
- Phonetic training
- Use of conversation texts
- Inductive approach to grammar
- Establish associations
- Henry Sweet: methodological principles should be based on a scientific analysis: The Practical Study of Languages (1899)
- Careful selection
- Imposing limits
- Arranging four skills
- Grading materials
- Wilhelm Vietor (Germany): phonetics would enable teachers to pronounce the language accurately, strongly criticised GTM
- Reformers believed that:
- The spoken language is primary
- Phonetics should be applied to teaching
- Hear the language first
- Words should be presented in sentences, practised in meaningful contexts
- Grammar taught inductively
- Translation should be avoided
- Beginnings of the discipline of applied linguistics
- Let to the development of Direct Method
The Direct Method
- Gouin: observation of child language learning - attention to naturalistic principles of lg learning
- Montaigne (16th)
- Sauveur (19th) used intensive oral interaction in the target lg → became the Natural Method
- Sauveur: foreign language could be taught without translation
- F. Franke (Germany) a language could best be taught by using it actively in the classroom
- Must encourage direct and spontaneous use of foreign language +induce rules of grammar
- Natural language learning principles provided foundations for Direct Method (berlitz Method)
- Instruction in target language
- Everyday vocabulary and sentences
- Oral communication
- Grammar taught inductively
- New points introduced orally
- Concrete vocabulary taught through demonstration
- Both speech and listening comprehension taught
- Correct pronunciation and grammar emphasised
- Direct Method was successfully in private language school but difficult to implement in public secondary education
- Drawbacks: required teachers who were native speakers, largely dependent on the teacher’s skill
- Harvard prof. Roger Brown: problems with strict Direct methods techniques → translation is sometimes more efficient to use
- 1920s: use of DM declined
- No single method could guarantee successful results
- Gradual introduction of words and grammatical structures in simple reading texts
- Emphasis on reading in Us until WWII
- Britain: 1920s-30s: the Reform Movement developed into the British approach to teaching English as a foreing language
- Subsequent developments: Audiolingualism in the US, Oral Approach or Situational Language Teaching in Britain

Week 3 - Classroom Cultures: From Coral Gardens to Learning Networks (by Frank
Prescott)
Interest in the language classroom as a culture in its own right can be traced back to Breen’s 1995 article in which he compares the
richness and complexity of classroom life to a coral garden. The interest in and study of the life of the classroom has been further
explored by researchers such as Prabhu, Allwright and more recently Rose Senior. This lecture will give an overview of the research
on the complexity of classroom culture and its implications for authentic communication and look at the status of the language
classroom in the 21st century following the advent of the digital revolution. The emphasis will be on the opportunities offered by the
life of the classroom for meaningful interaction and creating engaging activities for students
- Looking at the effect of the classroom on learning but from a new perspective: the complex social life within it

Breen (1985)
- “I wish to explore the belief that the classroom will have certain effects upon language learning.”
- Two questions – researcher’s and teacher’s
- 1) What are the specific contributions of the classroom to the process of language development?
- 2) In what ways might the teacher exploit the social reality of the classroom as a resource for the teaching of
language?
3 metaphors for the language classroom
- 1. The classroom as Experimental Laboratory – trying to isolate variables but ignoring complexity
- Used in SLA research. Linguistic input → learning outcome + language learning strategies
- this view ignores the intervening variable of learner cognition → ignore what goes on in Ss’ head
- it also ignores the situatedness of learning for the learner
- 2. The classroom as Discourse – superficial and symbolic
- seeks to describe what actually happens in classrooms through the discourse of classroom communication
- teachers and learners are active participants
- the classroom is seen as a text which can be read
- But: → it is problematic because
- how well can the surface text show underlying reality which has generated it? Discourse cannot reveal the internal
dimensions of communication. → cannot understand the intention behind the text
- reduces social events to observable features of talk between teacher and learner. It misses out the participants’
interpretations of the discourse
- → makes learners passive entities
- “Put simply, the discourse of the classroom does not itself reveal what the teacher and the learners experience from
the discourse.” Breen, p.140
- 3. The classroom as Coral Garden – complex social and psychological environment
- We should explore the language classroom as an anthropologist discovering an unknown culture
- “Just as gardens of coral were granted magical realities by the Trobriand islanders, a language class – outwardly a
gathering of people with an assumed common purpose – is an area of subjective and intersubjective realities which
are worked out, changed, and maintained. And these realities are not trivial background to the tasks of teaching and
learning a language.” (Breen, p.142) → highly complex environment involving diff points of view → has to be taken in
account
- The first two metaphors are reductive and “neglect the social reality of language learning as it is experienced and created by
teachers and learners” (p.141) and limit learners to passive respondents
The 8 essential features of the culture of the language classroom
- 1. Interactive – all its participants are involved in verbal and non-verbal interactions with a high value placed on consensus
whilst a negotiated search for meaning will be the norm. Interaction about the language as well as well as interaction through
the language.
- 2. Differentiated – in terms of views of language, learning purposes, preferences for how learning should be done. → not one
view but many different
 - 3. Collective – the culture of the classroom represents a tension between the individual and the group. Compromise is
necessary from individuals and the group in order to make progress. → made up of individuals but forms a group →
compromise is necessary
- 4. Highly normative – school classrooms are institutions aimed at socialisation of learners. They are also places where
students are evaluated as learners → brings threat of negative evaluation. → lg anxiety
- 5. Asymmetrical – teacher and learners have different knowledge, duties and rights. Harmony is established by negotiation
of rights and duties. There is also asymmetry between different groups within the class.
- 6. Inherently conservative – change is resisted as potentially upsetting the established equilibrium. Each new group reinvents
“the rules of the game” for itself and the teacher has to handle innovation cautiously.
- 7. Jointly constructed – both the new language and the lesson are jointly constructed. Lessons evolve through negotiation
and “are rarely straightforward journeys” (p.148). Any learning outcomes are socially mediated. → product of social reality of
the classroom
- 8. Immediately significant – “how things are done and why things are done have particular psychological significance for the
individual and for the group.” (p.149) → outsider might not be apparent
Breen’s conclusions
- For the researcher: → if they want to understand what is happening in the classroom - need a longitudinal observation
- “Cautious triangulation has to be married with longitudinal patience ... In essence, we have to critically re-examine our
own assumptions and familiar ways of collecting information.” p.151
- For the teacher:
- 1. “A language class may be a place where the underlying culture of that class can be mobilised and engaged more
overtly.” p.152
- 2. The culture of the classroom can help the teacher facilitate learning by revealing the process as it happens and as
it is experienced => action research
Prabhu (1992)
- Sees the lesson as four different types of event, four dimensions, thus making sense of a complex phenomenon based on
experience
- 1. A curricular unit –
- a stage in the implementation of a course, one of a sequence of teaching units. Each lesson is meant “to represent the
completion of a step in the learner’s psycholinguistic developement” (p.226). → what happens in the lesson
corresponds to what happens in learners mind?
- But this is an assumption made for the sake of convenience and does not reflect the learner’s actual developmental
progress.
- 2. Implementation of a method –
- A method has a conceptual aspect – a theory of how learning happens – and an operational aspect – the specification
of what should be done in the classroom.
- The focus here is on teaching procedures in relation to a corresponding theory of learning.
- An assumption is made that the theory is valid. → this is how effective learning takes place
- 3. A social event –
- A different perspective from the first two but a reality shared by both teacher and learner. → not pedagogical
perspective
- “a routinised social event, with roles and role relationships established by tradition and with a ritualistic aspect to
the actions performed.” (p.228)
- “a set of shared notions about the different phases of a lesson, legitimate and deviant behaviour, the extent of
teacher's authority and learner's right, and duties and obligations on both sides.” (ibid)
- With an essential function – a sense of security
- 4. An arena of human interaction –
- Beyond roles and routines, a lesson involves a collection of individuals
- Handling a lesson is a matter of protecting or enhancing one’s self-image for both the teacher and the learner
- The fiercest “play of personalities” (p.229) are between the learners
- Lessons are about the “elemental, inevitable interactions which occur simply because human beings are involved”
(p.230)
- All these dimensions are in conflict – they can help us understand how problems arise
- Pedagogic dimensions and social and personal dimensions of lessons
- Allows us to understand problems that arise in the classroom as conflicts between different dimensions (e.g.,
problems with group work)
 - Offers a way of ‟perceiving and understanding [conflicts] as the outcome of an interplay of different forces at work
in the classroom.” (p.231)
Prabhu’s conclusion...
- Pedagogic aspects are emphasised at the expense of non-pedagogic aspects
- New procedures result in disturbed balance followed by a new balance, a return to routine, a process of assimilation
- Not enough to institute a specific method from outside; the teacher has to be the specialist
- Teachers need to operate “with their own notions or theories of how learning comes about and how the teaching that
is being done is bringing it about.” (p.235)
- Rational theory construction - teaching as intellectual exploration is exciting and fulfilling
- Conflict resolution – through accommodation and protection of self-interest. Routinisation and sticking to the curriculum also
give security
- The lesson as an expression of growth – teachers need to operate with their own set of beliefs and become practicing
theorists, the researchers of their own classrooms
Senior-class-centred teaching
- Senior (2009) – research on how experienced teachers form bonded groups. Senior suggests that teachers whose behaviour is
both pedagogically and socially oriented take a class-centred approach.
- Exploring the process underlying classroom decisions making of experienced language teachers
- Examining social processes in classes of adult language learners
- Pedagogical and socially-oriented behaviours of teachers are closely intertwined
- Class-centred approach to teaching
- Based on her own research and findings of general research into group dynamics of groups of adult learners from
different cultural and linguistic backgrounds
- Class-centred teachers have a higher proportion of classes that function in a cohesive manner
- she describes 10 principles of class group development:
- 1. Creating the climate
- 2. Making connections
- 3. Establishing expectations → in terms of how people work together, supportive groups
- 4. Convincing the customers → by their own behaviour
- 5. Defining directions → everybody know the purpose
- 6. Harnessing the headstrong
- 7. Recognising roles → demonstrate that everybody is valued
- 8. Sustaining solidarity
- 9. Maintaining momentum → revive interest and enjoyment
- 10. Formalising farewells → clear ending, memorable experience
- More recently, Senior (2010) has looked at how cohesive groups can be formed online as well using the concept of
connectivity. How we create cohesive online groups is an urgent question that we are faced with at this particular moment
(the pandemic).
Set reading
- 1. Breen, M.P. (1985). The social context for language learning – a neglected situation? Studies in Second Language Acquisition,
7(2), pp. 135-158.
- 2. Senior, R.M. (2009). Class-centred teaching. ENGLISH TEACHING professional, 65, pp. 8-10.
References
- Prabhu, N.S. (1992). The dynamics of the language lesson. TESOL Quarterly, 26(2), pp. 225-241.
- Senior, R.M. (2010). Connectivity: a framework for understanding effective language teaching in face-to-face and online
learning communities. RELC Journal, 41(2), pp. 1-11.

Reading 1 - The social context for language learning

A

Reading 2 - Class-centred teaching

A

Week 4 - Have you got the energy? Teacher energies and learning groups (by Uwe Pohl)
As communicative language teachers, we value classroom experiences that are energising and engaging for our students. Yet we often
find ourselves grappling with lessons or parts of a class where there is a distinct lack of dynamic group interaction. This lecture will
take a closer look at the group encounter as a kind of variable energy field, in which the personal energy of the teacher is crucial and
where the different energy flows need to be monitored and managed

THE LESSON AS SOCIAL AND PEDAGOGIC EVENT

Ideal vs. real lessons
- Idealised visions of language teaching are often based on the assumption that teaching and learning can be planned fairly
neatly in advance. In reality, however, they are sometimes a very untidy affair. This is because any class is not just a
pedagogic but also a social encounter. It is an event in which “people come physically together and therefore become subject
to the immediate influence of each other’s behavior” (Allwright 1989; 4 cf. Tudor 2001:43-46

THE ENERGETIC CLASSROOM

The dynamic nature of classroom learning
- The language classroom is also a place where the participants – the students and the teacher – meet and interact on the basis
of potentially different perspectives on the nature and goal of classroom activity. All of this gives rise to a dynamic tension
which builds up and gets released in a way that is often described as the rhythm of learning in a group
What is group energy?
- It is difficult to describe the essence of the energy that makes itself felt in any learning group. Bentley (1994) offers a
definition that captures the dynamic nature of the phenomenon and highlights some essential features:
- “[Group energy] is the moment-to-moment fluctuating balance of mental, emotional and physical intensity and vitality that
can be felt like a positive or negative electrical charge in the air as if the group is switched on or off.” (Bentley, 1994, p.23)
- → mental: negative charge: students are disoriented
- Emotions: positive charge: you can feel it in the air, the room feels warm, enthusiasm
- Physical: positive charge: students are close to each other, use gestures | negative charge: dead fish, glassy eyes
Suggestions
- The quality of group energy is crucial for successful classroom interaction
- The flow of energy needs to be managed
- There are different but equally valid forms of personal energy present in a class
- We can influence the energy in our classrooms consciously and positively

GROUP ENERGY AND THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER

The need to harmonise group energy
- A bunch of people in a room does not make a group. A group is a “resource pool that is greater in any given area than the
resources possessed by any single member”. (Dörnyei & Malderez, 1997: 66). To operate as a group, the students’ diverse,
sometimes conflicting perceptions and goals need to be harmonised or aligned.
- “When a group of people function as a whole […] a commonality of direction emerges and individuals’ energies harmonise [as]
their shared vision becomes an extension of their personal vision” (Senge, 1990, pp.234-235)
- Non-aligned group vs Aligned group

-
- Non-aligned group: pointing to different directions (beginning of class), wasted energy
- Aligned group: harmonised energies, that is how birds fly
Matching challenge and ability: the concept of flow → role teachers have in generative energy
- Correlates the challenge (e.g. cognitive, physical) an individual faces to the level of knowledge and skills needed to meet it.
Individuals experience the (mis)match along a spectrum of emotions:
- “… when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult
and worthwhile.”. Csikszentmihály (1990)
- → expand energy to meet an actual challenge
- Correlation between challenge and skill / ability
- In classroom situation: this is why students feel anxious or stressed → is the task that we set is too high and the
ability is low
- Find the golden way setting up a class activity
- Flow: focused, happy
- Control: happy, confident
- Relaxation: confident, contented
- Boredom: depressed, contented → low challenge
- Apathy: sad, depressed
- Worry: sad, stressed
- Anxiety: stressed, alert
- Arousal: alert, focused

