Upstream Upper Intermediate

APPENDICES

A p p e n d i x 1 Laws and regulatory documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

A p p e n d i x 2 Structural breakdown of Lithianian educationsystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

A p p e n d i x 3 Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A p p e n d i x 4 Ministry recommended coursebooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

A p p e n d i x 5 The map of the survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

A p p e n d i x 6 The questionnaire for school teachers. . . . . . . . . . . . 14

A p p e n d i x 7 The questionnaire for tertiary teachers . . . . . . . . . . . 17

A p p e n d i x 8 The interview questionnaire for school administrators 20

A p p e n d i x 9 The interview questionnaire for tertiary administrators 23

A p p e n d i x 1 0 Lesson observation sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

A p p e n d i x 1 1 School Teacher Salaries in Primary and SecondaryEducation – Module II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

A p p e n d i x 1 2 a Focus group interview with college and universitylecturers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

A p p e n d i x 1 2 b Focus group interview with university lecturers I . . . . 46

A p p e n d i x 1 2 c Focus group interview with university lecturers II . . . . 58

A p p e n d i x 1 2 d Focus group interview with Ðiauliai and Paneveþysuniversity lecturers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

A p p e n d i x 1 2 e Focus group interview with school teachers I . . . . . . 84

A p p e n d i x 1 2 f Focus group interview with Ðiauliai region schoolteachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

A p p e n d i x 1 2 g Focus group interview with college students . . . . . . . 114

A p p e n d i x 1 2 h Focus group interview with university students I . . . . 128

A p p e n d i x 1 2 i Focus group interview with Ðiauliai, Klaipëda andPaneveþys university students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

A P P E N D I X 1

Laws and regulatory documents

Since the period of independence began firm legal foundations have been laid for theLithuanian system of education.

In accordance with the General Concept of Education (1991), the Law on Education

No. I-1489 to provide for the creation and functioning of the system of education waspassed in 1991 with the following amendments in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 and1999. In 2003 the Amendment of the Law of Education of the Republic of Lithuania

No. IX-1630 was passed. The Law on Higher Education 2000 No. VIII-1586 replacedthe Law on Research and Higher Education 1991 No. I-1052 and is currently replacedby the Amendment of the Law on Research and Higher Education 2002 No. IX-945.

Law on Vocational Education and Training 1997 No. VIII-450; Law on Non-Formal

Adult Education 1998 No. VIII-822 and Law on Special Education 1998 No. VIII-969provide for the institutional responsibility of teaching.

National Standards and General Curriculum Framework 2003 devotes a chapter to thelanguages and foreign languages at the basic school level (109–311 pp.). Here goals,objectives, value orientations, skills, didactic concepts, and teaching structures forforeign language instruction are defined.

2

A P P E N D I X 2

Structural breakdown of Lithianian education system

3

A P P E N D I X 3

Financing

The main sources of financing for general secondary education are the state and localadministration budgets. The Seimas allots budgets to the Ministry and local authoritiesin addition to sums received from local taxes. The budget varies from onemunicipality to the other and is controlled by local authorities. The teachers’ salarylevel is set by the Government and administered by local authorities.

Financial reform started in 2001 with the Resolution No. 1520 of 14 December of theGovernment of the Republic of Lithuania. The key goals of the reform were thefollowing:

• to improve the quality of education,• to create a transparent system of financing,• to give students the opportunity to choose an education institution,• to assure universal access to quality education,• to ensure the financial security of individual schools,• to reduce the number of students who do not attend schools,• to assure accountability from school administrations.

Educational financial resources consist of the following components:• student’s basket,• means allocated to finance the teaching environment.

The student’s basket consists of:• salaries for teachers,• allocations for teachers’ qualifications,• allocations for textbooks and teaching aids.

The reform defined the annual amount of resources that need to be spent on theeducation for one student depending on the type of school, location, number ofstudents with special needs and the number of students in national minority schools aswell as other indicators. The teaching environment (maintenance of the building,salaries of the technical staff, social insurance, etc.) is financed by the founder of theschool, which can be the ministry, municipality, physical person, religious community,etc.

The student’s basket defines the amount of resources to be spent on the education ofone student when the average number of students per class is 25. For 2004 the sum

4

allocated for one student was 1555 litas per year. For certain areas of education thesum can be increased. Examples would be national minority schools, small ruralschools, and schools integrating learners with special needs.

Vocational schools and colleges are financed from the state. The budget of eachindividual institution is the responsibility of the central authorities. Higher educationalinstitutions are financed from the state budget and managed in accordance withuniversity statutes. For each state-funded student, universities may have one studentwho pays tuition. The fees constitute extra income for universities.

References

LR Ðvietimo ir mokslo ministerija www.smm.lt

Statistikos departamentas prie Lietuvos Vyriausybës www.std.lt

Summary on Education Systems in Europe www.eurydice.org

5

A P P E N D I X 4

Ministry recommended coursebooks

CoursebookYear of

publicationPublisher

V. Rupainienë et al. Early School English I. Grade 2 2003 Ðviesa

V. Rupainienë et al. Early School English II. Grade 3 2004 Ðviesa

R. Stoðkienë, A. Timofejevienë, V. Rupainienë.School English I. Early language learning Year One

1999 Ðviesa

R. Stoðkienë, A. Timofejevienë. School English II.Early language learning Year Two

2000 Ðviesa

A. Stoðkienë, A. Timofejevienë. School English III.Early language learning Year Three

2001 Ðviesa

R. Stoðkienë, A. Timofejevienë. School English IV.Early language learning Year Four

2002 Ðviesa

R. Stoðkienë, A. Timofejevienë. School English V.Early language learning Year Five

2003 Ðviesa

R. Stoðkienë, A. Timofejevienë. School English VI.Early language learning Year Six

2004 Ðviesa

T. Kriliuvienë. Hello! 1. Early language learning YearOne

1999 Ðviesa

T. Kriliuvienë. Hello! 2. Early language learning YearTwo

2000 Ðviesa

T. Kriliuvienë. Hello! 3. Early language learning YearThree

2001 Ðviesa

T. Kriliuvienë. Hello! 4. Early language learning YearFour

2002 Ðviesa

T. Kriliuvienë. Hello! 5. Early language learning YearFive

2003 Ðviesa

T. Kriliuvienë, S. Shaw. Hello! 6. Early languagelearning Year Six

2004 Ðviesa

L. Bergman et al. Focus on Year 12 2002 Ðviesa

Kaleidoscope. Student’s Book. Materials for teachingBritish Cultural Studies in Lithuania

