Research

The Department's research focuses on modernising teacher training for foreign language teaching at the primary and lower secondary level, mentor training, CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), English language coursebooks and curriculum. Other research areas include academic discourse and English as a Lingua Franca.

The Department of English Language Teaching is currently involved in two international projects.

MENTRA

The focus on the quality of education and related to it teacher competencies and teacher education is a vital and broadly discussed issue not only in the Central European region but also in many countries worldwide. One of its aspects is practical training of future teachers and introduction of novice teachers into their profession, which largely depends on the quality of their supervising teacher, i.e. mentor teacher. The partners in the project are 6 HEIs from 4 countries: Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra and J. Selye University in Komarno, Slovakia; Ostrava University and the University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic; K. Eszterhazy University in Eger, Hungary; and University of Novi Sad, Serbia. All the institutions have long-lasting experience and expertise in teacher training and communication with mentors responsible for teaching practice of student teachers and induction phase of novices.

e-CET

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the lives and work activities of many people worldwide, including educational activities. Notwithstanding these limitations, the current situation has shown that online learning is one of the best solutions. The above facts initiated the partners to consider combining their experiences and efforts in developing e-learning modules that could be used for pre-school and in-service teacher education.

Project partners Aspekt Foundation (Slovakia), University of Ostrava (Czech Republic) and University of Bielsko-Biala (Poland) are institutions that provide English courses for future and practising teachers. Therefore, they have decided to collaborate and design e-courses suitable for different e-modules to increase the quality of pedagogy employees and improve their language and electronic skills.

Sharing the experience and best practices of all the institutions involved is a sound basis for developing e-courses and raising the skills of their staff. The courses will be available on the websites of the participating institutions. These will be ready for use in the event of a pandemic and as additional material for the benefit of English students and continuing professional development (CPD) courses, which are required by a lot of practising teachers.

Updated: 05. 11. 2021