Peter Simon, Karinthy Dual Language School Thokoly ut 7, Budapest, Hungary, and Gyongyi Vegh, Trefort Secondary School Kossuth Ter 12, Budapest, Hungary

Editor’s Note: These reflections are from two of the writers on an innovative project to produce a textbook for Hungarian Secondary schools. The book, entitled ‘Zoom In’, will be available in the autumn of 2001.

Gyöngyi Végh

Since my involvement in the project I have tried my hands at many things, experimented with lots of teaching ideas and materials and transgressed many boundaries defining different areas of expertise. I started work in the project as a teacher of English, whose role has expanded to challenge traditional definitions of other roles as the project proceeded. It wasn’t long before I realised that I am an educator just as much as I am a teacher. The expansion of my role did not stop there: I have become an amateur ethnographer, a materials writer, a graphic designer and most recently a conference presenter. All of this is daunting but empowering as well.

At the outset, the main aim of the project was to infuse meaningful content into EFL teaching: literature and culture seemed just right to provide the necessary content. We as practising teachers and project members, however, soon realised that meaningful content cannot be taught in the EFL classroom at secondary school level without taking on the responsibility of educating young people. Since this realisation, we have all regarded our aims at least threefold: linguistic, cultural and educational. There might be other teachers who think about the aims of EFL teaching at secondary school level similarly, but based on our experience as teachers in this sector, we have found that linking these aims and regarding them as of equal importance are still rather unusual concepts.

A landmark event took place two years after the start of the project: a project field trip to Plymouth, England. To make the most of our stay there, Michael Byram was asked to prepare the members of the project for an ethnographic immersion in life in Britain. The outcome of the field trip was lots of invaluable raw materials for teaching, which we started to process in the school year following the trip, and in the year after that we started to organise the materials into thematic units that could be tried out by other teachers as well. The most recent, and in fact final, stage of the project is that of materials writing, materials designing and trialing.

The unit I have been working on is called ‘School’s cool’ and is designed to meet the following linguistic, cultural and educational aims respectively:

a) to teach students vocabulary of school life; to draw their attention to concepts in the target language that are non-existent in their own culture or vice versa; to raise students’ text awareness by exposing them to different text types and styles; to teach students to write with a sense of audience awareness; to improve students skills to report statements and questions and to translate;

b) to teach students about three different schools in Devon; to make students realise that there are specific reasons why these schools differ from each other; to draw students attention to the beliefs and values that these schools try to convey to their students and to ask them to reflect on their own school’s beliefs and values;

c) to help students go beyond stereotypes and over-generalisations about schools and school life in Britain; to help students accept more complex answers and become suspicious of easy, ready-made ones; to help students draw their own conclusions based on the visual, audio and textual impact provided in the book; to encourage students to do their own research about their own school and draw their own conclusions based on their own research materials; to prepare students for a possible school visit in the framework of an exchange program.

Since the unit is still work in progress, the above list of aims cannot be regarded as comprehensive or final.

As far as the overall structure of the unit is concerned, it is based on the concept of a virtual visit to the three schools:

· students are first asked how they would prepare for such a visit

· they are then presented with the school prospectuses that visitors can get in certain schools and are asked to look at these closely both from the point of view of visual and language impact

· students are shown video recordings (or can listen to the audio version of these) made at the three schools (welcoming the visitors, assembly, two lessons)

· students can listen to interviews prepared with some students at the three schools

· a closer look at the schools’ rules and regulations creates the basis for comparison with those of the students’ own school

The process of writing this unit involves a lot of learning and decision making on my part, which becomes overwhelming at times but mostly it is very satisfying and enjoyable. I have learned to use very sophisticated computer programs and to look at teaching materials more consciously and with more awareness of the work that has gone into it. The decisions I have to make range from the very trivial question of time (When do I have the time for all this?), through the choice and position of pictures and colours to the question of selecting materials that best serve our purposes. Fortunately, there are certain very basic guidelines that all the project members identify with very strongly and hold as our basic working principles in writing the whole book: the materials should be authentic, meaningful and engaging for secondary school students; they should be able to convey our expressed linguistic, cultural and educational aims; and finally, the book has to look attractive both for teachers and students, has to contain different and motivating task types, and has to help language learning in tandem with personal development.