2003 Ðviesa

R. Ðimukauskienë. What is what in the World ofCatering. ESP for catering

2003 Ðviesa

6

CoursebookYear of


I. Rozgienë, E. Ðleinotienë. Business English forSchools

2001 Ðviesa

D. Crovitz, T. Ross. Classroom Literature Reader 2000 Ðviesa

E. Ðleinotienë et al. Limelight 11. Grade 11 2004 Ðviesa

C. Skinner. Excellent ! Starter 2004 Longman

C. Bradshaw, J. Hadfield. Excellent! Pupil’s Book 1 2003 Longman

C. Bradshaw, J. Hadfield. Excellent! Pupil’s Book 2 2003 Longman

M. Herrera, T. Zanatta. New English Parade Starter A 2000 Longman

M. Herrera, T. Zanatta. New English Parade Starter B 2000 Longman

M. Herrera, T. Zanatta. New English Parade 1 2000 Longman



S. Elsworth, J. Rose. Get up and Go! 1999 Longman

S. Elsworth, J. Rose. Go! 1 1999 Longman



M. Harris, D. Mower, A. Sikorzynska. OpportunitiesBeginner

2002 Longman

M. Harris, D. Mower, A. Sikorzynska. OpportunitiesElementary

2001 Longman

M. Harris, D. Mower, A. Sikorzynska. OpportunitiesPre-Intermediate

2000 Longman

M. Harris, D. Mower, A. Sikorzynska. Opportunities.Intermediate

2001 Longman

M. Harris, D. Mower, A. Sikorzynska. OpportunitiesUpper-Intermediate

2002 Longman

B. Abbs, I. Freebairn, Ch. Barker. Snapshot Starter 1998 Longman

B. Abbs, I. Freebairn, Ch. Barker. New SnapshotStarter

2003 Longman

B. Abbs, I. Freebairn, Ch. Barker. SnapshotElementary

1998 Longman

B. Abbs, I. Freebairn, Ch. Barker. New SnapshotElementary

2003 Longman

B. Abbs, I. Freebairn, Ch. Barker. New SnapshotPre-Intermediate

2003 Longman

7

CoursebookYear of


B. Abbs, I. Freebairn, Ch. Barker. New SnapshotIntermediate. Student’s Book.

2004 Longman

J. Copade, L. Mortimer. Get on Track to FCE 2002 Longman

A. Stanton, M. Stephens. Fast Track to FCE 2001 Longman

R. Acklam, A. Crace. Going for Gold Intermediate 2003 Longman

R. Acklam, A. Crace. Going for Gold UpperIntermediate. Coursebook

2003 Longman

R. Acklam, S. Burgess. First Certificate Gold 2000 Longman

J. Bell, R. Gower. First Certificate Expert.Coursebook

2003 Longman

F. Scott-Barret. First Certificate Listening andSpeaking

2000 Longman

J. Copage. First Certificate Use of English 2000 Longman

J. Copage. First Certificate Writing 2000 Longman

P. McGavigan. First Certificate Reading 2000 Longman

D. Evans. Powerhouse Intermediate 1999 Longman

D. Evans. Powerhouse Upper-Intermediate 2000 Longman

D. Cotton, D. Falvey. Market Leader Pre-Intermediate 2001 Longman

D. Cotton, D. Falvey. Market Leader Intermediate 2000 Longman

D. Cotton, D. Falvey. Market LeaderUpper-Intermediate

2000 Longman

H. Solozano, L. Frazier. Contemporary Topics 1 2002 Longman

E. Kisslinger, M. Rost. Contemporary Topics 2 2002 Longman

D. Beglar, N. Murray. Contemporary Topics 3 2002 Longman

P. Ellis, M. Bowen. Way Ahead Level 1 1997 MacmillanHeinemann






8

CoursebookYear of


J. Garton-Sprenger. Shine Level I 1999 MacmillanHeinemann

J. Garton-Sprenger. Shine Level II 1999 MacmillanHeinemann

J. Garton-Sprenger. Shine Level III 2000 MacmillanHeinemann

R. Norris. Ready for First Certificate 2002 MacmillanHeinemann

S. Kay, V. Jones et. al. Inside Out Pre-Intermediate 2002 MacmillanHeinemann

S. Kay, V. Jones et.al. Inside Out Intermediate 2000 MacmillanHeinemann

S. Kay, V. Jones et. al. Inside Out Upper-Intermedia-te

2001 MacmillanHeinemann

S. Kay, V. Jones et. al. Inside Out advanced 2001 MacmillanHeinemann

L. Prodromou. Rising Star Intermediate 2001 MacmillanHeinemann

L. Prodromou. Rising Star Pre-First Certificate 2000 MacmillanHeinemann

L. Prodromou. First Certificate Star 1998 MacmillanHeinemann

S. House, K. Scott. Story Magic 1. Pupil’s Book 2003 Macmillan




M. Mann, S. Taylore-Knowles. Skills for FirstCertificate. Writing

2003 Macmillan

M. Mann, S. Taylore-Knowles. Skills for FirstCertificate. Reading

2003 Macmillan

M. Mann, S. Taylore-Knowles. Skills for FirstCertificate. Listening and Speaking

2003 Macmillan

M. Mann, S. Taylore-Knowles. Skills for FirstCertificate. Use of English

2003 Macmillan

S. Gika. You and Me Starter 1994 Oxford UP

C. Lawday. You and Me 1 1994 Oxford UP

C. Lawday. You and Me 2 1994 Oxford UP

9

CoursebookYear of


S. Maidment, L. Roberts. Happy House 1 2000 Oxford UP

S. Maidment, L. Roberts. Happy House 2 2003 Oxford UP

S. Maidment, L. Roberts. Happy Street 1 2000 Oxford UP

S. Maidment, L. Roberts. Happy Street 2 2001 Oxford UP

B. Bowler, S. Parminter. Happy Earth 1 2002 Oxford UP

B. Bowler, S. Parminter. Happy Earth 2 2003 Oxford UP

P. Shipton. Chit Chat 1 2002 Oxford UP

P. Shipton. Chit Chat 2 2002 Oxford UP

N. Whitney. Open Doors I 1995 Oxford UP