Presence and rapport (How does a particular teacher presence influence the quality of a group?)
- The teacher is one of the key factors that influence the level and flow of energy in a group. Presence describes “the unique
climate or psychological atmosphere that the teacher creates (Underhill 1997). Rapport is what gets created when different
presences meet. It is the bridge between the teacher and other individuals in the group and the channel through which they
communicate verbally and non-verbally
- Intensity
- R: I think I’m difficult to ignore (laughs). SO I bring some energy into the classroom → I’m hard to ignore
- K: I always start with a very cheerful Good morning! In Hungarian we say, megadom az alaphangot → striking up a
basic tone
- M: In the corridor I’m trying to concentrate on that bunch of people. They are sitting there, they are expecting
something… So I walk into the classroom in a rather energetic way and I’m trying to show I’m coming fou YOU, We
are going to do something together. → I’m coming for you
- Humour → not teachers presence, but laugh together
 - E: Sometimes, on a Friday morning, I go into a class and everybody’s sitting there like Zombies and nobody talk and
you say: Oh you really managed to wake me up this morning. And they start laughing → making them laugh
- A: There is a lot of laughter in my classes and that keeps people on their toes. A class where there is smiling and
laughing like repartee witty repartee between people → friendly banter
- M: it creates something we agree on, we are on the same wave-length. If we are laughing together it means that we
can do things together in a good mood and are moving on from there → laughing together
- I: I act as a silly student
- Empathy → teachers anticipate what Ss would like, emotional connection, relating to students’s well-being, needs
- R: I do a bit of, call it auntie work and I say things like: are you drinking enough water? Are you drinking you litre a
day? Or Are you getting a decent meal? Just a few comments to demonstrate that I care. → auntie work
- L: At the beginning of the class I try to link back to the previous lesson without putting them on the spot. But not
like: What did you read for today? Or What was your homework? Instead, I help them recall some of the things.. →
no putting on the spot
- Sz: I have a 15-year old daughter, so I know about the things these kids do or we talk about stuff on YouTube. And
sometimes I just mention those things in class → sharing something personal
- Challenge → need to be challenged, not quite knowing what is next, keep them alert, awake
- A: In my classes they never quite know what is going to happen, so for me, spontaneity and inpredictability are very
important things which generate energy → unpredictable lesson
- K: I think intellectual challenge is the most important kind. Students will want to prove themselves, to show that they
are up to it. → challenging tasks
- J: there are students that I call the dead fish, who are either too shy, disappointed or cynical to contribute. Even
these students I usually manage to tickle to life. They simply have to perform in front of the group. There is no
exception.. → tickling the dead fish
Teachers’ preferred access points to a group energy field
- To build and maintain a group energy field (Heron,1993, p.46) teachers may use personally preferred and interrelated access
points → combined energy
- “Energy seems to be a raw social force which occurs naturally when adolescents meet. It is created through interaction” → it
happens naturally with interaction, interaction generates energy

-
Quiz
- Which of the following words best describes group energy?
- Balanced
- Managed
- Fluctuating
- Charged
- Which of the following words does NOT related to aligned groups?
- Wasted
- harmonised
- one-directional
- Focused
- Which influences most the way students experience their classroom groups?
- Group, teacher, methodology, other
- The classroom as an energy field
-
Strategies for managing group energy
- A teacher can consciously influence & work with the energy in a group by
- planning lessons with an eye to the movement of energy
- tuning in and staying tuned to the group’s energy level
- varying forms of student-student interaction and communication (e.g. different work modes)
- making space for students’ ideas
- tapping into different student competences
- How can the teacher influence group energy in ways that support learning?
 - Stickers, move around, set task that draw students’ energy, project task, get physical energy back, visuals, bigger
projects (different kinds of abilities get together: the drawer, the idea master..)
- Some interactive tasks: think-pair-share, buzz pairs, mingle, gallery walk, group work with roles … see reading 2
- Strategies for managing group energy
- Plan lessons with an eye to the movement of energy (how you think the energy will move there)
- Tune in and stay tuned to the group’s energy level (talk about problems before starting a class)p, or do Sg physical)
- Shared focus of attention
- Interest to communicate
- Choose activities that help to align the classroom group ( get directionality gaining)
- Create opportunities for students to interact/communicate (not just pair group, but monitor who is taking)
- Create space for student ideas and different competences and work modes (Sg that only students can provide)

Compulsory reading
- Pohl, U. & Szesztay, M. (2010) Understanding group energy in university language classes, Working Papers in Applied
Linguistics (WoPaL), 4, 23-38. 2010.
- Pohl, U. & Szesztay, M. (2020) Let’s map it out! classes. English Language Teaching Professional. Issue 129. 39-42
References
- Allwright, D. (1989) Interaction in the language classroom: social problems and pedagogic possibilities. Language teaching in
today’s world. Vol.3. Paris: achete.
- Bentley, T. (1994). Facilitation. Providing opportunities for learning. Csikszentmihály, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of
Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.
- Dörnyei Z., & Malderez, A. (1997). Group dynamics and foreign language teaching. System, 25/1. 65–81. McGraw-Hill, London.
- Heron, J. (1993). Group facilitation. Theories and models for practice. London: Kogan Page.Cambridge University Press.
- Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline. The art and practice of the learning organisation. New York: Doubleday.
- Tudor, I. (2001) The dynamics of the language classroom. Cambridge: CUP.
- Underhill, A. (1997). The psychological atmosphere we create in our classrooms. The Language Teacher. 21(9). JALT Tokyo.
Retrieved, September 30, 2010 http://www.jalt-publications.org/tlt/files/97/sep/underhill.html
lessons
- Idealised

Reading
A

Week 5 - Multicultural education (by Andrea Thürmer)

Multiculturalism exists in many forms depending on the nation, region, and even local communities. Multicultural education reflects
those differences within communities and within classrooms. Despite this, the practice of Multicultural Educations is based on very
specific fundamental principles of teaching and learning. This lecture will focus on such fundamental principles, clarify a number of
related concepts and pedagogic strategies as well as address the varying degrees by which all of these can be introduced into the
classroom setting.

Multiculturalism
- Multiculturalism is now a demographic reality in many countries. This is why cultural identifiers, such as ethnicity, social
status, religion, gender and home language have become increasingly important for how people in our societies perceive and
relate to each other. One of the dangers in this process is that of essentialising: people in one culture are seen as essentially
different from people in another, i.e. […] “lumped together as though all are the same under a grossly simplistic, exaggerated
and homogenous, imagined, single culture” (Holliday 2011: 4-5). In this view people typically
- belong to a physical place with evenly spread traits and membership
- are associated with a country and a language
- are seen as mutually exclusive with other national cultures
- → attitudes about multiculturalism
- Angela Mekel: (politics) This multicultural approach, saying that we simply live side by side and live happily with each
other has failed. Utterly failed.
- Multiculturalism is an evolving definition
Multiculturalism as a philosophy
- Multiculturalism is often associated with identity politics, cultural plurality, and liberal theory - that all cultures are equal and
no one culture is better or superior to another culture
- Expression of culture is considered a human right and cultural plurality is healthy in society
- Multiculturalism is a branch of philosophy that emphasises the relationship between cultural diversity and human freedom
and well-being, while offering justifications for accommodating the claims of cultural minorities in legal and political
institutions and public policies.
- Multiculturalism is an umbrella term that covers a number of distinct areas, including the study of identity politics, the
politics of recognition, national self-determination and the politics of multinational citizenship, secularism and religious
diversity
- Multiculturalism as a philosophy and identity politics = people want to be recognised in a particular way and we respect that
and create safe environment
Multiculturalism as policy
- Multiculturalism’s roots lie in the recognition of Human Rights
- Policies concerning multiculturalism focus on addressing issues like:
- The right to expression of religion
- Language rights
- Equity (having the opportunities)
- Access to education and employment opportunities for all
- Done through law → National Human Rights Institutions (accessibility, independence, justice, dignity, cooperation, equality,
rule of law)
Multiculturalism as a Demographic Reality
- Regardless of where we are, we now share the same place with many different nationalities and languages
- Scholars argue that multiculturalism has always existed citing the cultural plurality of most nations and ancient civilisations -
where people of many backgrounds, religions and cultural practises existed side by side and interacted for centuries within
regional and urban locations
- Currently, the realities of globalisation, immigration, migration (through work, study or otherwise), means that people from a
variety of cultures are sharing space in their communities and workplaces, in their neighbourhoods and, of course, in the
schools
 - Also in schools
- Top-down as policy, down-top: in classroom
Realities and challenges - a teacher’s letter - Communication problems with our foreign students
- HOME ACTIVITY:
- Devise 5 steps that the teacher can take to get to know their student better
- Come up with 3 classroom strategies by which the Hungarian teacher in the bilingual school can begin addressing the
problem in her classroom
Multicultural education
- Multicultural education is one positive and systematic response to the challenges posed by our increasingly multicultural
societies. It refers to employing many and varied cross-cultural experiences, content, methods, strategies and techniques in
the classrooms so as to meet the needs of students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, including those with
special needs or disabilities, as well as students who identify with differing gender roles and sexualities.
- Multicultural education depends on context
- Different nations and governments have different approaches concerning multiculturalism based on their own
political and historical contexts
- The means that, for example, practical appriaches to addressing multiculturalism issues in post-apartheid
Johannesburg, South Africa very greatly from approaches to multiculturalism in Vancouver, Canada; Bangalore, India;
Oslo, Norway, or Singapore.
- Multicultural education in the United States
- Literature on multiculturalism in the classroom that is available reflects the specific issues of different places
- For examples, much of the literature concerning multiculturalism in the US addresses racism (specifically in regards
to African-Americans, Latino culture, Mexican-Americans, and Asiam Americans) prejudice and inequity
- Multiculturalism in South Africa
- In Johannesburg, schools must address the needs of various linguistic groups such as Afrikaans, English, Venda,
Tsonga, Sotho, Yhosa, and Zulu
- Teachers must address the historical tensions that students bring to the classroom because of the diverse but
shared backgrounds
- Language is a key component of multicultural education
- Multiculturalism in Canada
- In Canada the focus is often on:
- Teaching languages (French and English)
- Accommodating to the needs of new immigrants and refugees
- Issues addressing aboriginal cultures
- In Canada, multiculturalism is official government policy
- The Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Multicultural Act guarantee the right to express one’s culture, speak
one’s language and practice one’s religion
- Pierre Trudeau: There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of
an all Canadian boy or girl? A society which emphasises uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.
Approaches vary
- In Canada, policies are often flexible but adhere to specific principles, for example:
- Counselling should be made available to students in their mother tongue
- Schools should be accessible for people with disabilities
- Content taught in classes must not reflect racist beliefs
- These policies are then relegated to the provinces or states which are then further relegated to individual school boards
(includes accessible playgounds)
Six features when teaching culturally diverse groups
- Villegas and Lucas (2002) encourage teachers to consider six features when teaching culturally diverse groups: 1)
socio-cultural awareness, 2) a positive attitude toward students from diverse backgrounds, 3) commitment to change, 4)
incorporation of a constructivist view of learning, 5) learning about one’s students backgrounds, identities, and beliefs, and, 6)
incorporation of diverse content and teaching strategies that meet the needs and identities of all students
- 1) Socio-cultural consciousness/ awareness:
- realising that one’s own way of behaving, thinking, and being are influenced by social context and bias.
- Teachers should critically reflect on their own identities and become aware of latent negative attitudes or
stereotypes that they have regarding different groups (p5). → and carry that into classroom
- Once teachers are aware of their potential biases, they can respond to diversity in the classroom and be a model for
their students.
 - 2) A positive attitude toward students from culturally diverse backgrounds:
- seeing students’ backgrounds and identities as a positive opportunity, to include more inclusive content, to learn
about and to respect differences as well as add approaches that are related to and reflect the culture and identities
of the students. → encourage student to understand that T want to understand him/her
- 3) Commitment to change:
- teachers must address inequity and inequality in the classroom by recognizing and changing those things (i.e. course
content, approaches, classroom set up) that perpetuate bias.
- This involves including
- extra-curricular material,
- opportunities for self-regulated learning,
- changing or alternating between teaching approaches,
- as well as eliminating factors that are a barrier for students (seating plans, resources, biassed material etc.)
- 4) A constructivist view of learning:
- the belief that all students are capable of learning.
- Learning is an active process and social activity
- Learning is linked to personal experiences and promotes
- critical thinking,
- problem solving,
- Collaboration,
- as well as the recognition and sharing of multiple perspectives.
- → in this situation, a teacher should create a collaborative problem-solving environment where students become
active participants in their own learning
- Act as a facilitator of learning rather than an instructor
- Understand students’ pre-existing conceptions
- Guide activities to address them and then build on them
- 5) Learning about students’ past experiences, identities, home and broader culture:
- provides a foundation for more inclusive teaching
- as well as helps build relationships with the students and students’ families.
- Differences can be shared among students as well. - so they learn from each other
- 6) Incorporating diverse content and teaching strategies:
- finding and experimenting with diverse teaching methodologies and resources that reflect the
- interests,
- backgrounds,
- identities
- and cultures of the students
!!! Four main approaches to incorporating diverse content and teaching strategies
- There are four main approaches to incorporating diverse content and teaching strategies into multicultural classrooms and
curriculum: a) exclusive (contribution), b) inclusive (additive), c) transformative, and, d) social action (Banks, 1988; Kea,
Campbell-Whately & Richards, 2006, pp.7-9):
- a) Exclusive (Contribution Approach): represents traditional mainstream perspectives of diversity (Kea et. al. p.6)
- Teaching culture or diversity is restricted to one part of a course – social studies or focus on one group per week.
- Gender and diverse groups are discussed in relation to stereotypes – female and male roles are discussed according
to traditional roles, characteristics of certain ‘nations’ or ‘ethnicities’ are discussed according to generalities.
- Activities are restricted to the four ‘F’s’: food, folklore, fun and fashion or the two ‘H’s’ – heroes and holidays – i.e.
studying diverse ways of celebrating Christmas.
- Instruction strategies are lecture-based, teacher-centred, and assignments are focused primarily on content – i.e.
memorization of geography or holidays
- Evaluation and exams are objective (multiple choice, fill in the blanks, etc.)
- Night of death if learning Spanish
- b) Inclusive (Additive Approach): represents a mixture of normative and non-traditional diversity perspectives (ibid. p.7-8)
- Adds diversity content but retains traditional teaching structure –interdisciplinary lectures are discussed
throughout various courses over the entire year
- Readings reflect various perspectives: i.e. studying cultures from the perspective of various ethnicities, cultures,
genders and even animals
- Wide variety of assessment methods (portfolio, presentation, art, etc.)
- Teach through the point of view of buffalo
 - Predominantly teacher-centred but also includes some activities and other teaching approaches including group
work, pair work, presentations, etc.
- Students are encouraged to construct knowledge, use critical thinking skills and work with ‘peer learning’ (learning
from and about each other)
- Learning about ramadan, teaching maths around the world
-

Ethnic Groups within Country People from Other Countries

Canada Daily life of the indigenous people: Iqaluit , Climates, celebrations, clothing, folk and traditions
Meteghan, Saskatoon; cultures of the East of Afghanistan, Chile, Holland, the Philippines,
Coast, the North, and the Prairies Somalia, Spain, and English and French speaking
countries

China Life and traditions of the Dai, Hui, Korean, Miao, Geography, history, society, and life of people in
Mongol, and Tibetan people japan, southeast Asia, Rusia, Western Europe, and
US

Mexico Customs, festivals, and languages used in the Ethnicity and cultures in other countries,
country, the origin of the indigenous nation of immigration patterns and life in the Americas
Tenochtitlan

Taiwan Festivals, food, history, and traditions of Discussion of China, Holland, and Japan, as it
aboriginals, i.e. mountain people, people newly pertains to the history of Taiwan
arrived from Mainland China

