English testing issue in Hungary

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in education, English teaching, foreign language teaching, Hungary, language learning, language teaching, language testing, teacher training

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English as a foreign or second language, Hungary, Language education, limits in class, Secondary education, teaching foreign languages

Last week, students sitting for the school-leaving exams in Hungary were up against the English test on the higher level. This test is something the results of which count towards university entrance exams, so naturally, perceived or real trouble about it counts a lot more than that on the normal level tests. Internet news about the issue with the listening part can be read in Hungarian here. I hope that my interpretation of the situation may be useful for English teachers in other countries as well and may help students understand some features of the situation.

In short, of the 9809 exam takers, in one day, more than 2500 joined a facebook group (though this could be misleading, seeing that parents also joined the group) and submitted a petition to the relevant government agency against the quality of the listening material as they thought the material couldn’t be heard properly because of distortions of sound in classrooms. Some actually claimed the original sound already had echos. We can also listen to it in the middle section of the article, right next to the link to the pdf of the task sheet involved. As my listening to the published material reveals no distortion problems to me on my computer, the story reveals a lot of problems in the Hungarian education system.

Admitting that the inclusion of several French and Spanish words was not exactly fair, I still wonder if that may have disturbed takers. Not only in my teaching practice but also in all teaching materials, there are lots of names from other languages recurring all the time. How can one learn a language without mentioning outstanding people from history, science, the arts etc.? English doesn’t distort foreign names like Chinese does, so this can’t really have been a problem for trained examinees. Trained, I’m saying, and I’m returning to this a bit later.

Another problem claimed was the extreme distortion. The article claims many schools use ancient portable tape-recorders to play … what exactly? The listening material was issued to schools in two copies of the relevant CDs, so no tape-recorders could have been involved. Such a distortion is, to my mind, indicative of the quality of … the Hungarian media. Other than that, CD players may have been of dubious quality, in bad repair, I had already met a number of such equipment 10 years ago. However, if a CD player doesn’t work, it is taken away to be repaired or thrown away and is exchanged to a better one. Some people actually claimed that they didn’t hear the sound sitting in the second row and they have good listening abilities. To my mind, it is doubtful that the teacher administering the test purposefully brought in a bad player with bad loudspeakers to disturb her/his own students. Claiming that the loudspeaker had to be turned up too strongly in the big rooms is also strange: the same students had been sitting in the same rooms for four years listening to the same players at similar intensity. What may have been new, pray?

However, this point only in itself brings the technical background for schools in Hungary in the limelight, and probably deservedly. This in turn underlines the poor financials of the same for extended years. While in my study years we only had really ancient big tape-recorders to listen to the one set of intermittent pre-recorded (that is, unnatural, carefully read-out) listening material, the 21st century makes it necessary to expose students to realistic listening in countries, like Hungary, where English-language TV-programs are practically unavailable and dubbed films prevail in the cinemas. This practice is also in need of changing, but the poor general financial situation makes it very difficult for any broadcaster to buy the rights of contemporary TV programs and air them as they are. And what would be their incentive? That change nowhere to be seen in the pipeline, it is the schools’ duty to provide ample practice for listening. If they can. But that is only one side of the equation.

And that brings me up to my next point. As I said, it is up to schools. But schools consist of not only teachers, there are, in the majority, students as well. Meaning, the vast majority of people in a classroom are the students. Have you ever stood in front of a large group of people who resist all your efforts to bring them together and make them quietly learn something instead of their own will? It’s a lot easier for a party leader to speak to a huge crowd from their own party – they want to hear what he wants to say. Try doing it in front of the opposition. And that is still only speaking, not making them practice performing skills. My experience shows that during the last 15 years the willingness of most students in Hungarian schools to learn has been nose-diving. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink, as the proverb goes. More and more students do not want to drink from the fountain of knowledge, so to speak, but weep and wail each time listening is brought in – I faced this reluctance increasingly myself.

I’m not saying it happens everywhere, but that it has been increasing dangerously. Now, if the teacher doesn’t want to antagonize her/his students all the time, she/he yields and there goes the listening practice. This may turn into a general tendency because it is easy to neglect something once again what we’ve already neglected a couple of times and yes, listening is not easy and also not easy to teach. With a decrease of quality students, teachers’ average levels of quality and professionalism may also decline, and in a culture growing towards accommodating the perceived ‘needs’ of the customer (the students), teachers get used to catering to what students ‘want’. And that can be dangerously close to very little. This based on the majority will. And the majority is always right, right? At least before Copernicus …

That said, I’m not saying those students hadn’t practiced listening – I’m saying, what they had done was far from satisfactory, far from enough.

