Why teachers of English in Transcarpathian Hungarian schools apply the oral reading technique at the English lessons

Abstract

Abstract. In Transcarpathia, it is common practice to apply the oral reading method in teaching foreign languages in state-supported primary and secondary schools, despite the warning of modern methodologists not to apply it in its traditional way (Helgesen & Gakuin, 1993). Whether this technique is the ‘remainder’ of the Grammar-Translation Approach to language teaching widely applied in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s in Ukraine (and Transcarpathia is a part of this country) constitutes a question of puzzle. But this task is also favoured by grammar school and vocational school teachers of English in Years 10, 11 and12 in Hungary: reading aloud was the most frequently observed reading task in a classroom observation study attempting to find out what actually happens in English language classrooms in Hungary (Nikolov, 1999). Because oral reading is a widely applied technique, it deserves some attention on the part of the research community. As Goodman and Goodman (1980) define it, oral reading or reading aloud means saying a printed text out loud. For the purpose of the study depicted in this paper, this simple definition of the construct of reading aloud was expanded to written texts, too, i.e. reading aloud in this understanding means saying a hand-written text out loud (e.g. an exercise written by the pupil during the foreign language lesson or as a home assignment) or a printed text out loud (e.g. a dialogue or other types of texts in the pupils’ textbook). The reason behind carrying out such a research is that the topic is not sufficiently investigated and it needs urgent clarification by means of attempting to answer the main research question, For what reasons is the oral reading technique used by teachers in primary and secondary schools in the foreign language classroom?