N. Whitney. Open Doors II 1994 Oxford UP

N. Whitney. Open Doors III 1995 Oxford UP

T. Hutchinson. Project I 1999 Oxford UP

T. Hutchinson. Project II 1999 Oxford UP

T. Hutchinson. Project III 2000 Oxford UP

T. Hutchinson. Project IV 2001 Oxford UP

T. Hutchinson. Project Plus 2002 Oxford UP

K. Gude, M. Duckworth. Matrix Pre-Intermediate 2002 Oxford UP

K. Gude, J. Wildman. Matrix Intermediate 2001 Oxford UP

K. Gude, J. Wildman. Matrix Upper-Intermediate 2001 Oxford UP

D. Strange, D. Hall. Pacesetter Beginner 2000 Oxford UP

D. Strange, D. Hall. Pacesetter Elementary 2000 Oxford UP

D. Strange, D. Hall. Pacesetter Pre-Intermediate 2000 Oxford UP

D. Strange, D. Hall. Pacesetter Intermediate 2000 Oxford UP

R. Nolasco. Twist 1! 2000 Oxford UP



R. Nolasco. New Streetwise Intermediate 1999 Oxford UP

R. Nolasco. New Streetwise Upper-Intermediate 2000 Oxford UP

R. O. Neill, M. Duckworth & K.Gude. New Success atFirst Certificate

1997 Oxford UP

M. Duckworth, K. Gude. Countdown to FirstCertificate

1999 Oxford UP

P. May. Knockout First Certificate 1999 Oxford UP

J. Wildman, D. Bolton. Attain Intermediate.Student’s Book

2003 Oxford UP

10

CoursebookYear of


S. Haines, B. Stewart. First Certificate Masterclass.Student’ s Book

2004 Oxford UP

A. Capel, R. Nixon. PET Masterclass. Intermediate.Student’ s Book

2003 Oxford UP

H. Q. Mitchell, S. Parker. Zoom a 2000 MM Publications

H. Q. Mitchell, S. Parker. Zoom b 2001 MM Publications

H. Q. Mitchell, S. Parker. Zoom c 2002 MM Publications

H. Q. Mitchell, J. Scott. Say Yes to English 1 2000 MM Publications



H. Q. Mitchell, J. Scott. Channel Your EnglishBeginners

2003 MM Publications

H. Q. Mitchell, J. Scott. Channel Your EnglishElementary


H. Q .Mitchell, J. Scott. Channel Your EnglishPre-Intermediate


H. Q. Mitchell, J. Scott. Channel Your EnglishIntermediate


H. Q. Mitchell, J. Scott. Channel Your EnglishUpper-Intermediate


E. Gray, V. Evans. Welcome I. Primary 1999 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Welcome II. Primary 2000 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Welcome III. Primary 2001 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Enterprise I. Beginner 1998 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Enterprise II. Elementary 1999 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Enterprise III. Pre-Intermediate 1997 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Enterprise Plus.Pre-Intermediate

2002 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Enterprise IV. Intermediate 1997 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Upstream Intermediate 2002 Express publishing

B. Obee, V. Evans. Upstream Upper Intermediate.Student’ s Book

2003 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Mission FCE 1. First certificate 1996 Express publishing

V. Evans, J. Dooley. Mission FCE 2. First certificate 1996 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Letterfun Primary 2001 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Set Sail I. Primary 2001 Express publishing

11

CoursebookYear of


E. Gray, V. Evans. Set Sail II. Primary 2001 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Click On Starter 2002 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Click On 1. Beginner 2000 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Click On 2. Elementary 2001 Express publishing

E. Gray, V. Evans. Click On 3. Pre-Intermediate 2001 Express publishing

V. Evans. Click On 4. Intermediate 2002 Express publishing

G. Gerngross, H. Puchta. Join In. Pupil’s Book 1 2001 Cambridge UP



A. Littlejohn, D. Hicks. Cambridge English forSchools. Starter

1999 Cambridge UP

A. Littlejohn, D. Hicks. Cambridge English forSchools I. Elementary

2001 Cambridge UP

A. Littlejohn, D. Hicks. Cambridge English forSchools II. Pre-Intermediate

2002 Cambridge UP

A. Littlejohn, D. Hicks. Cambridge English forSchools III. Intermediate

2002 Cambridge UP

A. Littlejohn, D. Hicks. Cambridge English forSchools IV. Upper-Intermediate

2002 Cambridge UP

L. Jones. New Progress to First Certificate 1998 Cambridge UP

A. Capel, W. Sharp. Objective First Certificate 1998 Cambridge UP

M. Spratt-B. Obee. First Certificate Direct 2001 Cambridge UP

12

A P P E N D I X 5

The map of the survey

Alytus county – 32 respondentsKaunas county – 51 respondentsKlaipëda county – 27 respondentsMarijampolë county – 27 respondentsPanevëþys county – 39 respondentsÐiauliai county – 77 respondentsTauragë county – 23 respondentsTelðiai county – 9 respondentsUtena county – 26 respondentsVilnius county – 91 respondents

