Whose Challenge Is It? Learners and Teachers of English in Hungarian Preschool Contexts

Abstract

The chapter explores Hungarian preschool children’s and their teachers’ language use and meaning-making patterns in a context where English is a foreign language. It also seeks to provide a critical analysis of the discrepancy between teachers’ beliefs and practices in the examined contexts. Data collected through ethnographic processes reveal a mismatch between young learners’ needs and teacher preparation. In most cases, teachers struggle to match the target language input to children’s language level, and rely on translation as a systematic strategy for clarifying meaning. Data also show how a teacher’s self-exploration and reflection shape her cognition and practice in the preschool EFL setting. The study has implications for teacher education programmes in the observed context: it calls for a re-examination of professional training in order to address preschool foreign language teachers’ professional needs.