Language Education

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Controversies, observations and proposals in language education: An introduction

Language education is an area of research much broader than foreign/second language teaching/learning. Alongside traditional glottodidactic issues, it takes into consideration foreign/second language teacher training, first language education, the role(s) of language in teaching other school subjects, teaching second languages at home and language policy concerning both native and foreign languages. One of the aims of this volume is to bridge the gap between theory and practice by presenting solutions researchers can offer to practitioners specializing in language teaching at all the levels of education.

Language education has been a flourishing discipline for a long time. The main reason is as simple as the need to learn languages which enable people to function in the contemporary world. The command of two and more languages not only strengthens one’s position on the job market, but also allows for participating in culture: reading books, watching films etc. in other languages, let alone travelling and making friends. The multitude of constantly evolving approaches to teaching and learning foreign/second languages and emerging new technologies as well as the publication of innumerable coursebooks and other teaching materials, all confronted with changing educational systems at all levels of education, provide fertile grounds for reflection, research and discussion. However, solving the evergreen problems language learners face is frequently still far from being satisfactory; in numerous cases, it is the individual teacher whose education, classroom decisions, creativity, personality and treatment of students count most.

The volume is divided into three parts. The first one contains chapters discussing controversial issues in language education, the second presents observations and proposals, while the third one considers various issues in language education from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The majority of chapters deal with problems set in the Polish educational context.

The first part consists of five chapters. Researchers have always been interested in the state of language education at school – in our volume, it is Olga Aleksandrowska who makes an accurate diagnosis of English language education at senior secondary schools in Poland. Two other chapters also deal with teaching English. Hanna Kryszewska offers her detailed answer to the question whether Content and Language Integrated Learning is an administrative directive or educational opportunity. Maciej Rataj, in turn, considers the sociolinguistic issue of the varieties of English used at Polish schools and universities. In the fourth chapter, ← 7 | 8 → Beata Karpińska-Musiał discusses problems of language teacher training at Polish universities. Finally, Sonia Szramek-Karcz analyzes the controversial issue of non-native bilingualism, providing her classification of non-native bilingual families.

The second part of the volume contains proposals and observations concerning teaching English (and, occasionally, other languages) to teenagers and adults. Karolina Janczukowicz suggests treating public speaking as a tool in developing oral skills, Zbigniew Czaja analyzes typical Polish ways of pronouncing English vowels and offers techniques to deal with pronunciation problems, while Mikołaj Rychło provides an answer to the question why Polish learners fail to produce Polish sounds in foreign words. Further, Krzysztof Karaś presents the process approach to the development of the writing skill in students of an English department, Iwona Mokwa-Tarnowska writes about employing e-learning in teaching English to students at a technical university, whereas Michał Golubiewski discusses selected issues of teaching Maritime English. The chapter by Martin Blaszk deals with exploiting happening in school education, and in the last chapter of this part, Michał Daszkiewicz argues for using directed utterances as a successful technique in teaching a foreign language.

The third part of the volume includes chapters which explore education from the viewpoint of cognitive linguistics. Olga Sokołowska concentrates on explanatory metaphors used in such disciplines as physics, chemistry, biology and geography, and in teaching them at school. Tadeusz Danilewicz reflects on experiencing meaning in a second/foreign language from the cognitive perspective, and Joanna Redzimska analyzes the educational role of prototypes used in an animated film for children. The last chapter, authored by Danuta Stanulewicz, concerns the presence (and absence) of cognitive models in coursebooks designed for teaching English.

The editors would like to thank the Reviewer for the valuable comments which helped them to give the final shape to the volume.

The editors cherish the hope that not only researchers who express lively interest in language education, but also practitioners – teachers of languages and other school or academic subjects – will find this volume useful and inspiring.

Danuta Stanulewicz
Gdańsk, 16 August 2016

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Controversies and questions

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Some critical remarks on the current state of English language education at Polish senior secondary schools

Olga Aleksandrowska

University of Gdańsk

1. Introduction

The main aim of the educational reform initiated in 1999 was to improve the overall quality of Polish education. Several important modifications were made concerning the structure of education in Poland, the evaluation system, the Teachers’ Charter (Karta Nauczyciela) and foreign language learning. As a result, a new system of education was formed, comprising 4 major levels: kindergarten (preschool education), 6-year primary school (grades 1–3 at educational stage I and grades 4–6 at educational stage II), 3-year junior secondary school (educational stage III), and 3-year senior secondary school¹ (educational stage IV), which makes 12 years of ← 11 | 12 → compulsory schooling in total.2 Other main changes included the creation of The National Curriculum Framework³ (Podstawa Programowa, from now the NCF in short), and the introduction of a system of examinations at the end of primary and junior secondary schools.

With regard to foreign language education, two major modifications deserve particular attention: the fact that foreign language learning became an obligatory subject and that a new model of the Matura examination in modern foreign languages was established. The changes in the educational system and the two above-mentioned innovations have brought about important educational consequences with reference to the teaching of foreign languages at Polish schools.

The following sections aim to discuss the current condition of English language teaching at educational stage IV. The description of its main characteristics also allows us to notice what impact the Matura examination exerts on the didactic process.

2. Teaching English to Polish learners at senior secondary school

2.1. Types of the teaching/learning foreign language programmes and students’ proficiency levels

In Poland, learners are obliged to start their foreign language education from grade 1 of primary school. This means that, on average, when a student enters senior secondary school, he/she should already have been learning one foreign language for minimum 9 years. The authors of the National Curriculum Framework took the length of the learning experience into consideration when planning the didactic process at each educational stage. As a result, according to the NCF ← 12 | 13 → guidelines, classes of modern foreign languages at senior secondary school are conducted at the following levels:

A minimum of 450 hours (in the basic programme) and additional 180 hours (in the extended programme) are to be divided between two modern foreign languages taught in the 3-year period of learning. In practice, this means that there might be, on average, 3–6 lessons of English a week, depending on the programme which a given student follows. After the three years of learning at educational stage IV, the learner is expected to reach at least the pre-intermediate/intermediate competence level (A2+, B1 according to the CEFR4) in a foreign language. It is hoped that many senior secondary school learners’ knowledge and skills in L2 are much more advanced, reaching the B2/B2+ or even C1 level, which enables them to successfully pass the extended level of the Matura examination in English.