U.S. Life styles and traditions of African, Caucasian, Life and celebrations in Kenya, types of homes in
Chinese, Cuban and Jewish American families Chile, Greece, Hong kong, and Morocco

-
- c) Transformative Approach: represents complete structural transformation (ibid. pg. 9) usually for older learners
- Challenges traditional views and encourages new ways of thinking and questions the dominant social and political
discourse
- Teacher uses ‘issue-oriented’ approaches and encourages problem-solving (current events, news, etc.) → raised
suicide rates, climate change
- Student-centred with self-evaluation, -analysis and -reflection → lot of sharing, discussing
- E.g. how to restructure the school: more environmentally friendly “Rethinking Schools game”
- Man:A course of study (NYC) (1970) - was an integrative transformative curriculum that was later banned in the US
in 1975
- An American humanities teaching program, popular in America and Britain in the 1970s, it was based on the
theories of Jerome Bruner, particularly his concept of the “spiral curriculum”.
- This suggested that a concept might be taught repeatedly within a curriculum, but at a number of levels,
each level being more complex than the first. The process of repetition would thus enable the child to
absorb more complex ideas easily
- The course focused on the daily lives of the Inuit in Pelly Bay, Canada.
- YOUTUBE? Through These Eyes, the politics of education, the value of culture
- d) Social Action/Decision-making Approach → highly controversial
- Includes aspects of the transformative approach but also encourages students to become critical thinkers who are
actively and politically involved in social issues. → writing letter, creating programs, collect clothing, recycling →
take action
- Encourages students to question and respond to dominant and existing ideologies, practices and institutions through:
- Volunteer work; writing letters to government representatives, corporations, organisations, etc.; contacting
the press; collecting money for social causes; active or passive resistance; and/or protest: Cf. “The power
of student-driven learning’ by Shelly Wright (see below)
Classroom-based practices
- Villegas and Lucas (2002:9) outlined classroom-based practices that promote the development of multicultural classrooms:
- Reflective writing, in-class interviews, simulations and games; exploring family histories, studying case-studies,
history from different places;
- All have students realise that they belong to several communities at once and each can be seen as a distinct culture
- Studying case-studies, history from different places
 - Current events
First steps - asking ourselves difficult questions
- Am I aware of my own biases? How do I find it out?
- Does every person who walks into my classroom have the opportunity to achieve to his or her fullest capacity regardless of
race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, home language, disability or other cultural
identitifiers?
Multicultural Education requires teachers
- To take the multicultural context of their classrooms into their own hands and devise ways in which to solve problems
- To work together in teams to solve shared challenges and problems
- To continue to expand their own education in term of learning about other cultures and cultural practices
- To continue to expand their own education by learning from their students
- To continue to expand their own education by exposing themselves to new teaching methods and approaches that can
benefit their students
References
- Banks, J. (1988). Approaches to Multicultural Reform in Beyond Heroes and Holidays. Multicultural Leader, Vol 1, No. 2,
Educational Materials Services. (pp. 37-38).
- Holliday, A. (2011) Intercultural Communication and Ideology. London: Sage.
- Kea, C., Campbell-Whately, G. D., Richards, H. V. (2006) Becoming culturally responsive educators: Rethinking Teacher
Education Pedagogy, N.C. Crest Publishers).
- Villegas, A. M. & Lucas, T. (2002). Educating culturally responsive teachers. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press
Required Readings
- Cumming-McCann, A. (2003) Multicultural Education: Connecting Theory to Practice. In Focus on the Basics: Connecting
Research with Practice. World Education, Boston. Volume 6, Issue B, February 2003 pp 9-12.
http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=208.html
- NOTE: Please watch clips 1 – 4 in the recommended resources below for an illustration of the concepts in this handout and
the reading
Recommend reading and resources
- Common Beliefs (Teaching Tolerance) (n.d.) Southern Poverty Law Center, Tolerance.Org (PDF)
- 1. Multiculturalism in the Modern World: Jen Holladay at TEDxDenverTeachers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5rKgDOs33U
- 2. Becoming a Culturally Responsive Teacher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV36efjBKRU
- 3. Strategies for Teaching Culturally Diverse Students https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPutaPc9gB8
- 4. The power of student-driven learning: Shelley Wright at TEDxWestVancouverED
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fMC-z7K0r4

Reading
A

Week 6 - Nurturing a global mindset in the EFL classroom (by Rita Divéki)

In today’s world, education needs to empower students to become active global citizens who are prepared for 21st century challenges
and who can solve local and global problems, thus, who are globally competent. But what exactly does global competence mean? What
does it have to do with ELT? To what extent is it my task as an EFL teacher to nurture global citizens? What makes someone a global
teacher? What kind of activities could be used to develop students’ global competence? By the end of the lecture, you should be able
to answer all these questions

I. QUALITY EDUCATION IN THE 21st CENTURY

21st Century Challenges:
 - Global warming, climate change, poverty, racism, financial problems
- Ted Talk: Ken Robinson → changing education paradigm
- Picture: based on conformity, educational system is modelled on industrialisation in the sense that in schools are organised on
factory lines, separate subjects, due dates, e students are grouped together
- Whole idea is based on conformity and it’s fuelled by production-line mentality
- The world that we are preparing our student for is qualitatively different from the world they have to live in

- Problems with education systems →

- “There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization,
raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what
was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know
algebra or can analyze literature”
- Bruce Wellman at this point, we appear to have a 19th century curriculum, 20th century buildings and organisations
and 21th century students facing an undefined future”
Sustainable Development Goals – Goal 4
- In 2015, the leader of UN countries came up with 17 goals that they should achieve by 2030 to create a better world for all
 - Quality education must develop the skills, values and attitudes that enable citizens to lead healthy and fulfilled lives, make
informed decisions, and respond to local and global challenges through education for sustainable development and global
citizenship education, as well as human rights education and training in order to achieve the United Nations Education 2030
agenda (UNESCO, 2018)
II. GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION (GCE/GCED)
Aims:
- Global education is an umbrella term: sort of education with the premise of educating responsible citizens who will be
able to contribute to the creation of a better world
- In 2014: new phase: global citizenship education
- Definition: Global Citizenship Education (GCED) aims to empower learners of all ages to assume active roles, both
locally and globally, in building more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive and secure societies
- to create a sense of belonging to the global community and common humanity
- to create respect for the universal values of human rights, democracy, non-discrimination, and diversity
- to empower learners to engage and assume active roles to shape a more peaceful, tolerant, inclusive world
Associated themes:
- peace and human rights; intercultural understanding; citizenship education; respect for diversity and tolerance
- + Development education
- their focus is a bit different
General characteristics:
- Holistic pedagogy concentrating on:
- 1. learning contents (critical issues) → in a way that it integrates critical issues into the curriculum (like human
rights, climate change)
- 2. learning outcomes and the acquisition of wider skills (skills for collaboration, critical thinking, etc.) → Aims to
incorporate the skills and promote these skills (like cooperation, creativity and critical thinking in the classroom)
- 3. learning processes and the learning environment (interactive, learner-centred lessons, exploratory,
action-oriented and transformative learning). → design teaching in an interactive, student centred way, they try to
enable exploratory and action oriented transformative learning
- It has a transformative purpose
- Change in the person first (change attitudes and develop skills) in order for the students to go out and exercise the
desired change
- Interconnectivity (understand the complexities of interconnected world)
- Holistic, transformative, emphasises interconnectivity.
III. GLOBAL COMPETENCE
PISA Global Competence Assessment 2018
 - Definition: “the capacity to examine local, global, and intercultural issues, to understand and appreciate the perspectives and
world views of others, to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with people from different cultures, and to
act for collective well-being and sustainable development” (OECD, 2017, p.7).
- → four dimensions broken down:

Knowledge Skills Attitudes + Values

Knowledge about: Reasoning with information Openness towards people from different
- Global issues, Communicate effectively and respectfully cultural backgrounds
- culture and intercultural Perspective taking Respect
relations, Conflict management and resolution Global mindedness (ability to think about
- Socio-economic development and Adaptability the world)
interdependence, Values of human dignity
- environmental sustainability, Diversity
- global institutions,conflicts and
human rights

VI. GLOBAL COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT in ELT

- Open content space – CBI/CLIL approach (Content Based Instruction / Content and Language Integrated Learning)
- Open: in a sense that the curriculum is not as fixed
- “learners develop language skills while becoming more knowledgeable citizens of the world” + “thematically organised
materials are easier to remember and learn” - Stroller 1997
- Students are interested in real-life issues → more likely to get engaged and learn
- These topics are in the curriculum, and students also need to express their opinion about global topics in the Matura
exam/any language exam
- Students can explore issues of identity and diversity → by considering similarities and differences between peoples, places,
cultures and languages
- The EFL class is the best place to develop awareness of global interconnectedness → in that languages are continually
evolving and borrowing from each other
- Students can develop knowledge and appreciation of different cultures → and their world views
- The language classroom provides opportunities to explore global issues while developing reading, writing, listening and
speaking skills
V. BECOMING A GLOBALLY COMPETENT TEACHER
How to become a globally competent teacher? (in 5 steps)
- 1. Follow the news, be knowledgeable about what is happening in the world – locally + globally
 - 2. Teach your students by example, be authentic in your role → not to use plastic too much, be a role model and don’t drink in
front of them from plastic bottles, use reusable plastic
- 3. Be brave and bring in real-life issues into your classes (experiment and fail sometimes)
- 4. Try to make them interesting for your students through learner-centred methods
- 5. LLL/CPD → life-long learning and continuous professional development: always develop yourself and learn from your
intercultural experiences (e.g., at teacher conferences)
A Global Teacher… (Pike & Selby, 1988)
- “Be the change you wish to see in the world” (Gandhi) → an agent of change
- The work starts with us (teachers) - teachers first have to become global citizens
- You shouldn’t teach students how to think but to think

- 1. is ‘global centric’ rather than ethnocentric or nation centric;

- 2. is concerned about culture and perspective; → open person
- 3. is future-oriented;
- 4. is a facilitator;
- 5. has a profound belief in human potential;
- 6. is concerned with the development of the whole person;
- 7. employs a range of teaching/learning styles in the classroom;
- 8. sees learning as a life-long process;
- 9. tries to be congruent; → harmonious, balanced
- 10. is rights-respectful and seeks to shift the focus and locus of power and decision-making in the classroom;
- 11. seeks functional interdependence across the curriculum;
- 12. is a community teacher (pp. 272-274)
Knowledge, skills and attitudes a globally competent teacher should acquire based on OUP 2019
- Knowledge
- Understands what global competence is and what global skills are
- Knows how to conceptualise the global skills as achievable targets for specific learners
- Is aware of diverse methodological approaches for fostering global competence and is open to putting new ideas into
practice → openness
- Has global competence and can model it in action
- Is knowledgeable about global, local and intercultural issues
- Skills
- Can form dual learning objectives for lessons, integrating both linguistic and global skills
- Can find and utilise appropriate resources to promote global education in EFT classes at diverse proficiency levels
- Can identify creative opportunities within curricula to integrate global skills without compromising on other curricular
commitments
- Can give effective feedback to learners in order to move learning forward
- Attitudes
- Believes that the purpose of education across subjects is to prepare learners for life more broadly
- Is open to the idea of broadening the objectives of the EFL classroom beyond linguistic competences
- Identifies with the notion of being a globally competent teacher (global teacher)
 - Has the confidence to explore new approaches to teaching English alongside global competence
- Is willing to engage in lifelong continuous professional development as a globally competent teacher
VI. HOW TO NURTURE GLOBALLY COMPETENT STUDENTS?
- 1. Create a safe (and brave) space → in which students can freely express their ideas and feelings, particularly around
challenging areas such as diversity, cultural competence, and oppression
- 2. Choose a suitable topic based on the following criteria:
- (1) the topic should generate deep engagement from the students,
- (2) it should have clear local-global connections,
- (3) it should have visible global significance, and finally,
- (4) it should have robust disciplinary and interdisciplinary grounding.
- Some examples: Africa, Ageing, AIDS, atomic energy, children, climate change, decolonisation, democracy, ending
poverty, food, gender equality, health, human rights, international law and justice, migration, oceans and the law of
the sea, peace and security, population, refugees, water… (list from United Nations, nd)
- Google: the world’s largest lesson —> great resources for teachers, also about global issues + lesson plans
- 3. Use an engaging activity to deal with the topic
- (i.e., methods and techniques promoting the active participation of students)
- e.g., give them individual thinking time, pair work for discussion or improvisation, group work for brainstorming and research,
whole-class discussion and data collection, surveys, interviews, games, poetry appreciation, writing exercises, drama
(role-plays, simulations), group-based tasks and project work, organised discussions about thought-provoking texts, images or
videos, songs about current events, structured debates, web-collaboration projects, service learning
Resources to check out
- Eltsustainable.org
- Gisig.iatefl.org
- Eltfootprint.org
- gcdinelt.wixsite.com/mysite
COMPULSORY LITERATURE
- OECD. (2017). Preparing our youth for an inclusive and sustainable world: The OECD PISA global competence framework.
OECD. (pp. 4-20)
- Oxfam. (2015). Global citizenship in the classroom: A guide for teachers. Oxfam. (pp. 4-11)
- + Be familiar with at least 1 activity from pp. 12-21!
REFERENCES
- Boix Mansilla, V. & Jackson, A. (2011). Educating for global competence: Preparing our youth to engage the world. Asia Society.
- Pike, G. & Selby, D. (1988). Global teacher, global learner. Hodder and Stoughton.
- OECD. (2017). Preparing our youth for an inclusive and sustainable world: The OECD PISA global competence framework.
OECD.
- Oxford University Press. (2019). Global skills: Creating empowered 21st century citizens. Oxford University Press.
https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/expert/global-skills?cc=hu&selLanguage=hu
- UNESCO. (2018). Preparing teachers for global citizenship education: A template. UNESCO.
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000265452

Oxfam from page 12 → activities for the exam

- Why-Why-Why chain
 - Get learning think about underlying causes, links local to global
- Write an issue on the board - get Ss think of the direct reasons for that issue
- Then think of reasons behind the reasons
- Look at the last reasons and ask Ss whether it is fair that these are happening the world and what can be done to
change these
- Consequence wheel
- Mind-map that help Ss think through consequences of an event or issue
- Individually or in small groups
- Main event in the middle - direct consequences linked to this event, then the consequences of these consequences
whether good or bad
- Ask Ss how could they find out more about these facts and what could they do to break negative chains
- Critical thinking online
- Visit a website and evaluate them based on questions like who runs the website? What are their aims? How do you
react to the website and why? Who is providing information?
- For 3 groups of girls: I would give 3 websites of skincare or makeup brands who declare themselves green or vegan
and they should find evidence for that.

