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Lídia Bors, Marianne Nikolov, Richárd Pércsich and Gábor Szabó: Foreign language proficiency of eighth-grade Pécs students The article reports on a study measuring the performances of Pécs pupils in the last year of their primary-school studies in five modern languages: Croatian, English, French, German and Italian. The evaluation of students' levels was initiated and sponsored by the local government and implemented by a team of teachers and educational researchers. Similar tests were developed for all five languages to test three skills: listening, reading and writing. The results show that objectively evaluated tasks provided more reliable and valid results than writing tasks. Children studying foreign languages in intensive courses tended to perform better than their peers learning in a lower number of classes per week. On the other hand, no significant differences were found between groups of 2 or 3 classhours and 4 or 5 classhours, respectively. Children learning languages as a second foreign language in 2 or 3 classes often outperformed their peers in more intensive courses. The number of class hours seems to correlate with parental background, therefore it is difficult to determine whether the most important factor contributing to pupils' success is social or educational. MAGYAR PEDAGÓGIA 99. Number 3. 289-306. (1999) Levelezési cím / Address for correspondence: Bors Lídia, Angol Tanári Módszertani Központ, H-7621 Pécs, Király u. 33. email: pedint@mail.matav.hu |
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