13

A P P E N D I X 6

The questionnaire for school teachers

Please tick where appropriate and write comments

1. Location of your institution¨ urban ¨ rural

2. Please specify county and region____________________________________________________

3. Type of your institution / school¨ primary ¨ basic ¨ secondary ¨ gymnasium

4. Your age-range group:¨ 19–24 ¨ 25–30 ¨ 31–40 ¨ 41–50 ¨ 51–60 ¨ 61+

5. Gender:¨ male ¨ female

6. Your native language¨ Lithuanian ¨ Polish ¨ Russian ¨ English¨ other (please specify ____________________________

7. Your EL academic background¨ secondary school ¨ English language student ¨ college ¨ university

8. Your qualification category¨ teacher ¨ senior teacher ¨ teacher methodologist ¨ expert

9. Your job as an English language teacher is¨ full-time ¨ part-time

10. Your English languge teaching experience in years¨ less than 2 ¨ 2–5 ¨ 6–15 ¨ 16–30 ¨ 31+

11. The number of hours you teach English a week¨ 1–9 ¨ 10–18 ¨ 19–24 ¨ 25–30 ¨ 31+

14

12. Number of students in your groups¨ 5–11 ¨ 12–20 ¨ 21–29 ¨ 33+

13. What grades do you teach English¨ 1–4 ¨ 5–8 ¨ 9–10 ¨ 11–12

14. What is the title of the main course-book you use in the grades you teach?Please indicate the grade next to the book.__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

15. What motivates your choice for the textbooks? Tick the most important.¨ students’ needs ¨ publisher’s advertising¨ exam requirements ¨ syllabus requirements¨ textbook availability ¨ other, please specify _____________________¨ price

16. Are you satisfied with the course-books you use?¨ yes ¨ no ¨ not always

17. If yes, why¨ all skills covered ¨ attractive presentations¨ variety of activities ¨ reference to syllabus

18. What teaching aids do you use in the classroom?¨ video ¨ internet¨ tape recorder ¨ flipchart¨ overhead projector ¨ posters¨ computer ¨ other ________________________

19. What teaching aids do you lack in the classroom?¨ video ¨ internet¨ tape recorder ¨ flipchart¨ overhead projector ¨ posters¨ computer ¨ other ________________________

20. You find the support of the Ministry of Education and Science¨ very good ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

21. You find the support of school administration¨ very good ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

15

22. You find colleagues’ support¨ very good ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

23. You find parents’ support¨ very good ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

24. The support of in-service taecher training centres is¨ very good ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

25. Your participation in the international in-service teacher development eventsduring the last 5 years¨ 0 ¨ 1–3 ¨ 3+

26. Your participation in the national in-service teacher development events duringthe last 5 years¨ 0 ¨ 1–5 ¨ 6–10 ¨ 10+

27. Your participation in the regional in-service teacher development events duringthe last 5 years¨ 0 ¨ 1–5 ¨ 6–10 ¨ 10+

28. Do your school authorities encourage your professional development?¨ yes ¨ no

29. Why have you chosen teacher’s career?¨ call for teaching ¨ friends’ influence¨ family tradition ¨ good employment possibilities¨ wish to learn English ¨ other, please specify _____________________

30. Are you happy working as an English language teacher?¨ yes ¨ no ¨ uncertain

31. Would you change your job if you had a chance?¨ yes ¨ no ¨ uncertain

32. If yes, why?¨ need for change ¨ low salary¨ lack of respect ¨ other, please specify _____________________¨ low prestige

16

A P P E N D I X 7

The questionnaire for tertiary teachers

1. Name of institution ____________________________________________________

2. Type of institution¨ university ¨ non-university

3. Sector of education¨ state ¨ private

4. Faculty / department you teach at ________________________________________

5. Your academic degree¨ university (grad. pre-1994) ¨ BA ¨ MA ¨ PhD ¨ Dr Hab. ¨ other

6. Your title / position¨ assistant ¨ lecturer ¨ associate professor ¨ professor

7. Your job as an EL teacher¨ full-time ¨ part-time

8. Your ELT experience in tertiary institutions (in years)¨ 1–3 ¨ 4–9 ¨ 10–15 ¨ 16–21 ¨ 22+

9. Your professional development (last 5 years)¨ number of seminars attended¨ number of conferences attended¨ number of articles published¨ number of projects you were involved in¨ number of published teaching materials¨ other

10. You find the support for your professional development by the institutionauthorities¨ excellent ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

11. Number of students in your groups¨ 1–3 ¨ 4–9 ¨ 10–15 ¨ 16–21 ¨ 22+

17

12. Is the current number of hours enough to achieve the goals set for ELT at theinstitution?¨ yes ¨ uncertain ¨ no

13. What should the optimal number of students in a group for ELT be?¨ 1–3 ¨ 4–9 ¨ 10–15 ¨ 16–21 ¨ 22+

14. What do your students need more?¨ General English¨ English for Specific Purposes¨ English for Academic Purposes

15. The attitude of your students towards learning English is¨ very positive ¨ positive ¨ indifferent ¨ negative

16. Tick the resources and facilities you employ in your English classroom:¨ textbooks ¨ internet ¨ board ¨ OHP¨ supplementary material ¨ computer ¨ flipchart ¨ video¨ tape recorder ¨ markers ¨ multimedia ¨ other

17. Are you provided with the resources and facilities mentioned above by thefaculty you teach at?¨ yes ¨ partially ¨ no

18. What percentage of students start EL learning at your institution withsatisfactory command of English?¨ 1–30 % ¨ 30–60 % ¨ 60–90 %

19. Do you ask your students for some feedback on the courses provided andmethodology used?¨ yes ¨ no

20. Your follow-up on the students’ feedback:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

21. What were the problems the students addressed you in reference to English last year?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

18

22. Tick 1–3 major problems in ELT¨ low pay ¨ lack of students’ motivation¨ big groups ¨ poor attendance¨ lack of teaching materials ¨ insufficient number of hours¨ insufficient number of hours ¨ other

23. The attitude towards ELT of the faculty authorities you teach at is¨ very positive ¨ positive ¨ indifferent ¨ negative

24. What changes in ELT at the institution you teach at would you like to see inthe future?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

25. Other comments:__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

19

A P P E N D I X 8

The interview questionnaire for school administrators

I. GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Location¨ town ¨ region

2. Type of school¨ primary ¨ basic ¨ secondary ¨ gymnasium

3. Authority¨ state ¨ private

4. Position of the respondent¨ director ¨ deputy director

5. Subject taught by the respondent _________________________________________

6. Number of students (total) ______________________________________________

7. Number of students studying English as the first foreign language ____________

8. Number of students studying English as the second foreign language _________

9. School teaching staff ___________________________________________________

10. Number of teachers of English¨ full-timers ¨ part-timers ¨ native speakers

II. TEACHERS

11. What qualifications do EL teachers have (numbers)¨ BA ¨ PhD¨ MA ¨ retrainee¨ University diploma holder ¨ no formal qualification

