Methodological guidelines to teach Hungarian as a Foreign Language (Mónika Dóla)

2020

Lecturers

Teacher Education

Autonomous learning
Classroom Context

Hungarian

Hungarian

C1
C2

Guiding resources (online course/book)

Vocabulary
Grammar

Critical Thinking
Reading

This teaching resource is available online as a pdf document. It was written and edited by lecturers of Károli University. The target readers are lecturers of Hungarian as a foreign language. Each chapter has a lead-in activity, which requires some reflection from the readers on their previous personal experiences either as learners or teachers of foreign languages. These pre-activities are panel discussions using a graphic organizer. This way methods of teaching a foreign language are modelled, used, activated throughout the book. The chapters focus on various important aspects of language teaching: choosing textbooks, language skills, types of learners, features of a good language teachers, evaluation and assessment.

This book is ideal for teachers of Hungarian as a foreign language, but actually for teachers of any foreign languages. The book could be best tested with a group of 8 language lecturers; as most of the lead-in activities at the beginning of each chapter require group work. I would use this book with lecturers from different universities and teaching background so that they really could compare their own practices, reflect on them and gain new insights both from one another and the book itself. Number 8 would be ideal for the testing as there would be two groups to do identical tasks and even group insights could be shared and reflected during panel discussions.

This book is ideal for teachers of Hungarian as a foreign language, but actually for teachers of any foreign languages. The book could be best tested with a group of 8 language lecturers; as most of the lead-in activities at the beginning of each chapter require group work. These activities are in grey boxes. Form pairs/groups according to the instructions, and make them complete these activities. After completing these tasks, the lecturers are to read individually the theoretical and research background of the topic in the chapter. While reading, the lecturers continuously think about and monitor their answers given in the lead-in activities. After individual silent reading, there is a reflection activity that the lecturers can do on their own or in groups again. A checklist about the content is provided at the end of each chapter, which could be used for individual formative assessment.