Learning a language has nothing near to the logic of developing mathematical or historical knowledge. It is not even only knowledge, it is rather a huge set of skills. It is a lot more complex than other subjects except for learning a musical instrument, and contrary to beliefs, but due to the complexity as well, there are very big differences in learning abilities, especially if we consider the time constraints. Hence the complaints in the complaining group on facebook, demanding logical, rational answers. No, there may not be logical, rational answers. No, the way we learn languages is next to impossible to follow with logic. Yes, intelligence may have a limited part in it. Yes, it may also be due to psychological barriers, individual learning styles, short- and long-term memory differences, methodological differences on the part of the teacher as well as on the students, to name a few problems. And listening is an area where a lot of those factors converge for many as there is no possibility for individual speed, time to stop to consider and the like. It is thus very tiring and also difficult to really assess. I am next to stating that teaching a language is an instinctive art, with an instinct not easy to develop. So many colleagues in the classroom may give up on trying and practicing listening. It is easier to resort to a dry, seemingly logical structure of what happens easily each time: turn to page … read and answer the questions. Choose … fill in … let me see … correct … incorrect because … (grammar explanation following). Satisfaction – duties have been fulfilled.

Of course, students wanting to take the higher-level test are the cream of the classes. Why couldn’t they perform at the test without problems? Well, it’s because they are a minority of the communities they had been brought up in to be the best. To be the best among a general decline may mean very different from what it meant for us 40 years ago, or for my first groups 30-or-so years ago. Those communities are the real initiators of this protest and the real cause of the problem. They may be the reason why the best may think they are good listeners. Among whom?

Parents seem to subscribe to the general mood of protest. I have seen and felt this too. Parents have become more and more defensive of their children based on the perception that they know their kids better. Parents’ perceptions have been shifting towards seeing, if not the school, then at least the ‘problem’ teacher as the enemy instead of the ally in improving their children’s capabilities and thus future chances. Unfortunately, this perception has been spreading among the student community as well. And this has been happening in a country and culture where parents are more and more inundated with their own work. Before I forget, there is also the other side, the group of parents who can provide their kids with everything they wish for. As one student explained to me a few years ago, “I don’t need to speak English, I’ll have my father’s business and I’ll employ interpreters.” Well, yes, that seems easy for some. If that’s the image they make fashionable, what are the chances for the meek not to follow in laziness? However, that’s already a social problem that I can’t address here. But that’s another reason for the students to consider the teacher the enemy – she/he, the ‘loser’, seems to be powerless against the ‘mighty’ parents, so what do they want? Reminiscent of the situation in Chinese private schools. Does it also remind you of “another brick in the wall”?

I see one positive. And that is that the tasks are still given in English at an English test, something that may often not be the case in the Netherlands, or Italy, or China, for example. I can feel, however, that this may also change as so many other things have changed in the course of the last couple of years in the Hungarian education system. It is always easy to take the easier path. But that is going to be the subject of another article next time.

A few days after I posted this article, on 14th May, what do I see on Dutch TV? Mass protests on the net by Dutch takers of their respective school-leaving exams against the time constraints they thought was too short … while in Nigeria, where more than 270 girls were earlier kidnapped to prevent them from going to school and punish them, people are still hoping that there may still be a future for girls’ getting a profession.

by P. S.

On goals, limits and neurology

15 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by ZJShen-PSimon in English teaching, foreign language teaching, language learning, language teaching

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education, freedom in class, limits in class, teaching foreign languages

One thing I’d like to mention connects to how much freedom of choice a teacher should give to his/her students to make their learning more effective. I’ve seen a number of young teachers or tired older ones come into class asking the students, “what would you like to do today?” and the like. Occasionally, such offers may create wonders, but has the teacher ever thought about, let alone tried to verify, how much those students actually learned?

I’ve also seen teachers who go into class and start talking about what interesting things come into his/her minds, or asks the students whatever has happened to them since they last met or during the weekend and so on. All this is first intended to be an introduction, a warm-up, to let students quietly get into the mood of learning and activate their curiosity and involvement, but very often, these introductions take up most of the lessons, become a lecture by the teacher, or a series of anecdotes by anyone inside the room and don’t lead anywhere. The involvement and curiosity wanes after ten or fifteen minutes, and the teacher doesn’t realize it, because the faces still show interest. Out of politeness perhaps. But the class has already turned into a Chinese-style language class.