Week 7 - The Lexical Approach or the sad story of the dead rabbit (by Révész Judit)

Is language really a huge substitution table where we simply have to fill the slots with vocabulary items of our choice? Is it really
their grammatical prowess that makes good language learners so fluent? Is grammar the most important way vocabulary is organised?
Are vocabulary notebooks the best idea to store vocabulary? The Lexical Approach represents a major paradigm shift in our thinking
about language and more importantly about how languages are learnt and how they are to be taught. Besides presenting the theory,
the lecture will also look at the methodological implications of this new way of thinking

Intro exercise → Substitution table → substitution drill

- I’ll see what I can do. → function of this sentence: make a vague promise = a linguistic chunk

Noun/ pronoun auxiliary verb Relative pron. noun/ pronoun auxiliary verb

She may see when we may go

You will know what I will cook

I should decide why he should do

Brad Pitt must confirm how they must sing

Tom and Jerry ‘ll who Bill ‘ll hang

Cinderella Sue can

We

Characteristics of the Lexical Approach

- LA concentrates on developing learners' proficiency with lexis, or words and word combinations. It is based on the idea that
an important part of language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical phrases as unanalyzed wholes, or
"chunks. Only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations. This was derived from Corpus linguistics, which is
the study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) or "real world" text
 - → it is better to teach student these chucks (above) than all the other 100 thousand sentences coded in the substitution
table
- With the onset of the digital age, huge linguistic databases of spoken language became possible (e.g. BNC)
- They found that: Only a minority of spoken sentences are entirely novel creations —> British are not original, they use
collocations
- The Lexical Approach concentrates on developing learners’ proficiency with lexis, or words and word combinations
- It is based on the idea that an important part of language acquisition is the ability to comprehend and produce lexical phrases
as unanalysed wholes, or chunks or collocations
- These chunks become the raw data by which learners perceive patterns of language traditionally thought of as grammar → in
natural language acquisition, any many times in conscious language learning, it is the example that comes first and patterns
(grammar) come later → we derive pattern of specific examples
- Normally in school we teach the grammatical pattern and then we deal with the specific manifestations
Words and chunks
- What is a word and what is a chunk?
- Unemployed is a word → stored as one word
- Out of work is a chunk → combination of 3 different word
- What morphemes are? How many morphemes does these consist of? Both of them has 3
Collocation → synonym for chuck
- “Collocation is the readily observable phenomenon whereby certain words co-occur in natural text with greater than random
frequency. Instead of words, we consciously try to think of collocations, and to present these in expressions. Rather than
trying to break things into ever smaller pieces, there is a conscious effort to see things in larger, more holistic, ways.”
- (Lewis,M. (1997) Implementing the lexical approach: Putting theory into practice. Hove, England: Language Teaching
Publications.)
- → words in collocations are not necessarily immediately adjacent
- Extreme collocation: on the one hand, ….. On the other hand, …
Density of collocations
- 50-80% of text is made up of chunks!
Collocations are arbitrary
- Collocations are arbitrary, decided only by linguistic convention. → bus stop
- They are also idiomatic, very often their meaning cannot be derived from their constituent parts. → level crossing, heavy
smoker, by the way, that’ll do, we get on quite well
- Collocations differ to what extent their meaning is removed from the literal meanings of their constituent parts, i.e. in their
idiomaticity
- → idiomaticity indicates how figurative the meaning of a collocation is, or how far it is removed from a combination of the
literal meanings of its constituent parts → get on well (native speaker innovation)
Certain rules govern this arbitrariness
- Two intensifiers: very and absolutely
- Very: clever, disappointing, impressive, enjoyble, stupid → neutral adjectives → the phenomena is gradable
- Absolutely: brilliant, disastrous, superb, hilarious, idiotic → extreme, not gradable
Blocked collocations
- Fresh air, open air *silly cow disease, mad cow disease
- *big operation, major operation
De-lexicalised words
- E.g. take, get, be, have, make, do
- They don’t have a meaning without a context → without their collocations, they are meaningless but they have a huge
collocational field
Collocational field
- Certain items like bad has a huge collocational field (or the verbs mentioned above), i.e. it can co-occur more or less freely
with a lot of words whereas rancid has a small one. (ony butter goes rancid)
- → or shrug has a tiny one (stug your shoulders)
- Certain words cannot be differentiated by meaning, they can only be differentiated by their collocational field. Speak, tell,
say
- I can’t __speak__ for the rest of the staff, though.
- You’d better do exactly what the doctor __says__
- Don’t worry. Everything you __tell__ me is confidential.
- To __tell__ you the truth, I was half expecting it.
 - Can I __speak__ to Mr Harrison please?
- Shall we __say__ two o’clock?
- Actions _speak__ louder than words.
- __Tell__ me about it!
“Language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar”
- Lewis,M. (1993) The Lexical Approach. Hove: Language Teaching Publications p.34)
- → collocation is the most powerful force in combining words. What we call “grammar” is on a continuum of more or less
generative collocations.
Shakespeare W. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592-3)
- Duke: Sir Valentine, wither away so fast?
- Valentine: Please it you grase, there is a messenger
That stays to bear my letters to my friends,
And I am going to deliver them. → actor was walking, not meant future, not grammatical item yet
Sediment approach to grammar
- Üledék, lerakódás
- Going to + inf as a grammar item
- Go to + inf =
- Go + gerund =
- Go and + inf = go and fetch my glasses
- They are just as common but not taught as grammar or collocation either

Types of chunks/collocations
- words (e.g., book, pen)
- polywords (e.g., by the way, upside down)
- word partnerships (e.g., community service, absolutely convinced)
- institutionalised utterances (e.g., I'll get it; We'll see; That'll do; If I were you .)
- sentence frames and heads (e.g., That is not as . . . as you think; The fact/suggestion/problem/danger was . . .)
- text frames (first of all…., secondly….., finally…., on the one hand… on the other hand…)
Colligation
- Colligation is the way a word regularly co-occurs with a (grammatical) pattern, in other words it denotes the word and its
grammatical environment. Each word has its own “grammar”.
- Examples: He passed HIS driving test” He insisted ON MOVING out
- → He’s only 19 but he drives an own car. HIS own car
- *She passed the driving test. HER driving test
- *They suggested to go somewhere. GOING
Advantages of having a large repertoire of formulaic language or collocational competence
- Chunks save processing time
- Listening, reading – better prediction, texts are not difficult because of unrecognised words but because of a great density
of unrecognised collocations → better prediction when listening and reading - enhanced speed, increased fluency
- Speaking and writing, faster production – increased fluency, more accurate negotiation of meaning → better production when
speaking and writing - increased fluency . Chunks save processing time
 - More accurate and more economical expression of meaning. Her disability will last until she dies. Vs She has a permanent
disability
- Brain has huge storage capacity
- Grammar for free – chunks bring their grammar with them → if I were you I’d..
- Pronunciation for free – chunks bring their rhythm and intonation pattern with them, using chunks increases fluency
- → improved pronunciation! The language of foreigners is slow and clumsy because we often try to fabricate our sentences
word by word
- Your English is so fluent because you have a large amount of prefabricated, over-learnt chunks available to you!
FCE USe of English test (B2)
- Environmental Concerns
- Earth is the only (0) … we know of in the universe that can support human life. (1) ........ human activities are making the planet
less fit to live on. As the western world (2) ........ on consuming two-thirds of the world's resources while half of the world's
population do so (3) ........ to stay alive we are rapidly destroying the very resource we have by which all people can survive and
prosper. Everywhere fertile soil is (4) ........ built on or washed into the sea. Renewable resources are exploited so much that
they will never be able to recover completely. We discharge pollutants into the atmosphere without any thought of the
consequences. As a (5) ........ the planet's ability to support people is being (5.2) ……. at the very time when rising
human numbers and consumption are (6) ........ increasingly heavy demands on it. The Earth's natural resources are
there for us to use. We need food, water, air, energy, medicines, warmth, shelter and minerals to (7) ........ us fed,
comfortable, healthy and active. If we are sensible in how we use the resources they will (8) ........ indefinitely. But if we use
them wastefully and excessively they will soon run out and everyone will suffer.
- Gap 1
- Although, Still, Yet, Despite
- Gap 2
- Continues, repeats, carries, follows
- Gap 3
- Already, just, for, entirely
- Gap 4
- Sooner, neither, either, rather
- Gap 5
- Development, result, reaction, product
- 5.2
- Stopped, narrowed, reduced, cut
- Gap 6
- Doing, having, taking, making
- Gap 7
- Hold, maintain, stay, keep
- Gap 8
- Last, stand, go, remain
→ we test collocational competence, but is it what we teach?!?!
Implications for teaching/learning
Translation as a language learning tool is out
- With premature translation we ask learners to fabricate English sentences whereas they cannot be fabricated. It encourages
negative learner habits like translating from one’s own language instead of thinking in the target language. Translation is a
separate skill that has to be taught at very high levels when a lot of chunks are available to the translator in both languages
Vocabulary lists with L1 equivalents are out
- It is best to link vocabulary items to
- reality,
- perceptions,
- definitions,
- sample sentences/linguistic context,
- collocational field
- Monolingual dictionaries should be introduced gradually but as early as possible, the process should start at pre-intermediate
level
Value of learner Creativity is highly overrated/questioned
- Learner creativity is not rewarded at exams. Although collocations change very fast, they are controlled by the native
speaker community. Learner creativity should start at the level of combining chunks
Rote learning is back
- → learn collocations by heart
- Fluent language use requires a large amount of over-learnt chunks.
- Collocations memory, jigsaw
- Gapped reading
- Correcting text
- Reconstructing text
- Dictation
- Copying – off-the wall-dictation
- Drills
- Learning by heart, songs, poetry, tongue twisters, proverbs, etc.
Huge amounts of authentic input
- Intensive and extensive listening and reading in the target language so that chunks re-appear in various linguistic and social
contexts and therefore are re-enforced
Raising awareness
- Noticing and recording language patterns and collocations
- Observe-Hypothesize-Experiment, as opposed to the traditional Present-Practice-Produce paradigm
Working with language corpuses, collocation dictionaries, etc
- British National Corpus
→ + teacher is language model and input provider
New English File Intermediate
- I have a close friend called Irene. I’ve known her for about 15 years now. We met at work - she was a colleague of mine at
the company where I used to work. We get on very well although we don’t have a lot in common - we have quite different
interests. We don’t work together any more, and when I changed jobs we lost touch for a couple of years. But now we in
touch regularly.
Translation, classroom example
- Mit csinálsz vasárnap délutánonként?
- Újságot olvasok.
- Kéne egy kis segítség. Mit csinálsz?
- Újságot olvasok.
Re-telling
- Retell the story in your own words!
- Retell their story in your words
- Retell your story in their words!
TOUCH in the BNC
- I did not want to touch her.
- I don’t wanna lose touch with them now.
- Clare kept in touch with Annabel.
- He will touch everyone on the raw’
- When the South Africans touch down at Kingston Airport
- A touch of elegance
- Staying in touch is essential
- Had been out of touch since the first report
- Trying to get in touch?
- A touch more deeply
- He has been in touch with Greenalls
- Yes touch wood.
Collocation domino/ memory
- Traffic jam
- Cycle lane
- Pedestrian area
- Rush hour
- Parking lot
Storing/revising vocabulary
- BUS
- Catch the
 - Miss the
- Get off the
- Get on the
- Take the
- Bus
- Lane
- Timetable
- Terminal
- Route
- Pass
-
Criticism
- St output is undervalued (RJ)
- There is no methodology or syllabus (Thornbury)
- → teachers and learners look for a grammar syllabus
- Learning time is limited, grammatical structures are often generative (Swan)
- Decisions about which collocations to include at which level are difficult. → difficult to decide which collocations to include in
a programme at which level
- Testing is difficult
- Accuracy is back in a more wicked way → a new kind of accuracy is introduced, replacing grammatical accuracy (RJ)
- English as world language - how relevant are native speaker communication patterns?
Conference for civil engineers, Prague
- Pierre (F) and Istvan (H)
- Pierre: How are you István, comment ca va?
- István: My wife had (sic) big (sic) operation recently (sic)!
- Pierre: Oh no! I’m so sorry. Tell me how is she (sic)?
The sad story of the dead rabbit
- Car is a machine, if we have all the parts and the instruction manual, you can assemble the car
- If language is a machine, grammar is the instructions manual, vocabulary are the parts
- A rabbit, cannot put it back together
- Language is more similar to a live organism than to a machine
- We can learn a lot about if we take it apart but there certain things we can’t learn (movement, habits) and cannot but
it back together

catching the bus

making friends

fan club
 half brother

toasting the bride

Summary
- Don’t fabrice, imitate!
Compulsory reading:
- Lewis, M. (2000) Language in the Lexical Approach, In: Teaching Collocation, Further Developments in the Lexical Approach.
Hove: Language Teaching Publications. Chapter 7, pp 126-155
Recommended reading
- Nattinger, R. J., DeCarrico, J. S. (1992), Lexical Phrases and Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Harwood, N. (2001) Taking a lexical approach to teaching: principles and problems Talk delivered at 35th IATEFL conference.
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~nharwood/lexapproach.htm
- Thornbury, S. (1998) The Lexical Approach: A Journey without Maps? Modern English Teacher, Vol.7. No.4.
http://www.thornburyscott.com/assets/Lexical%20approach.pdf
- Swan, M. (2006) Chunks in the classroom: let’s not go overboard. The Teacher Trainer. 20/3, 2006 retrieved at
http://www.mikeswan.co.uk/elt-applied-linguistics/chunks-in-the-classroom.htm

Reading
A

Week 8 - Metaphoric language: Idioms versus proverbs in the English language classroom
(by Jasmina Sazdovska)

The lecture examines whether it is justifiable for us as English teachers to spend a considerable amount of time teaching our
students how to use idioms to expand their vocabulary. The Common European framework of reference for languages frequently even
refers to idioms as markers of higher levels of language mastery. Yet idioms are closely linked to a specific local culture and are often
difficult to relate to in international setting. This is because idioms do not retain their original metaphoric meaning. Proverbs, on the
other hand, are living metaphors which capture pieces of wisdom succinctly. They are transparent and frequently have counterparts in
many languages and cultures. Therefore, they may make for higher value teaching tools than fixed and culturally limited idioms. The
lecture proposes some practical techniques for the use of proverbs in our English language classes

a lazy eye an old flame

→ Idiom - definition
- A term used in grammar and lexicology to refer to a sequence of words which is semantically and often syntactically
restricted, so that they function as a single unit. From a semantic viewpoint, the meanings of the individual words cannot be
summed to produce the meaning of the idiomatic expression as a whole. (Crystal D)
- → function as a single unit, one construction
- From a syntactic viewpoint, the words often do not permit the usual variability they display in other contexts, e.g. it’s raining
cats and dogs - *it’s raining a cat and a dog. Because of their lack of internal contrastivity, some linguists refer to idioms as
‘ready-made utterances’. An alternative terminology refers to idioms as ‘habitual collocations’. (Crystal D)
Idiom - etymology
- From late Latin idioma “a peculiarity in language”
- From Greek idioma “peculiarity, peculiar phraseology”
- From idioumai “to appropriate to oneself”
- From idios “personal, private”
- Properly “perticular to oneself”
- (Online Etymology Dictionary)
Idiom - definition
- Idioms are fixed chunks of lexis that are sometimes also called ‘dead metaphors’ because they frequently stem historically
from a metaphor, but their meaning has nowadays lost transparency. They provide interesting insights into the culture of
the native speakers.
- Metaphor: symbolic verbal expression (apple of my eye)
Idiom types
- Phrasal verbs: set off, set up, take back
- Functional expressions: would you like to…? Could you tell me the way to …?
- Discourse markers: anyway, I mean, by the way, you know
- Binomials and trinomials: back and white, knife and fork, ladies and gentleman, the good, the bad and the ugly, shake, rattle
and roll
- Comparisons: as keen as mustard, as stubborn as a mule
- Collocations: take a nap, make an application, do the shopping, hugely enjoyable

an apple doesn't fall far from the tree the early bird catches the worm
Proverb - definition
- The wisdom of the street
- Daughters of daily experience
- Short sentences draw from long experience
- Philosophy of the common people
- The whit of one man and the wisdom of many
- Few words, good sense and a fine image
- Proverbs are usually somewhat longer chunks than idioms that are also mostly based on metaphors. Their meaning is
transparent and they encapsulate a wise saying. Proverbs reflect the culture of the speakers, yet they frequently have
counterparts in other languages.
Proverb - characteristics
- Provide advice
- Offers insight into life
- Sum up or comment on human experience
- They’re brief sentences
- Sometimes they rhyme or use alliteration (early to bed and early to rise make the man healthy, wealthy and wise)
- Easy to remember
- Some proverbs can contradict others because ‘life is contradictory’ (e.g. the early bird catches the worm <-> the early rooster
is the first in the pot = take a huge risk being first)
- Reveal commonalities between people and cultures
- Their meaning lasts through time and crosses geographical boundaries
 - In teaching, proverbs can be interdisciplinary (in lg classroom, content and language integrated learning)
Basic definitions and examples:
- Lexical chunks, collocations, phrasal verbs
- Idioms
- Comparisons, similes
- Metaphors
- Proverbs
Difficulties for learners
- Importance of context
- Fixed forms
- Challenges with translation
- Transparency of meaning
Transparent Opaque