Péter Simon

For me one of the big difficulties is creating material for various audiences, which should include all types of ‘customers’, such as teachers as well as the target student populations of Hungary and possibly a few neighbouring countries.

These factors really came into the limelight first when we presented our material in Slovakia in Februray 2000. The participants there were all ladies, and their reaction to my part of the book, which was basically about identity and language expressed through football, besides being one of polite co-operation, was that they would not like to work on such material that they do not find close enough to themselves. Though my opinion is that school has a duty to cater for male as well as female students, one cannot argue with the antipathy of the female teacher that seems to form the vast majority of practising teachers in secondary schools.

As a consequence of these considerations, a compromise solution could be one that incorporates the language and atmosphere of football as manifest in the interest and beliefs of the author into a thoroughly reshaped unit about some major trends in the media like daily newspapers, popular images around us, the television and popular youth magazines, but which also includes topics present in the UK at the time of our visit, i.e. the Wimbledon finals with two popular British tennis players in the press, the Glastonbury Festival with a song about football and rugby championships. This kind of unit would have a wider allure to most ‘customers’ with various aspects of culture, could concentrate on the more important subject of press representation and be even more informative than the original format. This focus could also strengthen the possibility of drawing parallels between and comparing British cultural aspects with respective Hungarian culture and widen the scope of comparison among different genres, styles and registers of English. This, however, could only come out in my case by the authors presenting their work in progress.

As a summary we may conclude by saying that through repeated exposure to criticism, members of our group have come to a stage in their professional development where we are in a good position to realise our most important principles while writing the book. These include realising our linguistic, cultural and educational aims through various meaningful tasks which we hope will

· integrate cultural and language teaching

· reflect our awareness of the complex needs of our different audiences

· provide basis for interaction with students through the material

· provide basis for interaction between British and Hungarian culture through the material

· raise students’ awareness of and question aspects of culture for them to more deeply recognise meanings


