Developing language skills during educational trips to England

Artykuł dotyczy spostrzeżeń po powrocie z wyjazdów edukacyjnych do Anglii. Porusza kwestię pozytywnego wpływu takich wyjazdów na rozwijanie czterech podstawowych umiejętności językowych, tj. czytania, słuchania, pisania i mówienia.

Developing language skills during educational trips to England

Both the teachers and the students are familiar with traditional methods of acquiring a foreign language, based on working with the coursebook, first at school and then at home. These methods tend to produce quite positive results, however, not everybody is enthusiastic about them, the students in particular.
In 2005 and 2007 my lower-secondary school students and I had an opportunity to participate in educational trips to England. The trips turned out to be really successful, not only because of the tourist attractions but also as far as developing skills was concerned. During these trips my students were exposed to English most of the time, in the form of both reading and listening. What is more, they were made to produce English, which usually causes them so much trouble. The circumstances, however, in which the production of English occurred, were different from what the students had been asked to do before. They were no longer in the classroom, they were in the target language country and they were in a way forced to use English in order to be understood and to complete numerous tasks, both educational and entertaining ones.
In this short article I would like to analyse the positive impact of the educational trips on the four fundamental language skills separately. The conclusions included here may appear obvious but they are nevertheless worth mentioning so that more teachers can become aware of them and, if possible, incorporate such trips in their syllabuses.

Receptive skills

Reading and listening are considered by the learners to be the two easier skills, since they are basically connected with comprehending the language, not producing it. However, they demand nearly as much knowledge and skill as the productive ones, so it is quite astonishing that their importance is frequently undermined by both the learners and the teachers.
During the trips the students were constantly exposed to English, they read in English and listened to native and non-native speakers using it. No lesson at school, however well-prepared, can equal such a wonderful opportunity to experience the real situations, in which the comprehension and the reception of the language undoubtedly makes a lot of sense and is indispensable for everyday life.

Reading

What and where did the students read in English?
- information on the Eurotunnel train
- names of goods and special offers in the shops
- information in the ...