Narrowing the focus to idioms and proverbs

- Juxtaposition
- Frequency in use
- Frequency in teaching materials
- Frequency in testing criteria
- Formality differences
Idiomaticity definition and of idiomatic collocations
- a combination of two or more words which function as a unit of meaning
- Examples: phrasal verbs: set off; take back; functional expressions: would you like to …? could you tell me the way to …?
discourse markers: anyway, I mean; by the way; binomials and trinomials: black and white; knife and fork; the good, the bad
and the ugly; comparisons: as keen as mustard; as stubborn as a mule;collocations: take a nap; make an application; do the
shopping; hugely enjoyable
Benefits and challenges of teaching idioms

Benefits Challenges

Easily accessible in English language teaching materials Fixed form and opaque meaning make learning difficult

Important for learners wanting to take language exam (CEFR Might be overused, underused or used incorrectly by students
levels)

Important for students aiming to communicate with native May not be important for students aiming to communicate in an
speakers ELF context

Can make colourful, fun examples of language use Translation frequently does not help and chunks need to be
learnt by heart

Benefits and challenges of teaching proverbs

Benefits Challenges

Engage higher-order thinking and cognitive skills to glean the Rarely feature in English language teaching materials → have to
wisdom from the adage create own material

Foster creativity and focus on morals of stories, values and life Might be considered rather formal and literary for everyday
lessons conversation

Important for students aiming to communicate in an ELF May not be important for students aiming to integrate in a
context native-speaking culture
 Counterparts in other cultures can be found fostering Lingering stigma of Grammar-Translation method & studies of
cross-cultural communication classical languages

List 3 reasons why idioms and/or proverbs are used

- to sum up a narrative sequence or anecdote → moral of the story
- to evaluate or comment on something someone has said
- to establish an informal atmosphere and rapport between speakers → start and idiom and sb else finishes
- to highlight or make a strong point in an argument → frequently used in debates
- to co-construct the dialogue (e.g. one speaker, starts to say an idiom, the other finishes it)
- to create humour
Importance of idioms vs proverbs
- Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) 28 mentions of idiom use
- A1: Can reply in an interview to simple direct questions spoken very slowly and clearly in direct non-idiomatic speech
about personal details
- B1: Can follow much of what is said around him/her on general topics provided interlocutors avoid very idiomatic
usage and articulate clearly
- B2 spoken interaction: only extreme background noise, inadequate discourse structure and/or idiomatic usage
influences the ability to understand … may experience some difficulty with low frequency idioms
- C1: Can follow films employing a considerable degree of slang and idiomatic usage. Good command of idiomatic
expressions and colloquialisms
- C2: …can take part effortlessly in any conversation or discussion and have a good familiarity with idiomatic
expressions and colloquialisms. Has a good command of idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms with awareness of
connotative levels of meaning
- -”- only 2 mentions of proverbs
- No level attached, general description → .. which proverbs, cliches and folk idioms learners should need / be equipped
/ be required to a, recognise and understand b, use themselves
- A knowledge of … accumulated folk wisdom, expressed in language assumed to be known to all, is a significant
component of the linguistic aspect of sociocultural competence
- Proverbs e.g. a stitch in time saves nine
- Idioms e.g. a sprat to catch a mackerel

Idiom activities
- In groups of 4-5 discuss examples of activities on the use of idioms
- Matching
- Gap fill
- Cartoons
- Definitions
- Pedestrian
- Memory reliant
- Drill & Kill
- Abstract - not very transparent
- These exercises presuppose communication with a native speaker
- What level would these activities be appropriate for? Upper-Intermediate and advanced levels in course books
- Business Benchmark Advanced - together with phrasal verbs and expressions (p 65, 95)
- Cutting Edge Advanced - Idioms with cry and tears p 21, body idioms p 44
 - New English File Upper-Intermediate, personality p 146, clothes/fashion p 148, feelings p 151, body idioms p 152, music idioms
p 153
- New English File Advanced: family p 158, get idioms p 160, money p 162, animals p 166
- Inside Out Upper-Intermediate: body idioms p 37
- Market Leader Upper-Intermediate p 10: be on sb’s wavelength, keep sb in the loop
- Collins Cobuild Idioms - 300 idioms, 24 units, B1-C2
Proverb activities
- What level would these activities be appropriate for?
- Paraphrasing
- Translation (does not work with idioms)
- Illustration
- Restructuring
- Creative
- Analytical
- Critical thinking
- Communicative
- They foster cross-cultural and english as a lingua franca communication
- Proverbs in coursebooks: almost no reference to proverbs in language course books
- Market Leader Advanced: rhetorical devices (metaphor, repetition, hyperbole, paradox, a few proverbs)
English as a Lingua Franca
- Up to 80% of communication in English takes place between non-native speakers… pedagogic relevance…: What does the
grammar of informal, spoken English mean for the non-native speaker of English, and what is the pedagogic relevance of this
particular variety of English in the context of English as an international language?’
Proverb Comprehension
- Concreteness of the nouns … easily such expressions are understood … proverb comprehension was related to the ability to
reason by analogy
- E.g. A good sailor like a rough sea. When the cat’s away, the mice will play
- entail(s) a variety of issues in the areas of categorisation, mental representation, pragmatics, attention, and more
- Unlike idioms, novel proverbs can be created anew, permitting tighter control over potential confounds, such as familiarity
Novel Proverbs
- The cow gives good milk but kicks over the pail → The ocean delights the sailor then drowns him
- The best fish swim near the bottom → The tastiest coffee beans grow in the highest branches (nothing comes for free)
Proverbs and Fables
- Proverbs often occur in the context of fables, including those that students read in their literature texts at school. The
enduring appeal of fables, such as those created by the Greek philosopher Aesop during the 6th century BC, suggests that
they may be useful as part of classroom instruction
Cognitive value of proverbs
- To provide important practice in the process of analogical mapping, students are instructed to think of situations in their own
lives where that particular proverb could apply
Blooms_Taxonomy → Cognitive skills
- Levels of understanding

- remember → create
- Idioms fall into the remember category
- Proverbs fall into analyse category (find meaning behind symbolism, recreate a new one, translate or find an equvavelt)
Translation
 - Proverbs lend themselves more readily to translation than idioms
- Reintroduction of translation into ELT is being discussed
Process Proverbs in Translation
- Require higher order thinking skills
- Think of a proverb in one language L1, extract the meaning and apply that in another language L2
Activity
- In groups of 2 or 3 think of a proverb in your L1 and then try to find an English equivalent
Required reading
- Johnson, B. (2013). Proverbs: Wisdom of the ages in contemporary literacy instruction. Ejournal of Balanced Reading
Instruction, 1(1), 16-21. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=jblri
Additional reading:
- Prodromu, L. (2003). Idiomaticity. English Teaching Professional, 27, 10-12.
- Sazdovska, J. (2016). Changing views on the teaching of idioms and proverbs in the ELT classroom. In: É. Illés & J. Sazdovska
(eds.). English for a change. Budapest: IATEFL Hungary, 20-43.
https://www.iatefl.hu/sites/default/files/English_for_a_Change_Final.pdf

Reading
A

Week 9 - Oral genres in the EFL classroom: a square peg in a round hole (by Veljanovszki
Dávid)

Communicative language teaching prizes speaking activities modelled upon real life interactions and serving meaningful communicative
purposes. Thus, the language classroom could be seen as a true reflection of real life speaking situations. Through reliance on the most
essential tools for describing the main properties of these spoken exchanges, you will be invited to appreciate the diversity of oral
genres typically found in classroom contexts, ranging from closely scripted speech events, such as oral presentations and debates, to
more spontaneously constructed instances of communication (pair/group discussions, teacher-initiated responses, student comments,
etc.). There will be a brief overview of the structural features of the most common spoken genres. Questions such as what makes a
fitting and assessable contribution as well as how the related skills, awareness may be taught and developed will also be addressed

Definitions: what is genre?

- Swales (1990): “a class of communicative events, the members of which share some set of communicative purposes.”
- Hyland (2008):
- Genre “is based on the idea that members of a community usually have little difficulty in recognising similarities in
the texts they use frequently and are able to draw on their repeated experiences with such texts to read,
understand and perhaps write them relatively easily.” → we are parts of different communities (university,
neighbourhood, also diff communities of texts)
- Martin (1992): Genres are staged, goal-oriented, purposeful social processes.
- Staged: a genre is staged as the meanings are made in steps; it usually takes more than one step for participants to
achieve their goals. → can be broken down into meaningful units
- Goal oriented: a genre is goal oriented in that texts typically move through stages to a point of closure, and are
considered incomplete if the culmination is not reached. → toward towards achieving a communicative goal
- Social process: genres are negotiated interactively and are a realisation of a social purpose. → all happen in
interpersonal situations between individuals, participant observe the social roles
Why genre in ELT? Different understandings of grammar
- Two traditional interpretations of grammar in ELT:
- A. mental grammar: a mental system which is cognitive constituent of the brain (Chomsky 1980) → every able minded
human being is born with an innate capacity to acquire language(es), cognitive constituent of the brain that we are
capable of recognising grammatical rules and store them, productively use them as well
 - B. descriptive grammar: a set of rules (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985) → classical classification of
grammar, ancient Romans (part of speech categories, syntactic categories..)
- Problems with these two: despite their importance in language instruction, they leave a narrow scope for linguistic analysis.
- C. functional grammar:
- Genre theory is a component of functional grammar.
- It focuses on grammatical composition grounded in the functional concept of the nature of language.
- According to the functional concept, language is viewed not only as a linguistic system but also as a means
for doing things. → a tool for getting things done as we speak
- Most of our everyday language use involves functional activities: offering, suggesting, advising, apologising,
etc. more beneficial for ELT practitioners (Halliday, 1985; Martin, Matthiessen, & Painter, 1997) → however
detailed and attractive these approaches are, they leave very little room for linguistic analysis
- Beneficial for language teachers
- We would need opportunity, context, for our learners to make sense of grammar of themselves → students should
recognise rules
- A third approach? → Functional grammar

What benefits are there of a genre-based approach in EFL?

- 3.1. It reflects communicative language teaching: analyses of both formal and functional aspects of language in social and
cultural contexts: language , content, context of discourse production, interpretation (Paltridge, 2001) → not simply language
but content and context, + interpretation
- 3.2. Language teaching through authentic situations: learners actively practise doing things with language. Possible learner
roles: receiver, processor and producer. Chances to respond to diverse situations → skills for successful communication in
different discourse communities (Swales, 1990) → arguing, telling their problems → use language to actively fo things, also
implies that Ss take on different roles → dynamic, switch, turning roles (preceiver, processor, producer)
- 3.3. Close relationship with the theory of register: helpful in text-based and literature-based ELT → learners distinguishing
between literary genres and demonstrating how meaning is created through language (Hyland, 2008)
- 3.4. Combined with theory of register: great contribution to the teaching and learning of productive skills. Language as
social event → speaking and writing are linked to power, gender, age and geography → productive skills: speak and write
- 3.5. In ESP: constructing texts that are also in agreement with discipline-specific situations (Hyland, 1990; 2004) (e.g. a job
interview, hotel room reservation) → all these have genre specificalities
- 3.6. Learners can grasp pragmatic meaning from spoken narratives: phrases of chronological order (Initially, At first, Then),
discourse markers to introduce (Now ...) or delay topics (... OK ... erm ...); conversational strategies: → are aimed at:
- to maintain harmony
- to save face → avoid embarrassment, having to apologise
- to avoid conflict, etc.
- → politeness functions → blanket term for these 3
Common oral text types from the EFL classroom
- Whole-class Debate (Lincoln/Douglas Debate Format)
- 1AC (1st Affirmative Constructive) - 7 mins
- A good instruction that attract the audiences attention and interest in the topic
- Clearly state the resolution
- Clearly state each of your contentions
- Support with reason and evidence
- Conclude effectively
- Cross Examination of the Aff by the Neg - 3 mins
- You ask questions - have a strategy at the very least a direction to your questioning
 - Be courteous
- Face the audience
- 1NC (first Negative Constructive) - 8 min
- A good instruction that attracts the audience’s attention and interest in the topic
- Clearly state the negative’s position on the topic
- Clearly state the Negative’s observations
- Support with reason and evidence
- Attack and question the Affirmative’s Contentious/ evidence → rebuttal, immediate attack
- Conclude effectively
- Cross Examination of the Neg by the Aff - 3 mins
- You ask questions - have a strategy or the very least a direction to your questioning
- Be courteous
- Face the audience
- Rebuttal speeches - no new arguments are allowed - new evidence, analísis is ok
- 1 AR (first Affirmative Rebuttal) - 4 mins
- Respond to the Negative Observations - show how they are not as strong/relevant as the Affirmative Contentions
- Rebuild the Affirmative case
- NR (Negative Rebuttal) - 7 mins
- Respond to latest Affirmative arguments
- Make your final case to the audience that the Negative position is superior to the Affirmative
- Try and convince the audience the Affirmative has failed to carry the burden of proof
- Summarise the debate and conclude effectively and ask for the audience to agree with the Negative position
- 2AR (second Affirmative Rebuttal) - 4 mins
- Respond to final Negative arguments
- Summarise the debate and show the audience how the Affirmative position is superior - and the Affirmative has
carried the burden of proof
- Conclude effectively
Teacher- initiated response: IRF (initiation-Response- Feedback) Sequence
- Question (Can you can tell me Jack how we form present perfect form)
- Answer
- Acknowledgment (based on halliday 1984)
Spoken narrative from an interview
- The fight
- A: What was the most important fight that you remember, one that sticks in your mind?
- Abstract
- B: Well, one I think was with a girl.
- Orientation
- Like I was a kid, you know, and she was the baddest girl, the baddest girl in the neighbourhood. If you didn’t bring her candy
to school, she would punch you in the mouth, and you had to kiss her when she’d tell you. This girl was only about 12 years old,
man, but she was a killer. She didn’t take no junk, she whupped all her brothers.
- Complication
- And I came to school one day and I didn’t have no money. My ma wouldn’t give me no money.. So I go to school and this girl
says “Where’s the candy?” I said “I don’t have it” She says, powwww!
- Evaluation
- So, I says to myself, “There’s gonna be times my mother won’t give me money because (we’re) a poor family. And I can’t take
this all, you know, every time she don’t give me any money”. So I say, “Wekk, I just gotta fight this girl. She’s gonna hafta
whup me. I hope she don’t whup me”.
- Resolution
- And I hit the girl: powwww! And I put something on it. I win the fight.
- Coda
- That was one of the most important.
Service Encounter
- Sale request: Customer: Can I have ten oranges and a kilo of bananas please?
- Sale Compliance: Vendor: Yes, anything else? Customer: No thanks.
- Sale: Vendor: That’ll be dollar forty.
- Purchase: Customer: Two dollars.
 - Purchase Closure: Vendor: Sixty, eighty, two dolalrs. Thank you.
What is in the focus of teaching spoken genres in the ELT classroom?

