Introduction to Johanna Kapitánffy's
case study
by Antoinette Camilleri Grima
|
Johanna Kapitánffy
offers a critical appraisal of a bilingual school
programme in Budapest. Several of the questions
raised in this case study have implications for
similar programmes elsewhere. For instance,
Kapitánffy asks (a) whether this kind of
bilingual provision has become an elitist choice
that excludes forever those students who do not
pass the entry examination; and (b) whether it is
right for schools simply to respond to market forces
such as the dominant choice for English that leaves
little space for extensive learning provision in
other foreign languages (ACG_introduction.ppt). |
On the other hand, a number of benefits are accrued through
these kinds of bilingual programmes, such as the:
- Expanding domains of foreign language use by students
at school, in view of current educational and future professional
needs, in addition to social realities. This is certainly
one of the recommendations put forward in the Guide,
in that (a) "speakers" awareness of their plurilingual
repertoires may lead them to give equal value to each of
the varieties they and other speakers use, even if they
do not have the same functions" (Guide, p.
63) and, (b) "the principle of plurilingualism should
be seen in relation to the European project" (Guide,
p. 68), a project which is clearly explained in the Guide
(e.g. section 5.2).
- Much more positive attitudes to language learning.
The increased motivation that results from a diversified
language programme at school leads to "a curiosity
about languages that will lead them (i.e. the learners)
to develop their own linguistic repertoires" (Guide,
p. 63).
- Acquisition of additional skills, such as those required
in intercultural communication. It seems that bilingual
streams such as the one described here (as well as in Grajal
de Blas, Hurghis, Calleja), have intercultural communicative
competence as an explicit aim, and probably have more time
and better opportunities to incorporate it into the curriculum,
than those schools where foreign language lessons continue
to occupy a very limited space as subjects.
|
A
foreign language as a medium of instruction in a secondary school
in Hungary
Johanna Kapitánffy
The school
Táncsics Mihály Hungarian-English General Secondary
School is situated in Budapest. It is a four-grade secondary
school receiving pupils aged 14-15, but it also offers pupils of
the same age a five-year bilingual programme known in Hungarian
as "kéttannyelvu oktatás" (KTO).
In this paper I use the abbreviation KTO to mean the kind of bilingual
education in place in the Hungarian context.
KTO education means that besides the mother tongue (Hungarian)
another language is used as the medium of instruction in the teaching
and learning of at least three subjects. Unlike in bilingual
programmes in many countries, the additional language is not a second
language for the pupils but a foreign language and they do not have
the opportunity to use it outside school. In fact, in many
respects Hungarian KTO education is similar to content and language
integrated learning (CLIL/EMILE) defined as "any dual-focused
educational context in which an additional language, thus not usually
the first language of the learners involved, is used as a medium
in the teaching and learning of non-language content. If there is
no dual-focus on language and non-language content within a lesson
or a course then it does not qualify as a form of CLIL/EMILE"
(Marsh, 2002:15-17) (Dora Kovacs.doc) .
Táncsics operates this programme for one class (about 36
pupils) every year. The subjects involved in the KTO programme
are Mathematics, Physics, Music, Drawing and the Arts. Classes are
split up into two groups in these lessons as it is prescribed in
the Guidelines for Bilingual School Education (see more on this
below).
The school was founded 41 years ago and already in the late 1970s
it placed special emphasis on teaching foreign languages besides
the compulsory Russian language. This meant that the pupils
of Táncsics all learnt two modern foreign languages, Russian,
which was compulsory and which they had already started at primary
school, and another language from a choice of English, French, German
or Spanish. At that time the school was quite exceptional
in that pupils had 5-7 lessons a week of the second foreign language
(apart from Russian). Thanks to this programme and the well-trained
and enthusiastic language and also non-language teaching staff,
Táncsics has always had a very good reputation as a secondary
school with a strong language programme.
There are 65 full time teachers employed in the school, and out
of these 27 are language teachers (41.5% of the teaching staff).
It is important to know that secondary school teachers in Hungary
usually teach two subjects (sometimes even three) as a result of
their university studies where they usually have two majors.