12. EL teachers’ positions (numbers)¨ teacher ¨ teacher-methodologist¨ senior-teacher ¨ teacher-expert

20

13. EL teachers’ experience in ELT (years)¨ less than 2 ¨ 3–5 ¨ 6–10 ¨ 11–20 ¨ 20+

14. What do you think about ELT teachers’ qualification?¨ highly qualified ¨ qualified ¨ underqualified

15. How do you encourage EL teachers to raise their qualification?¨ by attending teacher development events¨ by organising in-house meetings / events¨ providing / disseminating information¨ other (please specify)

16. What is your relationship with EL teachers?¨ excellent ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

17. What do you think the working conditions of English teachers at your school are?¨ excellent ¨ good ¨ fair ¨ poor

III. TEACHING PROCESS

18. How many EL lessons per week do students have?¨ grade 1 ¨ grade 4 ¨ grade 7 ¨ grade 10¨ grade 2 ¨ grade 5 ¨ grade 8 ¨ grade 11¨ grade 3 ¨ grade 6 ¨ grade 9 ¨ grade 12

19. Who designs ELT syllabi?¨ teachers individually ¨ school administration¨ chief-teachers ¨ other¨ ELT board

20. What resources are available at your school?¨ tape recorder ¨ OHP ¨ internet access¨ video recorder ¨ computer

IV. PROBLEM AREAS

21. What are the main problems in teaching English at your school?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

21

22. How do you intend to solve EL teaching problems?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

V. SUPPORT

23. How do parents support EL teachers at your school?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

24. What support does the ministry provide your school in ELT area?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

VI. FUTURE PLANS

25. What are future plans in ELT at your school?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

26. Other comments______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

22

A P P E N D I X 9

The interview questionnaire for tertiary administrators

1. Name of institution ____________________________________________________

2. Faculty / department ___________________________________________________

3. Title / position of the respondent ________________________________________

4. Number of students (faculty / department) ¨

5. Number of students studying English ¨

6. Number of terms for EL (mandatory) ¨

7. Number of terms for EL (optional) ¨

8. Number of academic hours for EL per week ¨

9. Is the current number of hours enough to achieve the goals set for ELT at thefaculty / department?¨ yes ¨ uncertain ¨ no

10. Number of credits for EL ¨

11. What should be the optimal number of students in a group for EL? ¨

12. What do your students need more:¨ General English ¨ ESP

13. Are you familiar with the students’ needs?¨ yes ¨ uncertain ¨ no

14. Types of resources / facilities provided by the faculty:¨ textbooks ¨ tape recorders¨ dictionaries ¨ video¨ OHP ¨ software for a computer classroom

15. What is the students’ final assessment in English proficiency?¨ exam ¨ graded credit¨ credit

23

16. Are you satisfied with the EL results achieved by the students? Why (pleasespecify)? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

17. What was the number of students participating in international mobility(exchange) programmes last year? ¨

18. What were the problems the students addressed you in reference to English lastyear? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

19. What were the problems the teachers addressed you in reference to English lastyear? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

20. Do you encourage EL teachers’ qualification? How?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

21. Should the students contribute financially to ELT?¨ no ¨ partially ¨ full price

22. What are the future plans of ELT at your faculty?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

23. What changes would you like to see in the future concerning ELT?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

24. Other comments ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

24

A P P E N D I X 1 0

Lesson observation sheet

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Observer’s name____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. County (apskritis)____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Location¨ town ¨ rural

4. Education sector¨ state ¨ private

5. Type of school¨ primary ¨ basic ¨ secondary ¨ gymnasium

6. Number of students at school¨ less than 100 ¨ 101–400 ¨ 401–800 ¨ more than 800

7. Native language at school¨ Lithuanian ¨ Russian ¨ Polish ¨ other

8. Date of observation____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9. Grade taught¨ 4th ¨ 8th ¨ 11th

THE TEACHER

10. Teacher’s age group¨ 19–24 ¨ 25–30 ¨ 31–40 ¨ 41–50¨ 51–60 ¨ over 60

25

11. Teacher’s gender¨ female¨ male

12. ELT experience¨ less than 2 ¨ 2–5 ¨ 6–15 ¨ 16–30 ¨ more than 30

13. Teacher’s ELT qualification¨ none ¨ requalification cert.¨ BA ¨ MA¨ PhD ¨ other: ___________________________________

THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENT

14. Classroom¨ ELT room ¨ just a classroom

15. Equipment available in the classroom (tick more than one if needed)¨ chalkboard ¨ whiteboard ¨ flipchart¨ display space ¨ OHP ¨ audio recorder¨ video recorder ¨ computer ¨ internet access¨ power point projector ¨ other: _________________________

16. Number of students in the group¨ 5-11 ¨ 12-20 ¨ 21-29 ¨ more than 30

THE LESSON

17. The lesson aims are¨ clear ¨ unclear

18. The lesson is divided into clear stages¨ yes ¨ no

19. This lesson can best be described as¨ a grammar lesson ¨ a vocabulary lesson¨ a reading lesson ¨ a listening lesson¨ a speaking lesson ¨ a writing lesson¨ a mixed lesson

20. The lesson is well balanced with a variety of activities¨ yes ¨ no

21. Text book usedTitle _________________________ Publisher ___________________________

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22. Text book level¨ beginner’s ¨ elementary ¨ pre-intermediate¨ intermediate ¨ upper-intermediate¨ advanced ¨ proficiency

23. Other learning materials used¨ activity book ¨ dictionaries ¨ readers¨ handouts ¨ audio cassettes ¨ video¨ multimedia ¨ self-produced¨ other: ______________________________________________

24. Materials are appropriate to the age of the students¨ yes ¨ no

25. Materials are¨ appropriate to the level ¨ too complicated¨ too easy

THE STUDENTS

26. The students are actively involved¨ yes ¨ no

27. The students use English most of the time¨ yes ¨ no

CLASS MANAGEMENT

28. The lesson is generally¨ teacher-centered ¨ student-centered ¨ a mix

29. Interaction patterns used (more than one is possible)¨ individual work ¨ group work ¨ pair work¨ whole class work

30. Teacher is sensitive to the needs of individual students¨ yes ¨ no

31. The teacher speaks¨ more than 75% of time ¨ more than 50% of time¨ as much as the students ¨ not as much as the students

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32. Use of Lithuanian is¨ justified ¨ not justified

33. Teacher encourages and praises¨ yes ¨ no

34. Error correction¨ encourages learning ¨ discourages learning

35. Error correction is¨ overemphasized ¨ just right ¨ ignored

36. General comments on the lesson______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

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A P P E N D I X 1 1

School Teacher Salaries in Primary and Secondary Education –Module II

Maximum Salary / Minimum SalaryTeacher – ISCED 3 – 2002/2003

Source: Eurydice.