Features Spoken Texts tend to

Discourse Level (context and organisation) - be produced in context with the listener
- be produced in conjunction with other speakers
- have repetition, reformulation, and refinement between
speakers

Grammar and Sentence Level - use simple and short clauses with little elaborate
embedding
- have a high incidence of coordinated clauses (and, but)
- have indicators of interpersonal dynamics (tag
questions, interruptions, unfinished clauses) and
indication of presence of speaker (first person
pronouns)

Lexis and Word Level - have low lexical density

- use general vocabulary and more idioms
- use terms dependent on the context (this one, that one,
it)

Genre and context awareness activities for the classroom (Millard 2011
- text purpose audience activities
- genre and discourse activities
- problem-solution activities
- spoken vs. written language activities
Compulsory reading
- Millar, D. (2011). Genre awareness in the EFL classroom. English Teaching Forum. No. 2, 2-15.
References
- Chomsky, N. 1980. Rules and Representations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
- Halliday, M. A. K. (1985). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
- Hyland, K. (2008). Academic discourse. London: Continuum. Google Scholar.
- Hyland, K. (2004). Genre and second language writing. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
- Hyland, K. (1990). A Genre Description of the Argumentative Essay. RELC Journal.
- Martin, J.R. (1992). English Text: System and Structure. Philadelphia/Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Martin, J. R., Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. and Painter, C. (1997). Working with Functional Grammar. New York: Arnold.
- Paltridge, B. (2001). Genre and the language learning classroom. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
- Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London:
Longman.
- Swales, J. (1990). Genre Analysis English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press.

Genre awareness in the EFL classroom

A

Week 10 - The teacher as preacher, the teacher as facilitator (by Szesztay Margit)

Recent approaches to ELT have required the teacher to take on new roles. In addition to the more traditional roles of passing on
information and giving explanations, for example, teachers need to tap into the potential of the group and to coordinate various pair,
group and whole class activities. When student-to-student interaction becomes the main source of learning, the teacher acts more like
a facilitator of the learning process, rather than being the fountain of knowledge. But what exactly does this mean in practice? … This
will be the main focus of this lecture

Lecturer - facilitator
1+1+1 > 3 → equation of synergy → greater than the sum of its individual members, group has a great deal of potential

The power of questions? → teacher as facilitator use question purposefully

- closed and open questions (What’s your view on.. What would you do?)
Types of questions
- focusing question : brings → attention (what is the main topic today? What did we learn last time?)
- Comprehension questions → (why was the old man sad at the end of the story?)
- Clarification question → (Do you mean to say..? Are you saying..?)
- Concept questions → relate to grammar (I have closed the door. Is the door open?)
- Thinking questions → open-ended type (How can we encourage critical thinking in the classroom?) or Exit questions at the
end of the class to take away and think about
- Probing questions (tell us more, what makes you say that, nay experience?) → go deeper into sg (Can you give as an example?
Can you expand on that? Please give us more details)
- Display questions (rhetorical ones, teacher knows the answer, only for pedagogic reasons) → not a real question
- Leading questions (contain assumptions, why aren’t you motivated, why aren’t you paying attention?) → already have some
assumptions (Why aren’t you paying attention?)
Facilitator’s toolbox: a wide range of work modes and activity types
- mingle (why did this picture choose me? → invitation to use for imagination

- Group challenge (picture cover-up) → come up with 10 ideas what can we behind the question mark → keep on asking after
revealing: Whose breakfast is this? What do you think of this person based on the breakfast?

- Cross-over groups (scene from a film) → create a poster

- Random round (group picnic) → everybody has the chance to say something
The teacher as facilitator: skills, beliefs and qualities
- A facilitating teacher
- Is good at classroom management → + get attention back (bell, clap, hand raising)
- Uses a variety of work modes
- Is a good listener and a keen observer → listen to the content, not only language
- Believes in learner autonomy
- Trust the potential of the group → equation of synergy
- Sees group interaction as a way of learning
- Is sensitive to group dynamics
- Unlocks the power of questions
- Works with process-sensitive methodology
Historical background
- John Dewey and the primacy of experience
- Dewey believed that education is not fundamentally the transmission of knowledge, but rather it is the …’ intelligently
directed discovery of the meanings inherent in ordinary experience’ (Dewey 1938:35)
- Implications for the teacher: intelligent direction giver - works with students’ experience
- Abraham Maslow and humanistic psychology
- Humanistic psychologists believe that in every person there is a strong desire to realise his or her full potential, to
reach a level of self-actualization. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was one of the founders of humanistic psychology.
- Implications for the teacher: needs to create opportunities for learning, remove ‘learning blocks’ - the desire to
learn, develop is innate
- Carl Rogers and → father of humanistic education → conditions need to be right, then Ss will follow
- “When I have been able to transform a group … into a community of learners, then the excitement has been almost
beyond belief. To free curiosity, to permit individuals to go charging off in new directions dictated by their own
interest, to unleash the sense of inquiry, to open everything to questioning and exploration … - here is an experience
I can never forget.” (Rogers 1983:120)
Carl rogers 1902-19.. - freedom to learn
- father of humanistic education
- Freedom in the classroom
- Teachers need to free curiosity, unleash a sense of inquire, encourage questioning and exploration
- 3 key qualities: genuineness → not wearing a mask, bit vulnerable, admit if you don’t know something, acceptance → respect
anyone, connect with Ss, empathy → ability to put yourself to sb else’s shoes
Core qualities of a facilitator according to Rogers
- a) genuineness: means being yourself, not playing a role in front of your learners; Rogers sometimes referred to this quality
as authenticity, and yet other times as congruence.
- b) acceptance: means prizing the learner, prizing her feelings, her opinions her person Rogers sometimes referred to this
quality as unconditional positive regard. It implies a basic trust, a belief that this other person is fundamentally trustworthy.
- c) empathy, or empathic understanding: being able to put yourself into someone else’s shoes “This kind of understanding is
sharply different from the usual evaluative understanding which follows the pattern of ‘I understand what is wrong with you.’
(ibid, p. 125)
Facilitation in the classroom context
Adrian Underhill’s framework of lecturer, teacher, facilitator
Adrian Underhill
- lecturer, teacher, facilitator
- Facilitator: subject, methodology, +1 →
- Teacher: subjects + methodology → how you teach, groups
- Lecturer: subject → matter knowledge
- 2 kinds of teacher development: horizontal (learning), vertical (more attention to methodology, or +1)
Facilitator: +1??
- process orientation
- Being aware of your own presence → personal qualities
Process orientation
- How is everybody feeling?
- Inhibited, confused, lost, put on the spot, angry, frustrated, restless, bursting with energy..
- How can I best guide the learning process?
- How can I help my learners to feel safe, relaxed, excited, curious, attentive and self-confident?
 - How can I help them remember, guess, form associations, move into a more creative mode, be expressive with
language etc?
- How does each activity affect students’ energy levels?
presence: The unique psychological climate or atmosphere that a teacher creates in the classroom (Underhill 1997). It is influenced
by
- personal qualities (patience, warmth, confidence or spontaneity)
- voice, posture, gestures and other forms of body language
- teaching methods used
Teacher presence:
-“ thenoszchologicak atmosphere you create, as unique as your fingerprint “(Adrian)
Two types of professional development
- horizontal development : refers to a kind of teacher development which means ’more of the same’, e.g. more subject
knowledge or expertise. It doesn’t challenge your underlying values and assumptions.
- vertical development: consists of a shift in underlying values and assumptions of the process of learning, e.g. e.g. expanded or
new methodology based on a deeper understanding of learning
Earl Stevick: relationships in the classroom and group dynamics
- "Success depends less on materials, techniques and linguistic analysis, and more on what goes on inside and between people in
the classroom.“ → rapport matters between T and S % Rogers empathy
- “... a language class is an arena in which a number of private universes intersect one another. Each person is at the center of
his or her own universe of perceptions and values, and each is affected by what the others do ...”
- Implications for teacher:
- “The trick for the teacher is … to provide just the right amount of learning space. If there is too little, the students
will be stifled. If there is too much, the students will feel that the teacher has abandoned him.” Stevick (1980)
Earl Stevick
- humanistic education
- Emphasised relationships! Inside the classroom matter
- “Success depend Lee on materials, techniques,k and linguistic analysis and more on what goes on inside and between people in
the classroom”
- Memory, memory and method 1996
Recap
- need to unleash a sense of inquiry(rogers)
- Needs genuineness, acceptance, empathy (Rogers)
- Process orientation, self awareness (Underhill)
- Sensitivity to group dynamics (Stevick)
Getting the balance right
Stress free environment <> keep students on their toes
Telling - discovery
Lecture mode + group and pair work
Control, no student choice - freedom, offering choice
Sources
- Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education). Kappa Delta.
- Maslow, A. (1954) Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.
- Rogers, C. (1983) Freedom to Learn for the 80s.Columbus Merrill.
- Stevick, E. (1980) Teaching Languages: A way and ways. Newbury House.
- Underhill, A. (1997). The psychological atmosphere we create in our classrooms. The Language Teacher, 21(9), JALT Tokyo
Compulsory reading
- Underhill, A. (1996). Facilitation in language teaching. In J. Arnold (Ed.), Affect in language learning (pp.125-141). Cambridge:
CUP

Facilitation in language teaching

A

Week 11 - Upgrade the system: alternative approaches to assessment (by Lázár Ildikó)
As EFL teachers, we give feedback to our students and assess their progress. But what exactly do we assess, why do we and how do
we go about it? It is very important to make conscious and well-informed decisions about our choices between direct and indirect,
holistic and analytic, formative and summative, continuous and one-off assessment methods as well as self- or peer-evaluation and
assessment by the teacher. The lecture will invite you to think about possible drawbacks of traditional assessment practices and will
also introduce current alternative assessment methods ranging from learning diaries to portfolios.

Evaluation: s the observation and measurement of the effectiveness of a lesson or a course

Assessment is the measurement of a learner’s degree of attainment of (linguistic) competence
Assessment involves: pen and paper tests but also many other instruments
Assessment can be carried out by teachers or by learners and their peers

Types and aims of tests

- A test is a formal or informal method of measuring students’ knowledge and/or abilities in a given area. A test inevitably
samples performance but infers certain general competence on the basis of the sampled performance (Brown, 2007)
- Placement test: to see which group a student should be placed in according to level → a placement test, needs analysis/
diagnostic test, proficiency test (measure global), achievement test / progress test (end of unit)
- Diagnostic test: to see what a certain group of students needs to learn / practice
- Achievement or progress test: to measure students’ achievement at the end of a unit / course
- Proficiency test: to measure and compare students’ global competence in a given language or other subject (Brown, 2007)
What makes a good achievement test?
- validity – the test measures what it is intended to measure
- practicality – the test has to be practical regarding financial limitations, time constraints, ease of administration, and scoring
and interpretation
- reliability – the score will be the same or very similar if the test is taken at an another time or if it is corrected by someone
else; it is consistent and dependable
- advance preparation – teacher can raise awareness of test-taking strategies, lower anxiety, help students prepare for tests
- face validity – the students feel that the test measures what it is supposed to measure
- principle of authenticity – the language used in the test is natural, authentic and provides a familiar context
- washback effect – the effect the corrected test has on the learners (positive or negative)
- (Brown, 2007, pp. 251-257, pp. 270-272)
Negative connotations associated with traditional tests and testing
- Stress, fear of failure, one-off possibility to show what you know, not designed the way you expected the test to look like,
unpleasant surprises, too difficult questions, humiliation, seems more like punishment than a fair chance to prove that you
have made progress, don’t get assessed in areas where you can do well etc.
- → everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is
stupid. Einstein
Need for changes
- Language testing, generally associated with formal assessment procedures such as tests and examinations carried out at
specified times and serving a variety of purposes, is a vital component of instructional language programmes throughout the
world
- Nevertheless, educators and critics from various backgrounds have raised a number of concerns about its usefulness as the
primary measure of student achievements
- Traditional testing techniques are often incongruent with current second/ foreign language classroom practices
- Rich descriptive information about the products and, more importantly, about the process of learning and the ongoing
measurement of student growth needed for formative assessment and for planning instructional strategies cannot be
gathered by conventional testing methods (Barootchi and Keshvarz, 2002)
 - A communicative approach to language teaching is more likely to be adopted when the test at the end of a course of
instruction is itself communicative. A test can be a powerful instrument for effecting change in the language curriculum.
(Weir, 1990)
- … tests can be useful for collecting information about S achievement under certain restricted conditions, but they are not
particularly useful for collecting information about Ss’ attitudes, motivation, interests, and learning strategies (Genesee
and Hamayan, 1994)
Reconsidering the aims of assessment
- Assessment can be undertaken for different purposes:
- to help the teacher’s planning of further classroom work based on information gathered about learners’ progress over
a period of time (formative assessment) → can be turned into grades
- to measure and document learner achievement on the basis of performance to feed into externally imposed
record-keeping and to serve administrative purpose (summative assessment)
- to give grades as expected by the school and the parents
- to fill the register as expected by the school / the authorities
- to indicate mistakes/difficulties /weaknesses
- to acknowledge strengths / achievements
- to motivate/encourage learners
- to give content feedback
- to help learners assess their own progress over time (self-assessment)
- to keep track of learners’ progress on a regular basis (continuous assessment)
Changes in content, format, marking criteria and attitudes
- The content of language tests has become broader with more emphasis on sub-skills involved in listening, speaking, reading
and writing.
- In the communicative era tests tend to focus on the learner’s ability to extract meaning and to convey messages in both
written and oral performance.
- Tasks have become more life-like, and
- marking criteria focus on aspects of communicative language use in addition to the traditional criteria concerned with the
accurate command of syntax and lexis (Hedge, 2000, pp. 382-384)
Alternative approaches to assessment
- Evaluation is integral to teaching
- “While tests can be used as a bolt-on procedure at end-points in a learning programme, assessment is integral to the
whole process of teaching and learning. It is the means by which students’ language learning development and
achievement are monitored over time” (Hedge, 2000, p. 376)
- Alternative assessment is usually taken to mean assessment procedures which are less formal than traditional testing, which
are gathered over a period of time rather than being taken at one point in time, which are usually formative rather than
summative in function, are often low-stakes in terms of consequences, and are claimed to have beneficial washback effects
(Alderson and Banerjee, 2001)
Feedback
- Feedback is information that is given to the learner about his or her performance of a particular learning task, usually with
the objective of improving this performance (Ur, 1991).
- Any meaningful feedback is going to involve judgement →
How can we ensure that feedback is useful and supportive?
- by making the attitude to feedback more positive,
- by ensuring that feedback does not only focus on what was wrong,
- by suggesting ways to improve things,
- by discussing and accepting that mistakes are a natural part of learning,
- by clarifying that the purpose is to promote the learning process
Some examples for alternative (formative) assessment methods
- observation-driven assessment that focuses on both language and content, a teacher’s diary-type record of learners’
achievements and weaknesses, also known as learner profiles;
- portfolios kept by the learners themselves that contain samples from a variety of the learners’ work (compositions, drawings,
notes, pictures, audio or video-recordings, project results, etc.), discussed with and always made available for inspection for
both the learners themselves and the teacher; → Use of portfolio - Guidelines for students
- To keep record of your learning journey throughout the course
- To notice progress in your language use, knowledge, skills, attitudes
 - To record evidence of your thoughts, reeflections, results of projects, compositions, pictures and cartoons,
comments about your personal interests and learning strategies, etc.
- To write about interesting things you have learned, questions or concerns
- To reflect on progress and give/ get feedback to assess your improvement
- (nyelvtanulási napló, preparing teachers to use the European Language Portfolio…)
- learners’ personal diaries, similarly to the portfolio, contain samples of the learners’ work, help document the learning
process and encourage continuous self-assessment;
- projects, debates, role-plays, dramatisations, etc. evaluated by self, peers, and/or the teacher;
- tests that actually give real feedback with narrative evaluation to encourage learners and help them see their strengths in
addition to their areas for improvement (Hedge, 2000; Tsagari, 2004)
- gamification, meaning game elements used in classroom assessment (fun points, trophies)
Sample exam question
- List 3 methods of alternative (formative) assessment and describe them briefly.
- Teachers can use fun game elements in the classroom, like giving fun points or trophies to the students.
- Students can keep learning process diaries, which are similar to the portfolios as they help document the students’
learning process and encourage self-assessment.
- Students can assess themselves, this is called self-assessment, to check their progress and reflect on what they
have learnt so far.
- Assessments should not only focus on language but on content as well. This is called an observation-driven
assessment, which keeps record of the students’ achievements and weaknesses as well.
References
- Alderson, J. C. and Banerjee, J. (2001). Language testing and assessment. Language Teaching 34, 4:213-236.
- Brown, H.D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. (3rd ed) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
- Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Tsagari, D. (2004). Is there life beyond language testing? Introduction to alternative language assessment. CRILE Working
Papers 58
- Ur, P. (1991). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Weir, C. R. (1990). Communicative language testing. New York: Prentice Hall
Compulsory reading
- Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom. Oxford: OUP (pp. 375-378, 384-401)

