Ways of improving the teaching of writing in English as a foreign language in Hungarian secondary education

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on one aspect of foreign language teaching in the Hungarian public education: teaching and the assessment of writing in English as a foreign language.

The ultimate aim of the investigation was to work out a training framework for teacher training institutions to improve the quality of in-service training in teaching and assessing writing in English as a foreign language in Hungary. The research was motivated by the fact that teaching writing is a neglected area of English language teaching, and that the Hungarian examination reform puts emphasis on developing students' writing skills as well.

In order to reach the above-mentioned goal the thesis investigated the state of foreign language teaching in Hungary, summarised the relevant research findings into the teaching of writing, gave an overview of the research done in Hungary in the field of EFL writing instruction and testing in Hungarian secondary schools, analysed the official documents (curricula, present Matura examination requirements, the new Matura examination requirements) that set the conditions for the teaching of writing and the requirements students have to meet. The dissertation includes the research carried out by the author into determining progressive ways of testing writing in the new Matura examination, identifying teachers' needs for training in teaching and testing writing and factors contributing to reaching high professional quality in teaching writing. The author presents the content and framework of a university-based in-service training course for practising teachers of English incorporating the relevant findings of the above points.

On the basis of the theoretical and empirical evidence of the research it was possible to determine the writing subskills that secondary school students need to acquire by the end of their secondary-school studies, the writing tasks and text-types that need to be included in instruction and testing in accordance with the principles of communicative language teaching and students' real-life needs.

Date of Award	Jan 2006
Original language	English