Aktuális nyelvpedagógiai kérdések Kárpátalján

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to outline the current situation of foreign language teaching in Transcarpathia and to present the current issues in language pedagogy in our region. In order to understand the present, we need to know the past, so we will first say a few words about foreign language teaching in Transcarpathia before 1991, i.e. what foreign language (FL) teaching was like before Ukraine became independent. In the early 2000s, the country underwent a reform in the teaching of FL, the main change being that children started learning a FL at the age of seven, three years earlier than before. In 2004, the first comprehensive research on language pedagogy in Transcarpathia was carried out, which assessed the situation in English language teaching at that time. In our study we draw a parallel between the situation 18 years ago and the present, pointing out changes and differences. We describe in more detail the current situation of foreign language teaching in Transcarpathia, and then address one of the most topical issues, the Advanced Level Foreign Language Examination (ZNO), and why in 2022, no such examination will be offered to school-leavers. The research team of the Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian College of Higher Education investigated distance learning in the quarantine situation due to COVID-19 in 2020, the effects of online education on the quality of teaching, the attitudes of teachers and learners, instructors and students towards digital education. A survey of secondary school children showed that although most of them had problems with online learning, their attitudes to learning were serious, they had developed their digital skills to a large extent, although some became demotivated as a result of online learning. Nevertheless, they have developed learner autonomy, which continues to help them to learn independently (Fábián, Huszti, Lechner and Bárány, 2021). At the end of the study, we summarise the impact of the pandemic on language learning in higher education in Transcarpathia. We can say that the most significant positive outcome of online education is that both teachers and students have greatly improved their digital skills and gained new technological knowledge that they can easily use in the future (Bárány, Fábián, Lechner and Huszti, 2022).