Obviously, among the 27 language teachers you can find teachers
whose other subject is a non-language subject while others teach
two modern languages.
The school population is about 650, and there are four parallel
classes in a grade with about 35 pupils in a class. Every
class has a special profile. As will be explained in more
detail below, there is a Hungarian-English bilingual class, another
special language class with 6 foreign language lessons weekly (half
the pupils learn English and the other half Spanish as their first
foreign language), a class specialising in Biology and there is
a class where half the pupils study Advanced Mathematics while the
other half specialises in information technology.
The pedagogical work of teachers is supported in Táncsics
by the different subject teacher teams. As for foreign languages,
there are two teams: an English and German teacher team as well
as a French, Italian, Spanish and Russian teacher team. The
two teams work closely together and hold a joint meeting once every
two months.
Subject teacher teams usually have meetings once a month
where they discuss current issues. Each team has a leader
who is responsible for the professional work of the team.
The teams organise peer observations besides the team leader
visiting at least one lesson per teacher every school year.
Teachers themselves consider peer observations to be extremely
useful from the perspective of their professional development
(RoadMap_ACG).
Before going into greater detail about how this project came into
being and how the bilingual programme is organised, it is useful
to provide some background information about the Hungarian education
system.
The status and distribution of foreign languages
in compulsory schooling in Hungary
Until 1989, when the communist regime in Hungary collapsed, it
was compulsory for all pupils both at primary and secondary level
to learn Russian. Apart from a few primary schools specialising
in languages, only general secondary schools (gymnasium) offered
a second (western) foreign language, "which meant that about
15% of all pupils at secondary level had the opportunity to learn
Russian and another language" (Vágó, 1999:26).
Now that Russian is not compulsory, it is possible for Hungarian
school children (a choice often dictated by parents) to choose the
foreign language they wish to learn from the languages that are
offered in the curriculum of the school they attend. This
free choice of languages to be learnt, coupled with heightened competition
for pupils due to their decreasing number, forces schools to satisfy
above all the demands of parents and children regarding the provision
of foreign languages. This means that market forces play a
decisive role in the distribution of foreign languages in schools
and as a result the dominance of English is growing stronger year
by year. The following two tables show the fundamental change
in the distribution of foreign languages at primary and secondary
level between 1989 and 2003.
Table 1: The distribution of foreign languages in primary schools
in Hungary
School-year |
English |
German |
French |
Russian |
Other |
1989/90 |
4% |
5% |
0.4% |
89.0% |
1.6% |
1992/93 |
32% |
45.9% |
1.7% |
19.4% |
1.0% |
1997/98 |
43.7% |
52.9% |
1.2% |
1.2% |
1.0% |
1999/00 |
47.7% |
49.0% |
1.0% |
0.8% |
1.5% |
2003/04 |
58.1% |
40.1% |
0.5% |
0.3% |
1.0% |
(Csécsi, 2003/2004)
Table 2: The distribution of foreign languages at secondary level
in Hungary
School-year |
English |
German |
French |
Russian |
Other |
1989/90 |
21.8% |
17.8% |
4.4% |
51.8% |
4.2% |
1992/93 |
40.2% |
35.7% |
6.2% |
13.2% |
4.7% |
1997/98 |
46.6% |
39.8% |
5.5% |
1.8% |
6.3% |
1999/00 |
48.2% |
39.6% |
5.1% |
0.9% |
6.2% |
2003/04 |
51.8% |
37.4% |
4.5% |
0.4% |
5.9% |
(Csécsi, 2003/2004)
Both at primary and at secondary
levels pupils are counted in each language they learn. This
explains why in 1989/90 the percentage for Russian is less than
100%, although this was the last school-year when this language
was still compulsory for everybody. The figures indicate how
the share of Russian in the curriculum dramatically dropped to well
below 1 per cent by 2003/04 and how stable the rise of English has
been for the past 15 years. Between 1990 and 2000 German,
which is considered to be a regional lingua franca in Central Europe,
used to be the most popular foreign language at primary level.
Since that time, however, the share of English has been steadily
increasing at that level, too, and as a result German has been losing
ground. At secondary level English has always had the strongest
position since 1990 and its share in the curriculum is getting larger.