Reading - Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom

A

Week 12 - If you can’t beat’em, join’em: ICT methodologies in the language classroom (by
Major Éva & Szabó Éva)

Technology in language teaching is not new, but as access to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become more
widespread, the use of rapidly changing new tools in education will inevitably result in changing normal ELT practice as well. On the
other hand, it is quite difficult for teachers to see how to exploit these tools in their own classroom. The lecture will give an overview
of using current technology and tools in the language classroom, from websites through emails, blogs and wikis to e-learning,
illustrating each application with short examples. The key questions will be: How can a teacher integrate ICT tools in his/her teaching?
What are the key issues to be considered when a teacher decides to apply ICT tools? How can a digital immigrant (like most of us
teachers are) live up to the expectations of a digital native (like most students are nowadays)?

- → video: Evolution of the desk

Learners, metaphors, generation
- learners’ expectations: digital natives (generations x, y , z & alpha) vs digital immigrants (Prensky, 2001)) →
 - Digital natives: are all native speaker of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet
- Digital immigrants: always retain, to some degree, their accent (when speaking the digital language)
- The metaphor of place:
- visitors and residents (White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A., 2011) →
- Visitor: use the web for a particular purpose, unlike to have any form of presistent profile online, see the web as a
set of tools which deliver ot manipulate content
- Resident: see the web as a place - a proportion of their lives is actually lived out online, they are likely to consider
that they belong to a community which is located in the virtual world, see the web primarily as a network of
communication and live their lives on the web
- generation factor (baby boomers » alpha)

generation alpha: born with digital tools in their hands

Clash of generations: OK BOOMER phenomenon:
- As The New York Times puts it, OK boomer is a rallying cry for millions of fed-up kids. The phrase crossed over into the
mainstream, when a 25-year-old New Zealand lawmaker used it in response to heckling during a speech on the climate crisis.
A short history of using technology in the language classroom
- tape recorders, language laboratories, video players (1960,70s)
- CALL : respond to stimuli, text reconstructions, individual tasks, CD-ROMs (1980s) very static
- ICT was formed (Internet, computer programmes, web-based tools, TELL → Technology Enhanced Language Learning),
Internet, computer programmes, web-based tools (1990s) →
- The WEB

- Web 1.0: one-way distribution, largely flat, static use, source of information, mostly “read-only web”, mostly
“published content” → personal website, Britannica Online
- Web 2.0: two-way process, a fully-fledged computing platform, mostly “read-write web”, “mostly user-generated
content (UGC), social websites, e-learning: blended and online courses (VLE ), synchronous and asynchronous
communication tools → blog, Wikipedia
- Web 3.0 (The future): semantic web, artificial intelligence, 3D graphics, connectivity, ubiquity
New pedagogies
- → Education 1.0
- Behaviourist, essentialist education
- Characterised by 3 Rs: receiving, responsing, regardatating → one way process
- ‘Education 2.0’
- permits interactivity (T-St; St-St, St- content/expert)
- focuses on the three Cs – Communicating, Contributing, and Collaborating
- constructivist learning environments
- knowledge construction is emphasised over knowledge reproduction
- thoughtful reflection on experience is encouraged
- → + Project and Inquiry Based Learning
- Two-way process
- ‘Education 3.0’ (The future)
- a different set of Cs: Learners as Connectors, Creators, Constructivists
- self-determined learner rather than “doing” learning as facilitated by the educator
- teachers, learners, networks, connections, media, resources, tools create a unique entity that has the potential to
meet individual learners’, educators’, and even societal needs
- ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill
- decision-making is itself a learning process
Online teaching and learning
- E-learning
- Distance learning
- Online learning
- Blended learning
- Virtual Learning environment (Learning Management System)
- Online classes and webinars
- Videoconferencing tools

CALL= Computer Assisted Language Learning

ICT= Information and Communication Technologies
TELL=Technology Enhanced Language Learning
VLE=Virtual Learning Environment
→ What kind of expertise does a teacher need for online classes?
- Careful design of activities
- Instructions should be more spelled out
- Less scaffolding is possible
- Encourage student autonomy
- More design happens before than during the course
- Teacher presence
- cognitive , social, facilitatory (mentoring the Ss)
- Assessment
 - The most challenging par an institution used to face-to-face oral or written exam
- A continuous assessment model must be adopted
- Make self-regulation a part of the assessment (e.g. self-reflections or portfolios)
- Planning self-places, asynchronous activities (always within a ore-defined timeline) as part of the Ss’ learning process
- Indicate clear ways of assessing Ss’ participation
- Shift the focus onto Ss as responsible for their own learning

Some examples for ICT tools

- a) Interactive whiteboards (IWBs)
- strengths (e.g.: a great number of interactive activities → + special pen - write over images, highlight things etc.)
- weaknesses (e.g.: too few tasks readily available, time-consuming to create tasks, used more for teaching sciences -
visualisation, promotes frontal teaching and teacher-centredness + many of the activities can be done with online
tools)
- b) Online tools
- When used to supplement in-person teaching in and out of the classroom
- developing vocabulary
- developing language skills
- fostering group cohesion
- When used in online teaching as the main medium of teaching
- all areas of teaching and class management
mLearning (mobile learning)
- “There is no point in fighting a losing battle. Kids already bringing mobile devices to class - find ways to embrace the
technology, not suppress it” (Nicky Hockly, 2010)
- with the help of any handheld devices (mobile phones)
- on the move or within the classroom
- → informal learning - learning outside the classroom
- BUT! Misconceptions
- Only mobile phones → any handheld devices e.g. iPods, netbooks, e-readers, cameras
- Only on the move –y in the classroom too
- Only for accessing content → for producing content too
- content from a wide range of sources: apps, Internet (vocabulary flashcards, podcasts, videos), materials produced by
students, etc.
- Advantages of mLearning
- Level of engagement
- Amount of language generated
- Sense of ownership
- Ways of implementing mLearning
- Class sets
- Hybrid →
- BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) →
- Students bring to class technology they already own and use out of school
- School provides support and infrastructure
- Commonly heard arguments against BYOD
- Devices and hardware
- Haves and Have nots
- Tech support for the different devicesM
- Equal access to reliable Wi-Fi
- Device charged?
- Safety
- Cyberbullying
- Access to inappropriate content
- Classroom management
- Class time spent on: social media sites, texting, accessing inappropriate content
Examples for mLearning activities
 - Quiz- Are you addicted to your mobile phone?
- Do you check your phone immediately on waking up?
- Do you check your phone before going to sleep?
- Do you check your phone ……. Itt még van páár
- Phone with photos
- Water- photos, presentation
- Kahoot quizzes
- Mentimeter - voting system, world clouds, brainstorming, questions
- Quizlet live - quizzes and vocabulary practice
- More to check out: Hockly N, Dudeney G 2014 Going mobile
Just become you can doesn't mean you should!

The Five ’Ws’ for using technology (Stanley, 2011)

- Why use the technology?
- Who is the technology best for?
- What is the technology best used for?
- Where should it be used?
- When should the technology be used?
- +
- How should the technology be used? (Stanley G.)
The TPACK model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Rodgers, 2018)

- Three types of knowledge to integrate technology into teaching:

- 1) Content Knowledge (CK) - what are you teaching and what is your own knowledge of the subject?
- 2) Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) - how do your students learn best and what instructional strategies do you need to
meet their needs and the requirements? → how we can teach them in the most effective way
 - 3) Technological Knowledge (TK) - what digital tools are available to you, which do you know well enough to use, and
which would be most appropriate for the lesson at hand?
- → step back, look at your strategy, evaluate it
- Centre: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge – TPACK
What are the benefits of using technology in language teaching?
- exposure to and practice in all areas of language
- exposure to different varieties of English
- fostering group cohesion
- motivation
- learner autonomy
- interaction and collaboration between learners in the same class and in different countries
What do we need to consider when using technology?
- core values and beliefs
- aims and principles
- teacher and learner roles (facilitation, learner-centredness)
- potential dangers
- unpredictability of technology
- misuse → interactive white board → becomes teacher-centred, don't forget that ICt is a tool subordinated to our
purposes, needs and aims
- course planning → is different with ICT activities, Ss keep deadlines
Arthur C Clarke: A teacher that can be replaced by a machine, should be.

Compulsory reading
- Dudeney, G., & Hockly, N. (2007). Chapter 11: elearning: online teaching and training. In: G. Dudeney & N. Hockly, How to teach
English with technology. Pearson-Longman. (see uploaded on course website)
- Hockly, N. (2012). Mobile learning: What is it and why should you care? Modern English Teacher, 21/2. Also available:
http://www.academia.edu/2050979/Mobile_learning_What_is_it_and_why_should_you_care Retrieved on 12 March, 2017.
- Rodgers, D. (2018). The TPACK framework explained (with classroom examples).
https://www.schoology.com/blog/tpack-framework-explained Retrieved on 1 November, 2020
References
- Blaschke, L. M., Kenyon, C., & Hase, S. (2014) Experiences in Self-Determined Learning: Moving from Education 1.0 Through
Education 2.0 Towards Education 3.0. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/?s=Education+2.0
 - Hockly, N. (2012). Tech-savvy teaching: BYOD. Modern English Teacher, 21/4. Also available:
http://www.academia.edu/2065524/Tech-savvy_teaching_BYOD Retrieved on 12 March, 2017.
- Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. Part 1. On the Horizon, 9/5. MCB University Press. Also available at:
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp
- Prensky, M. (2004) The Emerging Online Life Of The Digital Native. Available at:
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Emerging_Online_Life_of_the_Digital_Native-03.pdf Retrieved on 27
November, 2017
- Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge.
Teachers College Record 108/6, p. 1017-1054.
- Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P. et al. Online University Teaching During and After the Covid-19 Crisis: Refocusing
Teacher Presence and Learning Activity. Postdigit Sci Educ 2, 923–945 (2020).
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs42438-020-00155-y Retrieved on 29 October, 2020.
- Stanley, G. (2011). Better 'the Five Ws' than 'Because it's there'.
http://blog-efl.blogspot.hu/2011/05/better-five-ws-than-because-its-there.html Retrieved on 12 March, 2017.
- White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement.
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/3171/3049#author Retrieved on 12 March,
2017

Reading
A

Week 13 - Mock Exam

Lecture 7: Metaphoric language: Idioms versus proverbs in the English language classroom (Jasmina Sazdovska)
List 2 BENEFITS and 2 CHALLENGES of teaching IDIOMS.
- Benefits: Idioms are easily accessible in English language teaching materials. They are important for learners wanting to take
language exams, especially above then B2 level. Idioms can be important to know when talking to native speakers. By using
them, we can make fun and colourful examples of language use.
- Challenges: They are difficult to be learnt because of their fixed forms and opaque meanings. They are also difficult to
translate. They might be used incorrectly by students. Idioms can be considered not important by students in the EFL
classroom.
Lecture 5: Nurturing a Global Mindset in the EFL Classroom (Divéki Rita)
Name and explain the general CHARACTERISTICS of Global Citizen Education
- Holistic pedagogy concentrates on learning contents in a way that it integrates critical issues into the curriculum. For example
human rights or climate change) It also concentrates on learning outcomes and the acquisition of wider skills. Such as skills
for collaboration or critical thinking. It also focuses on the learning process and the learning environment, which should be
interactive, learner-centred, action-oriented and transformative. Its transformative purpose is to change attitudes and
develop skills in order for the students to go out and exercise the desired change. It promoted interconnectivity, meaning
that to understand the complexities of interconnected world.
-
Lecture Z: Non-native and native EFL teachers (Medgyes Péter)
List the main advantages of non-native teachers (Non-NESTs) over native-speaker teachers (NESTs).
- NESTs and non-NESTs can be equally good teachers, however, non-NESTs can provide a better learner model for students.
They might teach language learning strategies more effectively. They can better anticipate and prevent language difficulties,
since they also gone through the same learning process. They are more sensitive to their students and they also benefit from
their ability to use the students’ mother tongue.
Name and explain the term AUTHENTICITY in CLIL
- In this context authenticity means building on students’ existing ‘knowledge of the world’, connecting learning content
subjects (art, history, science etc.) and students’ own lives, and using current materials from the media and other sources
List at least 4 CHARACTERISTICS OF LANGUAGE MATERIALS THAT HELP TO DEVELOP INTERCULTURAL
UNDERSTANDING (L11)
- the representation of culture is as important as the language learning tasks
- the tourist-consumer viewpoint has been replaced by teaching students intercultural communication skills
- provide a realistic picture of a target culture, i.e. presents people from different regional, social and ethnic backgrounds
- gets students to compare the other society to their own
 - encourages learners to observe, reflect on and participate in the target culture and prepares them for visits to that culture
as well as other cultures

Week 14 - Always look on the bright side: Being a non-native (Medgyes Péter)

ASSUMPTIONS CONCERNING NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE TEACHERS

• NESTs and non-NESTs differ in terms of their language proficiency.