(:) No Data(f) No salary scale (see footnote)

AustriaISCED 3Teacher

Data relate to Allgemeinbildenden höheren Schulen.

Czech RepublicISCED 3Teacher

The data correspond to average salaries for all teachers.They are estimates based on salary tables, including salarybonuses, increases and allowances.

DenmarkISCED 3Teacher

Supplements are negotiated at local level, so no definitemaximum can be given.

FranceISCED 3Teacher

The data refers to professeurs agrégés. Another category ofteachers, the professeurs certifiés, can teach in generalupper secondary education. Their salaries are shown inISCED 2.

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GermanyISCED 3Teacher

Given the complexity and wide variety of individualcircumstances, the salaries of teachers have been calculatedon the basis of the average age at the start of a career(related to age at the outset and the total period of study)and salaries in the Länder of former West Germany.

HungaryISCED 3Teacher

Basic salaries cannot be provided. The data correspond toaverage salaries for all teachers. They are estimates basedon salary tables, including salary bonuses, increases andallowances.

IcelandISCED 3Teacher

Only basic salaries are shown. Possible additional payments(for overtime, extra responsibility, etc.) can be considerable.

LatviaISCED 3Teacher

Only basic salaries are shown. Bonuses and other additionalpayments constitute a major share of teacher remuneration,but they are not included as they vary in accordance withresources and the prevailing system in each municipality.

LiechtensteinISCED 3Teacher

Per capita GDP not available.

LithuaniaISCED 3Teacher

The salaries are those of teachers with university-leveleducation (ISCED 5A).

NetherlandsISCED 3Teacher

The salary shown is that of a teacher on grade 1 (thisqualification entitles its holders to teach in lower and uppersecondary education). Data relate to VWO teachers. Salarylevel on 1st March 2003, after indexing.

NorwayISCED 3Teacher

The salaries shown relate to a lektor teacher (five years ofinitial education, in some cases five and a half).

NorwayISCED 3Teacher

An agreement was reached in 2001 which led to aconsiderable pay rise for teachers and school heads who, inreturn, had to accept a greater school workload.

PolandISCED 3Teacher

A new system of teachers’ remuneration was introducedbetween 2000 and 2002. It is based on the key concept ofdifferent position of the basic salary in the overallremuneration of a teacher. Thus, local self-governmentsshould have greater decision power with respect to definingteachers’ salaries.

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PortugalISCED 3Teacher

Data refer to teachers with a Licenciatura diploma. Supportfor meals is included.

SpainISCED 3Teacher

Because of significant variations between AutonomousCommunities, average salaries have been represented.

SwedenISCED 3Teacher

Data are not based on a salary scale, but on collectedinformation on salaries (autumn 2002).

United Kingdom (E/W/NI)ISCED 3Teacher

Salaries shown include inner London allowance. Commonpay scales are in operation across the rest of England,Wales and Northern Ireland. It is unlikely that a teacherwould reach retirement without receiving any additionalallowances for specific responsibilities. Progression to themaximum is not automatic.

United Kingdom ScotlandISCED 3Teacher

Under the terms of a tripartite agreement reached inJanuary 2001 between the Scottish Executive, employersand teacher organisations, teachers and school heads areguaranteed a minimum salary increase of 23.1 % over threeyears from April 2001. The maximum salary is that of ateacher who has not been promoted.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 a

Focus group interview with college and university lecturers

28 October 2003, Kaunas

L1: I’m the local one from Kaunas. I have one of my colleagues here and my boss.I’ve been teaching English for already 12 years and approximately the same level,because we used to be some time ago technical, something like ‘Technikumas’ /‘technical college’, then a high school and now we are a college, called ‘college’. Butwe always used to have the secondary school leavers. English was the first foreignlanguage for all of them. So this is my practice. But, of course, I have someexperience of teaching short-time courses: children and adults.

L2: I’m from Vilnius College. Actually, I have been teaching English not very long,for ten years and up to that time I have been working as a translator from technicalEnglish and now I’m teaching students of Business Department. Actually, we have thesame students, graduates from secondary school. How to define their level? Itdepends. Some of them may be defined as upper-intermediate, others may be asintermediate.

M: But they are all secondary school leavers, that’s the age?

L2: Yes.

L3: I teach at Kaunas technical college. I have already been teaching for twenty fouryears. My teaching is specific because we focus on technical language more, becauseit’s a technical college. And then it is very difficult to decide on the level and on thematerial, because the students come with different levels and technical language isalready higher level. This is my practice.

L4: I am… from Kaunas College. I’m a teacher and also I’m the Head of theForeign Language Department. As the Head I’m quite young; it’s my second year inthat position. It’s a huge school, about seven thousand students and six faculties, sowe have sixty teachers in the department. I’ve been teaching for twenty years alreadyand I started with two levels of students: first level was graduates from basic schooland they used to take the final secondary school examination during their studiesand then – secondary school leavers. Now we have only this level, i.e. secondaryschool leavers.

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L5: I’m from Marijampole College. Our college has Languages Department and weprepare and train English teachers for primary and basic schools. There are otherdepartments as well, but I work in this department and so I teach my students Englishlanguage practice and the English language teaching methodology. We have teachingpractice at school and so, I think, I know what’s happening at school quite well. I’mafraid to say for how long I’ve been teaching English, because you can see I’m theoldest here – I’ve been teaching for thirty four years already. At the same time, I alsohave lessons in the gymnasium – one class. And also evening classes for adults, kind ofcourses. So, it seems to me that I work in different areas teaching English.

