The link between a new language teaching technique and learners traditional beliefs

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between individuals’ expectations of language learning and their readiness to accept a particular language teaching paradigm. The participants are students in an upper-intermediate speaking class at a southern Hungarian university. The study reviews the typical kinds of language learning experience in the Hungarian educational context, which in turn form learners’ expectations, and discusses the implications that learners expectations may have for their own language learning and – should they become teachers themselves – for their own language teaching. The paper describes the three research perspectives that inform it: the task-based language teaching (TBLT) paradigm; classroom-based research; and learner beliefs. The two phases of the research had 56 participants engaged in two speaking tasks and, of these, 28 involved in one-on-one, semi-structured interviews. The respondents’ answers are discussed in terms of their experience of learning form and their teachers’ classroom management as well as their impressions of the speaking tasks they had just performed in the classroom. The paper then discusses the possibilities for methodological change in a context marked by traditional teaching and learning techniques.