All in all, the status of English in public education in Hungary
reflects the same tendencies as in other European countries and
the following statement is equally true of the situation in Hungary:
"Whether or not one believes that English is "threatening"
Europe with linguistic homogeneity, it remains the case that dominant
social representations attribute every virtue to this language
(for use, communication, the new technologies, etc) and thus contribute
to disseminating an ideology of monolingualism…English
therefore not only plays the role of a language of communication
but is also valued for itself as the language of a model of life
or society".
(Beacco and Byram, 2003: 28)
In the second half of the 1970s and especially in the 1980s several
surveys pointed out that the level of foreign language skills among
the adult population in Hungary was alarmingly poor. "This
can be attributed to several reasons: firstly to the isolation of
the country for several decades, to the undemanding nature of the
labour market in this respect, and to the rather inefficient compulsory
Russian language teaching" (Halász and Lannert, 1997:43).
The demand for teaching western languages started to grow dramatically
in the 1970s and 1980s. At that time the abolition of compulsory
Russian teaching was out of the question, and other solutions had
to be found, among them the introduction of bilingual educational
programmes referred to as KTO in Hungarian.
The first bilingual general secondary schools in Hungary were founded
in 1987. KTO programmes were launched in English, French,
German, Spanish and Italian and there were three general secondary
schools that introduced a Russian-Hungarian bilingual programme
(Vámos, 1998). Nowadays there is only one Russian-Hungarian
bilingual school left, operating in Budapest. From the early
1990s all school types (with the exception of vocational training
schools) started such programmes both at primary and secondary level.
If one looks at secondary level schools alone, in the school year
1999/00, 56% of students in bilingual programmes attended general
secondary schools, whilst 44% attended vocational secondary schools.
Such secondary schools function in every region in Hungary.
Bilingual secondary education is provided at around 10% of all the
secondary schools, typically in one class in every grade.
Regarding the number of all secondary school pupils, about 2-3 percent
take part in a bilingual programme.
Table 3: The number of Hungarian - foreign language schools
and the number of pupils between 2001 and 200 in Hungary:
level |
2001/2002 |
2002/2003 |
2003/2004 |
|
Number
of
schools |
Number
of
pupils |
Number
of
schools |
Number
of
pupils |
Number
of
schools |
Number
of
pupils |
Primary
Grades
1-8 |
68 |
11 382 |
68 |
13 269 |
76 |
14 937 |
Secondary
Grades
9-13 |
93 |
14 015 |
101 |
14 037 |
98 |
15 352 |
(Csécsi, 2003/2004) About 50% of secondary-level bilingual
programmes are offered in English and 30% in German. This reflects
more or less the same distribution of languages as in Table 2, and
indicates that in this form of education, English too retains a
dominant position.
KTO or bilingual education is legally regulated by a Ministry of
Education document called "Guidelines for Bilingual School
Education". The application of these principles is not
obligatory but the central budget allocates supplementary funding
(the so called bilingual normative financing) only to schools that
follow these guidelines. With this supplementary funding,
bilingual institutions receive a per capita normative financing
which is 30% higher than the non-bilingual subsidy. The most
important principles in this document are as follows:
- Schools with a bilingual programme must employ a teacher whose
mother tongue is the foreign language involved in the programme.
- The number of students cannot go beyond 18 in the foreign language
lessons or in the lessons where the medium of instruction is the
foreign language. This basically means that the classes
have to be split up into two groups for these lessons. (The
normal number of pupils in a class is between 30-36).
- The school has the right to decide which subjects will be involved
in the bilingual programme.
- At least three subjects have to be learnt/taught in the foreign
language. The proportion of time devoted to foreign language
lessons and subject lessons taught in the foreign language cannot
be less than 35% of the total curriculum time. In the case of
early bilingual education at primary level (the first eight grades)
this proportion cannot exceed 50%.
- Except for Hungarian Language and Literature, any other subject
can be learnt/taught in the foreign language.
- At the end of their secondary studies pupils have the right
to take the secondary school-leaving examination in the foreign
language that was the medium of instruction.