The Hungarian British Studies in Secondary Schools Project: Personal reflections

Peter Simon, Karinthy Dual Language School Thokoly ut 7, Budapest, Hungary, and Gyongyi Vegh, Trefort Secondary School Kossuth Ter 12, Budapest, Hungary Editor’s Note: These reflections are from two of the writers on an innovative project to produce a textbook for Hungarian Secondary schools. The book, entitled ‘Zoom In’, will be available in the autumn of 2001. Gyöngyi Végh Since my involvement in the project I have tried my hands at many things, experimented with lots of teaching ideas and materials and transgressed many boundaries defining different areas of expertise. I started work in the project as a teacher of English, whose role has expanded to challenge traditional definitions of other roles as the project proceeded. It wasn’t long before I realised that I am an educator just as much as I am a teacher. The expansion of my role did not stop there: I have become an amateur ethnographer, a materials writer, a graphic designer and most recently a conference presenter. All of this is daunting but empowering as well. At the outset, the main aim of the project was to infuse meaningful content into EFL teaching: literature and culture seemed just right to provide the necessary content. We as practising teachers and project members, however, soon realised that meaningful content cannot be taught in the EFL classroom at secondary school level without taking on the responsibility of educating young people. Since this realisation, we have all regarded our aims at least threefold: linguistic, cultural and educational. There might be other teachers who think about the aims of EFL teaching at secondary school level similarly, but based on our experience as teachers in this sector, we have found that linking these aims and regarding them as of equal importance are still rather unusual concepts. A landmark event took place two years after the start of the project: a project field trip to Plymouth, England. To make the most of our stay there, Michael Byram was asked to prepare the members of the project for an ethnographic immersion in life in Britain. The outcome of the field trip was lots of invaluable raw materials for teaching, which we started to process in the school year following the trip, and in the year after that we started to organise the materials into thematic units that could be tried out by other teachers as well. The most recent, and in fact final, stage of the project is that of materials writing, materials designing and trialing. The unit I have been working on is called ‘School’s cool’ and is designed to meet the following linguistic, cultural and educational aims respectively: a) to teach students vocabulary of school life; to draw their attention to concepts in the target language that are non-existent in their own culture or vice versa; to raise students’ text awareness by exposing them to different text types and styles; to teach students to write with a sense of audience awareness; to improve students skills to report statements and questions and to translate; b) to teach students about three different schools in Devon; to make students realise that there are specific reasons why these schools differ from each other; to draw students attention to the beliefs and values that these schools try to convey to their students and to ask them to reflect on their own school’s beliefs and values; c) to help students go beyond stereotypes and over-generalisations about schools and school life in Britain; to help students accept more complex answers and become suspicious of easy, ready-made ones; to help students draw their own conclusions based on the visual, audio and textual impact provided in the book; to encourage students to do their own research about their own school and draw their own conclusions based on their own research materials; to prepare students for a possible school visit in the framework of an exchange program. Since the unit is still work in progress, the above list of aims cannot be regarded as comprehensive or final. As far as the overall structure of the unit is concerned, it is based on the concept of a virtual visit to the three schools: · students are first asked how they would prepare for such a visit · they are then presented with the school prospectuses that visitors can get in certain schools and are asked to look at these closely both from the point of view of visual and language impact · students are shown video recordings (or can listen to the audio version of these) made at the three schools (welcoming the visitors, assembly, two lessons) · students can listen to interviews prepared with some students at the three schools · a closer look at the schools’ rules and regulations creates the basis for comparison with those of the students’ own school The process of writing this unit involves a lot of learning and decision making on my part, which becomes overwhelming at times but mostly it is very satisfying and enjoyable. I have learned to use very sophisticated computer programs and to look at teaching materials more consciously and with more awareness of the work that has gone into it. The decisions I have to make range from the very trivial question of time (When do I have the time for all this?), through the choice and position of pictures and colours to the question of selecting materials that best serve our purposes. Fortunately, there are certain very basic guidelines that all the project members identify with very strongly and hold as our basic working principles in writing the whole book: the materials should be authentic, meaningful and engaging for secondary school students; they should be able to convey our expressed linguistic, cultural and educational aims; and finally, the book has to look attractive both for teachers and students, has to contain different and motivating task types, and has to help language learning in tandem with personal development. Péter Simon For me one of the big difficulties is creating material for various audiences, which should include all types of ‘customers’, such as teachers as well as the target student populations of Hungary and possibly a few neighbouring countries. These factors really came into the limelight first when we presented our material in Slovakia in Februray 2000. The participants there were all ladies, and their reaction to my part of the book, which was basically about identity and language expressed through football, besides being one of polite co-operation, was that they would not like to work on such material that they do not find close enough to themselves. Though my opinion is that school has a duty to cater for male as well as female students, one cannot argue with the antipathy of the female teacher that seems to form the vast majority of practising teachers in secondary schools. As a consequence of these considerations, a compromise solution could be one that incorporates the language and atmosphere of football as manifest in the interest and beliefs of the author into a thoroughly reshaped unit about some major trends in the media like daily newspapers, popular images around us, the television and popular youth magazines, but which also includes topics present in the UK at the time of our visit, i.e. the Wimbledon finals with two popular British tennis players in the press, the Glastonbury Festival with a song about football and rugby championships. This kind of unit would have a wider allure to most ‘customers’ with various aspects of culture, could concentrate on the more important subject of press representation and be even more informative than the original format. This focus could also strengthen the possibility of drawing parallels between and comparing British cultural aspects with respective Hungarian culture and widen the scope of comparison among different genres, styles and registers of English. This, however, could only come out in my case by the authors presenting their work in progress. As a summary we may conclude by saying that through repeated exposure to criticism, members of our group have come to a stage in their professional development where we are in a good position to realise our most important principles while writing the book. These include realising our linguistic, cultural and educational aims through various meaningful tasks which we hope will · integrate cultural and language teaching · reflect our awareness of the complex needs of our different audiences · provide basis for interaction with students through the material · provide basis for interaction between British and Hungarian culture through the material · raise students’ awareness of and question aspects of culture for them to more deeply recognise meanings