L6: I work in the private college in Kaunas. I have students who study business, law,English as interpreters. I don’t feel very comfortable to say that I’ve been teachingEnglish only for three years. So I feel as a chicken here. So my students aresecondary school leavers and they are more or less intermediate, sometimespre-intermediate, sometimes upper-intermediate.

L7: I’ve been teaching for six years and mostly I’ve been teaching adults in a veryspecific field. But this time I represent Kaunas Business College and I’ve been herejust for a month, because this is my part-time job and I think I’ll be just aninformation source and I don’t think I’ll make a great input to this meeting.

L8: I’ve been teaching at Kaunas University of Technology. Well, we have manystudents from different faculties and we are specializing in English for specificpurpose. Personally, I’ve been working with adult students in the CorrespondenceDepartment and we teach them typical language.

L9: I work at Vilnius University, Kaunas Faculty of Humanities. I’m of those youngteachers; my experience is only three years of teaching. Currently, I work withBachelor Degree students and I teach the advanced level – undergraduates.

L10: I teach at … college. Like most colleges our students enter also after secondaryschool. All of them are secondary school leavers. I teach different specialties: forthose, who study business, I teach business English; for those, who study law, tourismalso, they have English for one year and they all study professional English.

M: And how long have you been teaching?

L10: Eighteen years.

M: So what kinds of materials do you use in your lectures? Do you use course books?Do you use materials that you generate yourselves?

L1: I think the situation is similar in all those schools or colleges. We have to teachEnglish for purpose, specific or technical English, and it depends very much on the

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course you are teaching. For example, I teach mainly about food: catering industry,food industry, business administration or business and again food industry. So, coursefor catering – it’s possible to get some textbooks at elementary level in ourbookshops, only elementary level. And food industry, equipment, mainly, andtechnologies, it’s very complicated – no one writes in England this kind of books andfor that we have to look for specialized books. My colleagues, some of them, do readEnglish, they somehow manage to get those books, they travel somewhere or theyhave friends who send them, and then we lend, we borrow, we copy something andwe try to apply somehow those materials. And as to my situation, it’s very useful insome cases to use different materials to prepare during the projects. We have a fewprojects: international projects about and in food industry, so it’s possible to use someof those materials, something about food ... requirements and applied chemistry, let’ssay, but, of course, it’s very complicated. You need a lot of time to prepare thoseresources to use them with our students who are very diverse. This is my situation.

L5: I think it’s very different in my college, because it’s like a teacher training college. So,again it’s like language practice when we have to practice the language in differentaspects: in speaking, conversation, then writing and textual analysis. And, of course, thereare teachers who teach different subjects: separate teachers teach phonetics, grammar,British studies, literature and language practice and methodology, so that’s different. Butwhat we try to do is…Of course, it’s a good idea to have some kind of a course bookand we try to get one, but it never helps in all areas. So, we use a lot of supplementaryadditional materials, we use photocopiers for this – of course, in the limits of law – weuse the materials from the Internet, we use videos, and in Marijampole we have theeducation centre, that is a teacher-resource centre, and we are very happy that we’ve gotsome materials there which both students and teachers can take and use. And as I haveaccess to the British Council, sometimes I get some information, some materials from theBritish Council. And we were very happy to get more materials earlier. Now the librarymoved to another place, but still materials are there.

M: Are you controlled by the Ministry because of the curriculum that you have to follow?

L5: No, not my college. We prepare our own curriculum and we are free choosing thecurriculum and the materials, but we are not free – we have to follow the standardthat is prepared for this type of college.

M: Thank you. How much time do you spend developing your own materials?

All: A lot.

L3: Teacher’s work gets more and more expensive, because we spend hours inadapting texts, preparing tasks and whatever. That’s the most difficult part of ateacher’s life, I think.

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L5: And, as I know these teachers for a long time, it seems to me that Englishteachers are never satisfied with what they have, willing to find new and newmaterials and to use them in their work. So, I think, a lot of time is spend looking forsomething new that it would be interesting for me, not only for my students.

L3: Yeah. And most probably in some cases, you have the access to the materialsand you kind of have lack of the material, but the level you are teaching is not upto that material, that’s why you have anyway to decide how to tailor it to thestudents’ level.

M: When you use other materials like course books, and course books very oftenhave videos and cassettes, do you have all the resources to use? Do you have thetechnology? Do you have the computers? Do you have the videos? Do you have thetape recorders, etc.?

L4: Yes, in some cases.

L5: We have one video for the whole department, but it’s OK. We make kind of atimetable.

M: Do any of you not have access to some of this technology?

L5: Maybe some difficulties with the computers, because they are in anotherclassroom, and another building, but it is possible. Just, you know, difficult.

M: If you have access to Internet, how easy is it for you to do that?

L7: Very easy. Many teachers have the access to the Internet at home; many have theaccess at the department, so that they can utilize ideas, all the material that isprovided by the Internet. But I think one of the awkward things I tend to do is Inever use the tests which are provided, for example, in teachers’ books, because theywould probably be too easy. I prefer to design the test myself.

M: Now let’s assess your own development. Alongside that you are talking aboutdeveloping your course material, you are talking about developing your students, howare you yourselves developed? Who supports your development and how?

L4: As a teacher?

M: Yes.

L5: What you mean by who supports it?

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M: Does your institution support you? Do you have a network that you use betweenyourselves that provides support for you? If you want to go on some course forpersonal development, how much are you supported by the college administration? Isit easy to do it?

L4: There are certain formal requirements for raising your qualification, so theadministration must support, because it’s their duty to support teachers and theyusually do, at least in my college.

M: What if it’s a non-qualification type of development you want to go on?Workshops? Would you get support for that?

