Abstract:

The need for foreign language education in Slovakia is currently considered extremely topical. Due to much higher mobility of Slovak citizens and the Slovak language being understood in a rather limited number of countries, the main focus has been put on learning and teaching of English as a lingua franca, an international language of communication. This fact is therefore reflected in the Slovak education system where English is the first foreign language to be officially taught from the third year of primary school to the final year at secondary schools. For instance, the main goal of secondary technical schools is to prepare students for their future career focusing on teaching technical subjects which are a priority. As for the English language, students at these schools should achieve and graduate at a compulsory reference level B1 defined by the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). However, the focus on technical subjects leaves many students less interested in learning English at school or even outside the classroom and develop their communicative language competence and skills despite being aware of the importance of English. Another reason for students’ lower interest might be a more traditional approach towards teaching English when using textbooks.

In compliance with the philosophy introduced in CEFR which focuses on a language learner as an individual being, paying attention to their distinct learning styles and personal needs, highlighting their learner autonomy and communicative language teaching at schools including authenticity of tasks, the aim of our study is to examine whether a choice of a variety of different teaching techniques and procedures based on the aforementioned concept will raise secondary technical school students’ interest, encourage their motivation to learn English in and outside the classroom and thus improve their communicative language competence and performance in national B1 written tests.

An experimental group and a control group of students attending their final year at a secondary technical school have been chosen. Both groups study similar technical subjects and are at approximately the same language level aiming to reach B1. To find out the learning styles and attitudes towards English classes in the experimental group, qualitative research methods will be applied. B1 written tests as a quantitative research tool will be administered in both groups as a pre-test and a post-test and their results will be calculated and compared. Within the treatment in the experimental group own teaching materials will be designed based on the qualitative research outcome encouraging learner autonomy, respecting students as individuals and bringing more authenticity to the classroom. On the other hand, the control group will be exposed to teaching according to the chosen textbook representing a more traditional approach.

As a result, we expect more engagement and interest from the students in the experimental group and that they will benefit from their lessons, ready to use English in real-life situations.

Keywords:

Effectiveness, teaching techniques and procedures, reference level B1, secondary technical school.