- A bilingual programme cannot start later than in the ninth grade
of compulsory education.
- Besides the foreign language being the medium of instruction,
bilingual programmes also have to offer another foreign language.
- Bilingual programmes have to include the teaching/learning of
cultural knowledge about countries in which the target language(s)
is/are spoken.
The Guidelines differentiate between three types of bilingual education
at secondary level:
- Four-year programmes after eight years of primary education
for pupils aged 14-15 whose foreign language skills allow them
to learn the given subjects in the foreign language without an
intensive preparatory year. Obviously, there are only a
few schools that offer this version of bilingual education.
- Six-year programmes after six years of primary education for
pupils aged 12-13. During the first two years (grades 7
and 8) the pupils follow an intensive training course in the foreign
language, with a relatively high number of foreign language lessons
besides learning other subjects determined by the Hungarian Core
Curriculum. They start learning certain subjects in the
foreign medium as from grade 9. There are only a few secondary
schools offering such a programme throughout Hungary since there
are strict regulations on the maximum number of lessons a pupil
can have in a day making it extremely difficult to organize this
type of programme.
- Five-year programmes after eight years of primary education
for pupils aged 14-15 whose foreign language skills do not render
them capable of content learning in the foreign language.
As a result, these pupils take their secondary school-leaving
examination at the end of grade 13 while the majority of pupils
taking part in non-KTO education take their secondary school final
examinations at the end of grade 12 given the fact that compulsory
schooling lasts for 12 years in Hungary. In fact Act LXXIX
of 1993 on Public Education makes it possible for pupils in KTO
programmes to take their final examination at the end of year
thirteen, i.e. for them compulsory schooling lasts one more year.
During the first year of the programme (grade 9) they receive
very intensive training in the foreign language (18-20 lessons
per week) with the aim of enabling them to start content learning
in the foreign language from grade 10 onwards.
The implementation of the bilingual
programme
in Táncsics
The bilingual programme was introduced in Táncsics
in 2002, so the oldest bilingual pupils are now in grade 11,
and they have another two years before taking their secondary
school leaving final examinations. At the beginning
there was a two-year preparatory phase during which the school
and the teaching staff prepared for the new programme (Strategies)
.
The teaching staff put special emphasis on a preparatory period
prior to the commencement of a full-blown bilingual programme.
First of all they needed to decide which language to choose as the
other medium of instruction besides Hungarian for their KTO programme:
"The pressure for English was so strong that we did
not even think of choosing another language. Parents wanted English
and most teachers who spoke a foreign language, spoke English.
It would have been very difficult to find and even more complicated
to employ subject teachers speaking a less widely used language."
(H.É. a teacher at Táncsics)
The staff wanted to benefit from the fact that by that time several
Hungarian-English bilingual programmes had been running for 12-13
years in Hungary with a great amount of experience on the part of
the teachers and the school leadership. Consequently, the
teachers of Táncsics contacted some of the bilingual general
secondary schools with a good reputation and consulted their curriculum;
visited lessons in those schools; and organised meetings with their
teaching staff. In the meantime the school had to find a native
speaker of English with teaching qualifications to employ her/him
as it is regulated in the Guidelines mentioned earlier. It
took the school almost two years to find the right teacher.
However, the greatest challenge was to determine which non-language
subject teachers would be willing, and able, to teach their subjects
in English, more precisely to find the right teachers to teach their
subject with the dual focus characteristic of KTO i.e. concentrating
partly on the foreign language and partly on the subject content.
Teachers had to be found with a relatively high level of English
proficiency and who were willing to further improve their linguistic
skills as well as take part in in-service training courses on the
methodology of KTO. In applying this methodology subject teachers
have to devote a certain percentage of each KTO lesson to concentrate
on the language, teaching vocabulary, checking understanding etc.
The length of time spent on the language rather than on the content
varies from lesson to lesson according to pupils" needs:
"When you teach a subject in a language which is not
the mother tongue of the pupils, you simply cannot walk into the
classroom and do the same as in a non-KTO classroom. In a KTO
lesson you are half a language teacher and half a subject teacher.
For me preparing for a KTO lesson takes twice as much time as
for a non-KTO lesson."
