The interest for this research developed over ten years of teaching multilingual groups and then moving abroad and being faced with, what were presented as monolingual groups.
Features of monolingual classes include a shared L1, culture, common errors and educational experience, which influence learner expectations of teachers, activities, classroom management and learner training. In contrast with students from multilingual classes who have intentionally travelled abroad to learn English, usually although not always to an English speaking country, generally monolingual group members have significantly less exposure to English outside of the classroom resulting in a reduction in passive learning (Osstyn,1997).
Additionally, monolingual group learners may have varying levels of motivation: a need for English for special or academic purposes (ES/AP), perhaps a level of English competence is required for work or learners are planning on travelling abroad. In Hungary, for example, a B2 (upper-intermediate level as prescribed by the Common European Framework of Reference-CEFR) language exam is currently required for graduates to receive their further and higher education (HE) qualifications, stimulating extrinsic motivation, an external incentive for obtaining personal benefit. C1 (advanced) level language competence is usually required to gain employment in an international company, stimulating instrumental motivation -a desire to learn for occupational purpose. (Gardner and Lambert, 1972).
After a few years of teaching in Hungary, it became apparent that it was not the case that all the groups were monolingual. Rather, many of the learners were or had been learning other languages alongside English and /or were from bi or multilingual backgrounds.
What I experienced was, that despite this commonality in both traditional and educational culture and the growing saliency of access to English via online platforms and various other forms of media and literature, many learners were still not openly communicating during classes. Many who spent a lot of time online in English or claimed to be reading in English and watching English speaking films and television, were unable or unwilling to produce language that was evident of this time spent, demonstrating a lack of engagement with the English language material they were exposing themselves to. There was one exception to this group and that was the ‘gamers’, whose English outshone many of their peers at all levels.
Chik (2014) states that “gamers exercise autonomy by managing their gameplay both as leisure and learning practices in different dimensions (location, formality, locus of control, pedagogy and trajectory).” This mention of autonomy led to the consideration that, unless the non- gaming learners were specifically instructed to do something with their exposure to the
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authentic materials they were accessing, they were not only not engaged, they were not sure of how they were supposed to engage themselves with the material.
Following a move into teaching in the tertiary sector, what was clear was, that even at B2 level, learners still lacked a willingness to communicate (WTC), and as my work extended into travelling across Hungary carrying out teacher training sessions, this clarity developed. A number of English language teachers also lacked confidence in communicating in English, especially to a native speaker and in teaching some of the crucial skills to develop better communication, predominantly listening and pronunciation.
With the premise that teachers teach as they have been taught, Owen’s (2013) curiosity grew as to whether preservice or trainee teachers (TTs) on teacher education programmes also suffered from this affliction or whether the fact that they are teachers in the making would have any impact on their WTC. The answer was essentially not. Students are students and the TTs behaved no differently to those on the Bachelor of Arts (BA) English and American studies courses. In fact, in some cases they paid less attention to their language development, almost as if they thought the acquisition would just ‘come naturally’, again demonstrating that without a specific directive from the teacher, the TTs thought that language development was not a priority of the language teacher education course. All these impressions motivated my investigation of these attitudes, with the knowledge that some of these areas would, indeed be hard to prove. The initial research questions for the study arose on the basis of the aforementioned information:
• What causes a lack of willingness to communicate?
• How autonomous are trainee language teachers in their own target language development?
• What would happen if we give them a directive to improve their development and confidence?
• Will reflective teaching and learning help them?
• Are they ready to be autonomous learners?
The research was based in the context of the teacher education courses of a Hungarian University in the Transdanubia (TD) region and the students of the teacher education Master’s programme formed the participant samples.
The assumptions that followed these were:
• Lack of interactive WTC is caused by lack of confidence to perform ion front of peers
• Is communicative language teaching an effective for this context?
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• Trainee teachers are not autonomous in their own target language development
• There are distinct differences between peer feedback and immediate and delayed self- reflection.
• Hungarian trainee teachers are not yet ready for a fully autonomous approach to their learning.
The following sections provide the theoretical background and the framework for this exploratory study.
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Chapter Two: Theoretical background
This chapter presents the theoretical background, with supporting literature, which underpins the frameworks for this research.