Some of my readers may still remember the four vultures in the wonderful “The Jungle Book” cartoon of a few decades ago. They’ve had flown into the burnt-out wilderness, landed on the skeleton of a tree and started considering, “Whaderwe gonna do?” “Ah dunno, whaderwe gonna do?” “Ah dunno …” which goes on for some time, clearly showing that they have no purpose any more. They obviously can’t do anything more. I consider this lack of focus a danger to a language class. If a teacher goes in and expresses indecision in his actions, the result is inevitably a lack of learning.

The same danger is similar when the teacher asks the students to “write a text about something.” This means limitlessness, which is also a lack of focus. Full freedom is not appropriate for school. We have to have goals, short-term, mid-term and long-term purposes for our students so that they have an idea where they are expected to be progressing.

Out in society, limitlessness, even in less severe cases, may lead to unruly gang activity like from events in Romeo’s Verona to ‘favelas’ in Rio, or slum disturbances in any ‘developed’ or less developed country. Let’s not imagine that school activities cannot end up like these. I’m convinced that it is the teacher’ task to train students to concentrate their energies when in school. In most cases I can identify with film examples of taking children off streets to learn even martial arts and the like. These imaginary examples are pedagogically sound. They put the role of pedagogy in a wider context, the context of society. Teachers may not be able to teach high science to everybody, but they can turn pupils from even the worst backgrounds into useful and contented players in the world, according to their own abilities.

My other topic today falls into the category of limits as well. I’ve read a debate about using the 5-paragraph academic essay in schools, many doubting its role on the basis that in real life there’s no such thing. I agree with this latter. But we have to be aware of other connections as well: school and classes are not exactly what in real life happens – they are meant to introduce it. A class lasts for 45 or 50 minutes, life begins afterwards. Children go home after school to their own lives and may start their own mental adventures. Teachers also have lives outside schools. If we don’t bear this in mind and give tasks to our students simply ‘to write an essay’, students may write three lines in three different paragraphs, or write five pages according to how interesting they’ve found the subject and how much they have to say. The first remains nonsense and useless in pedagogical terms, and doesn’t help the student to acquire any sense of structure and supporting ideas at all. The second becomes fluid, also unstructured and so unreadable. It also requires incomparably long time for the teacher to assess it, not to mention provide advice on improvement. It’s also the case when a teacher tells students to ‘talk about something’ in class, ‘which interests you’ implied, but most students’ minds simply stop at this asking. Wouldn’t yours? Remember the advantages and application of task-based learning.

This said, I’d also like to draw attention to the fact that in real life, imaginative writing also requires structure, support to ideas, a balanced flow of events and so on. A present-day English poet once told a group of interested teachers at a short course on using poetry that looking at poetic inspiration with awe is nonsense. Anyone can become a good poet through practicing doing it. Musical geniuses also go through the process. They assign ‘opus 1’ to their first composition which they think is worth it. But they do a lot of work before too, for practice. My advice is for the teacher to teach students to focus, and limit verbiage to manageable amounts both for student and corrector. Afterwards, in real life, if things went well in class, some of the students may develop to be writers.

StateLibQld 1 113036 Cartoon of students receiving the cane, 1888 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Finally for today, I’d like to mention that I’ve read a very good article and listened to a brilliant lecture embedded into it as a video on how the human brain processes information flowing towards and through it. The pedagogical implications that are described are enormous, as it is pointed out first of all that any information that represents danger, or is not appropriate to learning something new and important is blocked out automatically by certain parts of the brain dependent on its own state.

Apart from the fact that I’m glad I won’t see the day when scientists will be able to stimulate or manipulate the sequence of neurons necessary to program the brain, I’ve found this article and the video inside it very-very useful and interesting. I consider it a must-see for boring, bored or tired teachers who’ve already given up on certain students or on improving their work and impact. And for anyone going into class. The teacher-scientist speaking also means to say that the main way of learning may not be among the traditional four skills. Thinking, which some educators, including me, think is the fifth skill, is the key to acquiring all the other 4 skills, not vice verse. What she presents also quite contradicts the traditional learning-style categories (auditory, etc.), while introduces something different and much more efficient. Besides, it points to the shortcomings of the communicative method of language learning, exposing the weakness in that if somebody speaks, he/she also learns something. Much more learning can take place simply while the student is allowed to reflect, take notes, exchange a remark with someone, besides full discussions or writing essays. Of course, a well-though-out argument presented to peers may be the best.

The article and the video can be accessed here at Classroom Aid.

by P.S.