(Sz. P., a teacher in the programme at Táncsics)
In fact, the curriculum level decision regarding the subjects to
be taught in English basically depended on the teacher supply in
Táncsics. By the time they launched the new programme,
they had employed three new teachers (a Mathematics, a Music and
a native English teacher) to create the group of colleagues who
work in the programme.
As a final step in the preparatory phase, the teachers teaching
in the new programme (both language and non-language teachers) started
to design the curriculum for the bilingual education at Táncsics.
This group plays a very important role in shaping and developing
the programme. They meet once a week to discuss different issues
concerning each and every bilingual class, and if necessary they
deal with problems of individual pupils too.
The KTO curriculum
According to the curriculum, the general aims of the bilingual
programme in Táncsics are as follows:
- To help pupils acquire high level skills in English and in another
foreign language enabling them to use these languages successfully
in all kinds of context (personal, educational, professional etc.),
- To help pupils develop a plurilingual, open attitude and mentality
making them capable and fond of learning new languages and getting
to know new cultures,
- To help them acquire intercultural skills enabling them to take
part in international mobility and communication.
Table 4: The timetable for the five year (grades 9-13) programme
|
Grades |
Subject |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
|
Weekly
number of lessons |
Hungarian Language and Literature
|
2 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
History and Social Studies |
|
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
Human Studies and Ethics |
|
|
|
|
1 |
English Language and Cultural
Studies |
18 |
6 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
Second Foreign Language |
|
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
Mathematics |
2 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
Information Technology |
2 |
|
|
|
|
Introduction to Philosophy |
|
|
|
|
1 |
Physics |
|
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
Biology |
|
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
Chemistry |
|
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
Geography and Environmental
Studies |
|
2 |
2 |
|
|
Music |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
Drawing and Visual Culture |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
|
Physical Education |
2+1 |
2+1 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
Drama and Dancing |
1 |
|
|
|
|
Art |
|
|
|
1 |
1 |
Film and Media Studies |
|
|
1 |
|
|
Social Studies |
|
|
1 |
1 |
|
(a) The preparatory year for English
Grade 9 is a preparatory year with a high number of English language
lessons. The classes are split up into three groups for English
in this grade with no more than 12 pupils in a group. The
groups are organised according to the English proficiency level
of the pupils. Each group has 4 English teachers (one of them being
the native speaker of English) who share the teaching of English
as follows: one has 9 lessons a week with the group, the other three
have 3 lessons a week each. Besides using the same course
book, each of them focuses on one of the four skills. Usually
the "main" teacher puts special emphasis on reading
and also grammar while the native English speaker always focuses
on speaking. The English language skills of the pupils who come
to the bilingual programme are at pre-intermediate level (Council
of Europe A2 or A2+) on average.
The curriculum states the following objectives for English by the
end of grade 9:
- To help pupils become autonomous language learners capable of
determining their own learning needs, strengths and weaknesses
as well as taking responsibility for their own learning process,
- To motivate them to improve their linguistic skills,
- To help pupils acquire upper-intermediate level proficiency
in English (Council of Europe B2) in all four skills,
- To prepare pupils for content learning in English putting special
emphasis on the skill of note taking in English as well as helping
them acquire the special terminology and language of the subjects
they are going to learn in English from grade 10 onwards.
At the end of year nine pupils take an end-of-year examination
in English. The pass mark is 60%. If a pupil does not
achieve it, s/he is advised to leave the bilingual programme and
join the parallel special English class. However, pupils do
have the right to stay in the programme. So far there have been
2-3 pupils every year who have not achieved 60% in the test.
Subjects other than English
Besides learning English through following the very intensive
programme, these pupils also have Hungarian as well as Mathematics,
Information Technology, Music, Drawing and PE lessons. The
medium of instruction for all the subjects other than English is
the Hungarian language in grade 9 with a very strong emphasis on
the development of the necessary competencies to study the given
subject (learning to learn skills) and also aiming at helping pupils
whose knowledge especially in the Hungarian Language and Mathematics
lags behind the rest of the class to catch up with the others.