• NESTs and non-NESTs differ in terms of their teaching behaviour.
• The discrepancy in language proficiency accounts for most of the differences found in their teaching behaviour.
• NESTs and non-NESTs can be equally good teachers (on their own terms)

ADVANTAGES OF NON-NATIVE TEACHERS OVER NATIVES

Non-NESTs
• can provide a better learner model.
• teach language learning strategies more effectively.
• supply more information about the English language.
• can better anticipate and prevent language difficulties.
• are more sensitive to their students.
• benefit from their ability to use the students’ mother tongue

NESTs non-NESTs

own use of English

speak better English speak poorer English

use real language use ’bookish’ language
use English more confidently use English less confidently

general attitude

adopt a more flexible approach adopt a more guided approach

are more innovative are more cautious
are less empathetic are more empathetic
attend to perceived needs attend to real needs
have far-fetched expectations have realistic expectations
are more casual are more strict
are less committed are more committed

attitude to teaching the language

are less insightful are more insightful

focus on: focus on:
fluency accuracy
meaning form
language in use grammar rules
oral skills printed word
colloquial registers formal registers
teach items in context teach items in isolation
prefer free activities prefer controlled activities
favour group/pairwork favour frontal work
use a variety of materials use a single coursebook
tolerate errors correct/punish for errors
set fewer tests set more tests
use no/less L1 use more L1
resort to no/less translation resort to more translation
assign less homework assign more homework

attitude to teaching culture

supply more cultural info supply less cultural infor

Week 15 - Paradise lost? Language policy issues in Hungary (Medgyes Péter)

What is language policy?

Body of ideas + laws/decrees/regulations + practices intended to achieve language change in a community of speakers

Total language teaching operation = hierarchy of decision-making functions

- Level 1 (political): WHY? → whether to teach Ls, which Ls, whom to teach, how much money to spend?
- Level 2 (political-linguistic-educational): WHAT? → when, how much, how long, for what purposes to teach?
- Level 3 (educational-methodological): HOW? → what methods, procedures & techniques to apply?

Bloom or gloom?

International perspective (Eurobarometer 2012)

Percentage 1 FL 2 FLs 3+ FLs

EU 54 25 10
HU 35 13 4

Language distribution (Eurobarometer 2012)

Percentage English French German

EU 38 12 11
HU 20 3 18

National perspective

Year Percentage
1980 9
1996 11
2001 19
2006 29
2012 35

Highlights of Golden Age (1989-2009)

1. Private language schools (since early 1980s)

International House Budapest & lots of others
E followed by G ↔ interest in R zero (=dead L)
Mushrooming ever since
Nyelviskolák Szakmai Egyesülete (since 1992): appr. 50 L schools wearing „Q” (quality) logo

2. Bilingual schools (since 1987)

10 schools (incl. 3 R): CLIL (= content and language integrated learning)
Established in disadvantaged areas/schools: „Elite by merit”
Today over 200 bilingual schools: 2/3 E + 1/3 G
Ideal solution: 1-2 subjects to be taught in target L in EVERY school!
3. Russian retraining programme (1990-1996)
Aims: to prevent RTs from losing job + to alleviate shortage of E/GTs
2-year L training + 3-year teacher training = free of charge!
5,000 graduates from 11 uni’s/colleges = 3,000 RTs + 2,000 others
Have they become good Ts?

4. Fast-track programme (1990-2004)

Aim: to supply E/GTs for schools asap → 3y single-major preservice training
Student-centred education + democratic ideals + teamwork
Emphasis on: L practice → meth → school practicum (support from partner + mentor + CETT tutor)
CETT ELTE: 1,000 fresh ETs → overproduction of ETs

5. National Core Curriculum (1995)

FLs well represented (over-represented?): 12-20%
FL compulsory frorm grade 4 + 2 FLs in all grammar schools/certain vocational schools
Free choice of languages ↔ mandatory E?
EU norms: „trilingual EU citizen” + comm. competence + CEFR (=KER)

6. Examination reform (1995)

Monopoly of „Rigó” exam crushed → 30 accredited exam systems in 24 centres
Two-level (medium+advanced) school-leaving exam in all subjects
Advanced FL exam = B2 complex state accredited L exam ↔ yet state exams as popular as ever
200,000 candidates/year → 80% are school students

7. World – Language programme (2003-2009)

Designed by LT experts → consensual political backing
Aims & principles: boosting FL education + FLs should be learnt at school + promoting equal opportunities + supporting
innovative ideas
Comprehensive programme package: nearly 50% of 3,000 applicants successful
open application system + 1 billion forints (3.5 MEuro)

8. Year of Intensive Language Learning (since 2004)

Grade 9 students study FLs in about 15 lessons/week in any grammar/vocational school
Aims and principles: same as those of W–L programme
Free choice of Ls: 2/3 E + 1/3 G + 9 more Ls
440 schools + 900 groups + 18 000 children (2009)
Strengths: intensive L learning + all shareholders satisfied
Weaknesses: only 13% take second FL + only 20% take advanced-level exam + majority quit after passing exam +
cost-effective?

Common goals → joint efforts

Individual level: increased motivation to learn FLs owing to historical circumstances

Government level: realisation that FL education is of utmost importance → momentous decisions taken to give FL education a boost →
creation of legal background to implement decisions → pumping money into implementation → innovative ideas from L teaching experts
welcome
Political & individual wills operated in harmony → mutual reinforcement → significant results

Paradise lost?

Outgoing socialist gov’t (2009-2010): diminishing attention paid to FL education

Incoming conservative (2010-2012): no coherent Lpolicy for 2ys

Rumours
- Primary schools: 2 FLs compulsory + only German & English on offer + first FL = German („English is too easy”)
 - Secondary grammar schools: abolition of YILL + 3 FLs in six-grade/eight-grade schools → Latin as 4th FL in eight-grade
schools
- Bilingual education is to be abolished
- Teacher education: BA/MA training merged + primary/secondary training separated

Public education law (2011): hardly any mention of FL instruction

National Core Curriculum (NAT) (Gov’t decree, 2012): see below

Frame curricula (Ministry regulation, 2012): centrally designed documents + based on school types + 90% of content obligatory + non-L
specific aims, objectives & requirements + L-specific details featuring in supplement

Local curricula: locally/school designed document + determined by appropriate frame curricula + 10% elbow room

Proportion of FL instruction in NAT

Grade 1-4 5-6 7-8 9-10 11-12

Percentage 2-6 10-18 10-15 12-20 13

Minimum exit levels (NAT)

Grade 4 6 8 12
FL1 --- A1 A2 B1
FL2 --- --- --- A2

Minumum exit levels for FL specialisation (NAT)

Grade 4 6 8 10 12
FL1 --- A1 A2-B1 B1-B2 B2-C1
FL2 --- --- A1 A2 B1-B2

Reality (as manifested in NAT)

- Primary schools: 1 FL compulsory/1 FL optional + German & English supplemented with French & Chinese + „easy/difficult”
distinction disregarded
- Secondary schools: YILL strictly regulated → numbers likely to diminish gradually + no mention of 3rd/4th L + Latin may be
FL2
- Bilingual education must begin in grade 1 + menu of target L subjects identified + H history to be taught in H
- Teacher education: BA/MA training merged + primary/secondary training separated

Summary

Disharmony between increased individual needs & policy decisions (e.g., FL competence = key competence ↔ YILL threatened)
Isolationist policy. „Europeans have very positive attitudes towards multilingualism” (Eurobarometer 2012)
Social gap likely to widen (víz. diminishing scope of YILL)
Golden Age over = period of decline → period of progress shall return!

References

Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment (2001). Strasbourg: Council of
Europe/Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Europeans and their languages (2012). European Commission, Brussels: Eurobarometer.
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf
Medgyes, P. (2011) Aranykor – nyelvoktatásunk két évtizede: 1989-2009. [The golden age of foreign language education in Hungary:
1989-2009]. Budapest: Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó.
Compulsory reading

Öveges, E. (2013). Idegennyelv-oktatás a köznevelésben – változások az új szabályozók tükrében [Teaching foreign language in public
education – recent changes in the legislation]. Modern Nyelvoktatás 19(3): 16-24.

Week 13 - Vizsgakérdések és a válaszaim is itt vannak (ötöst kaptam a vizsgáért, de nem

láttam, hogy mit rontottam el)

Lecture 4: Perspectives on Multicultural Education (Andrea Thurmer)

Explain the term MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

Multicultural education is a response to challenges in multicultural societies. It refers to methods, strategies and techniques used in
the classroom that meet the needs of a culturally diverse group of students from different linguistic backgrounds. It also includes
teaching students with disabilities or special needs and students who identify different gender roles. Multicultural education accepts
differences that students have (race, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, or any difference encompassed by students or
teachers).

Lecture 6: The Lexical Approach (Révész Judit)

Explain the term COLLOCATIONAL FIELD and illustrate its significance with 2 examples.

Collocations can have huge or small collocational fields. When a collocation has a huge collocational field, it co-occurs freely with lots
of words. For example, collocations with make or come - make a mistake/ charge/ money/ an effort/ a sound/ an excuse, come
close/under attack/ to decision/ to an end etc. Collocations with small collocational field have one or very few words with which they
co-occur. Such as shrug (shrug someone's shoulders) or rancid (butter goes rancid). Certain words can only be differentiated by their
collocational field, like tell, speak, say.

Lecture 7: Metaphoric language: Idioms versus proverbs in the English language classroom (Jasmina Sazdovska)

List 2 BENEFITS and 2 CHALLENGES of teaching PROVERBS.

One benefit of teaching proverbs is that they have counterparts in other languages and cultures which can foster cross-cultural
communication. Another benefit of teaching proverbs is that they foster creativity and focus on moral of the stories. Students learn
how to value things and can also learn life lessons with them. One challenge posed by proverbs in the classroom is that they are rarely
found in the coursebooks, therefore, teachers need to create their own materials. Another challenge is that students can find them
irrelevant when their aim is to be able to speak with natives.

Lecture 1: Dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants: A (very) short history of English Language Teaching (Christopher Ryan)

List at least 3 features of the DIRECT METHOD.

- mainly native teachers teach this method, therefore, the classroom is absolutely monolingual

- there are a lot of repetitions, which later form a habit

- only everyday vocabulary is taught and objects are used to demonstrate concrete vocabulary items, association of ideas is used to
teach abstract vocabulary items

Lecture 8: Oral Genres in the ELT Classroom: A Square Peg in a Round Hole? (Veljanovszki Dávid)

List at least 3 types of GENRE and CONTEXT AWARENESS ACTIVITIES for the classroom as described by Millar (2011).

- spoken <-> written language activities --> collect two authentic texts, one oral and one written and compare them in different aspects
and come to a conclusion with the students at the end
- problem - solution activity --> introduce this widely used discourse structure to the class by example posters

- text - audience - purpose activity --> explain students that there are many different ways of writing / genres. Introduce one in
class, like writing a letter and discuss differences between different types of letters (formal, informal, to a friend) and differences
between letters and other genres like memos or essays.

Lecture 3: Have you got the energy? Teacher energies and learning groups (Uwe Pohl)

Explain what GROUP ENERGY is.

Group energy is what is felt in the air during a class. It can be positive or negative depending on emotions and charges in the air. it is
positive when the room feels warm and the students are enthusiastic. It is negative when the students are tired and demotivated.
These charges can also be manifested in the physical space: are the students sitting close to each other or far away, do they use
gestures or show no emotions etc. In short I would say it is the presence or lack of harmony of the group.

Lecture 2: Classroom Cultures: From Coral Gardens to Learning Networks (Frank Prescott)

Name 3 METAPHORS FOR THE CLASSROOM discussed in Breen (1985).

- classroom as experimental laboratory --> Íis based on Second Language Acquisition Theory. The main function of the language
classroom is to expose students to linguistic input and learning outcome. The teacher is like an experimental psychologist who is
responsible for the students' comprehension and good learning behaviours. Problem is that this metaphor ignores what goes on in the
students' heads.

- classroom as discourse --> where the participants (teacher and students) play an active role and the classroom is like a text which
can be read. The problem is that we cannot understand the intention behind the text.

- classroom as coral garden --> emphasises the importance of understanding the classroom situation --> can result in increased
students' engagement and motivation and thus, promote better learning. The classroom is a highly complex environment and all points
of views should be taken into consideration.

Lecture 11: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em: ICT methodologies in the language classroom (Major Éva & Szabó Éva)

Define ONLINE LEARNING, BLENDED LEARNING and VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT.

Online learning: is when learning takes place on the internet.

Blended learning: this is what we experienced this semester. Half of the couse was held face-to-face, and the other half was held
online.

Virtual Learning Environment: it is a platform where online learning takes place. It is also called a Learner Management System or
virtual classroom. At this university, such a platform we use is Moodle.

Lecture 5: Nurturing a Global Mindset in the EFL Classroom (Divéki Rita)

Name and explain 3 WAYS of NURTURING GLOBALLY COMPETENT STUDENTS.

- create a safe place --> where students feel free to express their thought, feelings and ideas especially in topics like bullying, or
diversity

- choose a suitable topic --> based on deep engagement, local and global connections, its significance, and its disciplinary and
interdisciplinary grounding (such topics are: poverty, refugees, water issues, law and justice, etc.)
- use an engaging activity --> which requires the active participation of the students, such as games, videos, thought-provoking texts,
songs about current events or data collection to name a few

Lecture 9: The teacher as preacher, the teacher as facilitator (Szesztay Margit)

Explain the concept of TEACHER PRESENCE and factors that influence it.

Teacher presence is a unique atmosphere that is created by the teacher in the classroom, according to Underhill. The factors that can
influence it are the personal traits of the teacher (how patient, confident, understanding or open s/he is), the teacher's voice,
gestures and body language; and the teaching methods used.

Lecture 10: Upgrade the system: alternative approaches to assessment (Lázár Ildikó)

List and explain at least 4 METHODS OF ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT.

- Teachers can use fun game elements in the classroom, like giving fun points or trophies to the students.

- Students can keep learning process diaries, which are similar to the portfolios as they help document the students' learning process
and encourage self-assessment.

- Students can assess themselves, this is called self-assessment, to check their progress and reflect on what they have learnt so far.

- Assessments should not only focus on language but on content as well. This is called an observation-driven assessment, which keeps
record of the students' achievements and weaknesses as well.