Mathematics is a subject which from grade 10 onwards will be taught
in English and to make learning it in English easier certain concepts
are pre-taught to them already in grade 9 in Hungarian.
(b) Grades 10 to 13
English Language and Cultural Studies
As the timetable indicates (Table 4) there is a radical drop in
the number of English lessons from grade 10 onwards and the name
of the subject becomes English Language and Cultural Studies.
In fact, during these last four years the emphasis is gradually
shifted within the subject from foreign language learning to learning
about the cultures of English speaking countries in English.
As a result, content learning even within the foreign language curriculum
takes an increasing amount of time. Especially in grades 10
and 11 the teaching and learning of English Cultural Studies builds
a lot on the competencies and factual knowledge pupils have already
gained in subjects like Geography, History, Arts etc. They
deal with familiar topic areas from a new perspective in a foreign
language. This has a positive influence on the pupils"
performance and motivation even in the original subjects (Geography,
History) reinforcing and deepening what they have already learnt.
All this presupposes very close cooperation between English language
teachers and Geography, History and Arts teachers.
Subjects taught according to KTO education
As has already been mentioned Mathematics, Physics, Music, Drawing
and Arts are the non-language subjects involved in the bilingual
programme. Teachers teaching these subjects apply the methodology
of KTO education. The curriculum says that "in these
lessons the right balance has to be found between content and language
with the aim of preparing pupils to acquire the same competencies
and to gain the same knowledge as pupils in monolingual (Hungarian)
classes" (The Local Pedagogical Programme and the Local Curriculum
of Táncsics Mihály General Secondary School).
Non-language teachers from Táncsics involved in the bilingual
programme say that the content-language ratio in their lessons
ranges from 90% content and 10% language to sometimes 40% content
and almost 60% language, although the latter is rather exceptional.
"You have to make compromise all the time between language
teaching and content teaching. It is not easy. And you have
to accept that it is impossible to teach all the content that you
can teach and pupils can learn in a lesson where the medium of instruction
is the mother tongue" (K. G, a teacher at Táncsics).
In fact, regarding the different subjects, the Hungarian National
Core Curriculum does not differentiate between the requirements
of KTO education and non-KTO education. Furthermore, KTO pupils
have to sit for the same secondary school leaving final examination
in each subject as their non-KTO counterparts. They have the
right to choose the language (Hungarian or the foreign language)
in which they take the final exam in a given subject if the medium
of instruction was a foreign language.
(c) The organisation of foreign language
education in Táncsics
According to the Hungarian National Core Curriculum every general
secondary school has to teach two foreign languages to their pupils.
The language the pupils have learnt at primary (English or German)
has to be continued, and in grade 9 they have to start a second
foreign language.
At Táncsics, the first foreign language of the pupils in
the Biology and Mathematics-Informatics classes is either English
or German depending on which language they learnt at primary school.
In the other two classes (bilingual and special language classes)
they continue with English. The continuation of the foreign
language pupils learnt at primary sounds easier than it really is
given the fact that their language skills vary considerably.
So teachers have to put in a lot of effort and to do a lot of extra
work during the first semester to help "weak" pupils
improve their skills while also motivating those with a relatively
good command of the language.
As for the obligatory second foreign language, in Táncsics
pupils can choose between English, German, French, Italian,
Spanish or Russian. The general problem in Hungarian
secondary schools is that the majority of pupils in a given
class choose German or English as a second foreign language,
and as a result there are not enough candidates for the other
four or more languages. To solve this problem and to
keep or even strengthen the linguistic diversity of the school
Táncsics has made a special effort: the timetable is
organised so that pupils in each grade have their second foreign
language lessons at the same time (same days, same hours).
In this case if from the four parallel classes in a grade
at least 12 pupils wish to learn Italian for example, the
school can organise their lessons and they will not have to
join the English or German group of their own class.
This special organisation results in a few drawbacks in the
timetable: for example pupils have two, sometimes three "empty"
lessons a week, when there is no subject taught to them and
they have to go to the school library where they can study
or read something on their own. Yet all the language
teachers in the school agree that it is worth organising the
timetable in this way since with the exception of Russian
all the possible foreign languages are learnt in each grade
and the fact that pupils can learn the language they choose
plays an extremely important role in their motivation (Guide_EF.ppt).
Discussion
Since the introduction of KTO education, there have been debates
in Hungary on the problem of teaching subjects in a foreign language
and on the relevance and appropriateness of the policy that sets
the same requirements in each subject for KTO and non-KTO education.
Although no large-scale research on this issue has been carried
out so far, more and more teachers and educationalists are arguing
that the foreign language does complicate the subject learning and
slow down the progress in the curriculum subject. Some even
say that this fact should be recognised in the examination requirements
of the various subjects. The Guidelines of bilingual school
education partly recognise this difficulty by requiring schools
to split up the classes into smaller groups for subject lessons
where the medium of instruction is a foreign language.
The fact that in Hungary entrance into higher education is still
quite selective makes this problem even more complicated. Entrance
to higher education is based on competitive examinations (the competition
being very strong for certain universities). As a result,
teachers and secondary schools feel forced to design rather "heavy"
subject curricula with a great amount of lexical and theoretical
knowledge involved. This leaves very little time for the language
ratio as opposed to content ratio.
No wonder that in this situation schools choose the solution of
admitting into their bilingual programmes pupils whose academic
and learning skills are above average. This, however, reinforces
the selective character of our system of public education and is
in sharp contrast with current educational and political trends.
Conclusion
In Táncsics Secondary General School, as in many secondary
schools in other countries, bilingual education was introduced in
response to the demand for better foreign language education within
a given school curriculum where it was impossible to include additional
curricular time for foreign languages. The new programme can
be considered "as an educational solution to provide young
people with better skills in foreign languages" (Marsh, 2002:
9). The following conclusions can be drawn from the case study:
- The implementation of a KTO programme requires a relatively
long - sometimes taking several years - preparatory period.
- Strong cooperation and a good team spirit within the teaching
staff make the pedagogical work more successful in this field,
too.
- In Hungary the most successful is the five-year (1 preparatory
+ 4) programme because it provides pupils with a firm linguistic
foundation thanks to the preparatory year.
- KTO education does not mean teaching in a foreign language what
and how we teach in the mother tongue. It means that there
is a dual focus on the foreign language and the content and their
ratio varies from lesson to lesson according to the pupils"
needs.
- It is essential to understand that KTO is a methodological approach
which requires specific professional skills. Language fluency
alone is not sufficient for effective teaching in a KTO programme.
It is not necessary to have native speaker competence but it is
necessary to be able to apply special methods. "Any
over-emphasis on "language skills" can lead us to
neglect the significance of methodological skills…the methodological
skills for CLIL/EMILE can be successfully taught through in-service
or pre-service professional programmes" (Marsh, 2002:78).
- Very heavily loaded subject curricula and high stake examinations
focussing on lexical and theoretical knowledge force schools to
look for academically more talented pupils. This, unfortunately,
threatens to turn secondary level KTO programmes into a form of
"elite" education.
References
Beacco, J-C., Byram, M., Guide for the Development
of Language Education Policies in Europe - From Linguistic
Diversity to Plurilingual Education - Draft 1 (rev.),
Language Policy Division/ Council of Europe, Strassbourg, 2003
Csécsi Máriás, E. (ed.) Statistical
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Halász, G., Lannert, J. (ed.)
Report on Hungarian Public Education 1997, OKI, Budapest,
1997.
Halász, G., Lannert, J. (ed.)
Report on Hungarian Public Education 2003, OKI, Budapest,
2003.
Marsh, D., (ed), CLIL/EMILE - The European
Dimension, University of Jyväskulä, Jyväskulä,
2002.
Vágó, I., (ed.) Changes in the
Curricula in the Public Education of the 90s, OKKER, Budapest,
1999.
Vámos, Á. The Hungarian Map
of Languages of Instruction, Keraban, Budapest, 1998.
The Local Pedagogical Programme and the Local Curriculum of Táncsics
Mihály General Secondary School.
Act LXXIX of 1993 on Public Education.
Guidelines of Bilingual School Education in: 26/1997. (VII.10.)
Ministerial Decree on Bilingual School Education.
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