L5: You know, the support can come in two different ways. The principle is do theyallow you to go or not. So that’s one kind of support. And then, when you startthinking if they are going to pay for the trip, so that’s another thing. The supportconcerning money is like two times per year. And I usually go more times and then Igo using my own money. And if they just decide to pay me to go to Kaunas, it’s tooproblematic to go and get this ‘kreditas’. I usually don’t go there. Another thing is ifthey let you go or not, for example, at our college there is a tradition: if I, let’s say,went today, I left at twelve, and I still had two lessons and then I will have to havethese lessons tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. It’s not like I left and that’s it.Even if I give them some work to do, still I have to be with them.

L1: Yes, we have to invest a lot of our time and our money.

M: How many of you have been on a development programme of some type in thelast year? Where did you go?

L6: Mostly the British Council things, events, courses.

M: And is that convenient for you to get to these?

L6: Yes. I think it’s important to get on the list in some British Council mailing listsand then they send you all the information and you can choose the useful course foryou.

M: And when you do this, is your institution supporting you?

L6: It depends: if it’s directly related to your teaching, then usually yes; if it’s notdirectly related, then they say: ‘If it does not interfere with your classes, then you cango. If not, you have to arrange your classes, but generally I feel the support.

M: Who of you do not feel supported?

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L8: Well, our Head, she doesn’t allow to go anywhere and she pays attention only toour lessons or lectures. Who supports me? It’s only my family: my husband givessome money and, of course, time goes from my own budget too.

L7: And I represent business college which is private, and I know that all thelanguage teachers are just part-time teachers, so I also think that if they want to gosomewhere. they have to find funds for that and wouldn’t get any support in terms ofmoney.

M: Are all of you able to get into some kind of teaching network, to shareexperiences, materials? Is there such a network in Lithuania for English teachers, nomatter of what area or application they are? Is there an association of Englishteachers?

L4: We were rather active two or three years ago. There was an association at ourlevel and union associations were established four or five years ago, but then suddenlyeverything stopped and the financing was stopped.

M: Is that a difficulty because very often within the EC founding what happens is toget things started, to get weapon running and then you carry on yourselves and, sortof, founding is redrawn. Well, the British Council does the same, doesn’t it? It beginsprojects; it helps people to start moving, to make networks and then expects you totake the overall run of yourself.

L10: In my opinion, our teachers, we are willing to have a network, because when wemeet during courses it’s been a must to share ideas or experience, what we do, and thenwhen you go back to your college, I think, the problem is that teachers are too busy andwe have so many hours, and then you get back to your college and again jump into thelessons, in the routine of preparing additional materials and, again, no time.

L4: I think college conferences are very useful, because we share ideas. But thenagain everything stops.

L10: I wish I had one day-off for preparing materials, for meeting my colleagues, let’ssay, going to another college, talking face to face with my colleagues, but I have nopossibilities.

L5: I have one day-off. Twenty lessons and one day-off. So take fewer lessons.

L10: They don’t listen to you. It was my dream to have fewer hours, but there are noteachers and they are always asking: ‘Can you take this group? Can you take thisgroup?’ And then they ask you to give courses for the staff and teachers, otherteachers, evening courses, and then it’s a full day, from morning to evening.

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L5: I don’t know how it all works in Lithuania, but, let’s say, in Marijampole, as Imentioned already, there is an education centre. It’s like a teachers’ resource centreor teacher-in-service training some time, I’m also working there and responsible forcourses for English teachers. Once a month we have a course for English teachers ofdifferent levels. And they all come; we share experiences about what is happening atschools, not at colleges. But it’s the same, it’s teaching methodology and things likethat. And teachers come. The difficulty is that they are of different levels. Nowadaysthere are many teachers teaching English who are not teachers. And I see a very verybig problem, because primary school teachers started working with young learners.And I can see a very big problem here and, I think, I don’t know who, but maybe theMinistry of Education has to somehow control things like that, because what ishappening is the teacher comes to an English language course and doesn’t understandEnglish. That’s a problem, because if they think they can pronounce the word ‘This isa bag, a book, a notebook’, they can teach English already.

M: So notwithstanding all of these difficulties, what do you think are your strengths asteachers? What are you really good at?

L4: You know, the subject we teach is the priority, I think, right now. Because Iremember when I started working as a teacher, I used to come to a classroom, I hadto prove that it’s very important, you have to learn, because you will need that inyour life. Now I don’t have to do that, because they know it, they are motivated. Well,maybe not all of them are very hard working, but they are motivated. They know thatthey will need English.

M: And what’s your particular strength in taking that motivation and turning it intolearning?

L1: For me, I think, it’s quite easy to establish rapport with my students. Conflicts?No conflicts, I think. Sometimes it happens that someone examines you and maybewants to play some tricks, but somehow I manage to solve these situations. These aremy problem students, I think. This is one of my strengths. And my students say thatthey like when their teacher smiles and this year it happened so that one of theprevious year groups – now they are the second year students – have a differentteacher now and they are unhappy, because she doesn’t smile. She is young, she’s OK,but she doesn’t smile, she never smiles.

M: Well, you have got survival strengths; you got rapport strengths. What otherstrengths have you got?

L1: If we manage to survive that means that somehow we manage to plan our time.

L6: … to answer the question what my strengths are, I think that I’m trying to givemy students not only language knowledge, but some kind of cultural awareness and

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certain knowledge. If not skills – because they have to practice to gain skills – thenknowledge about intercultural communication.

L3: Well, I think it’s very important when you see the result and when you think thatyou have taught for some years and, certainly, you see that they have made someprogress. And especially when they feel themselves that they have made it and theyhave it. And our strength is in the students’ strength as well: if they feel strong in thisfield, we are strong too.

M: You obviously talked about strength you’ve got in terms of manufacturingmaterials. So you are pretty adaptable. These are skills enough?

L2: Flexible. But I think it can be done easily with the help of students themselves. If,for example, you give them an assignment to find information for topics which maynot be included in the textbook and they search for it on the Internet, for example,and accordingly they adopt the data, tailor it to their own level, I think, it reallyworks.

M: When you do that, you’re changing the whole teaching strategy, aren’t you?Because you’re saying that the way I’m going to teach you is not necessarily going tobe teacher-centered, it’s going to be student-centered and you’re going to take someresponsibility for your own learning. Is this the way that English language education isgoing within your colleges or within your classes?

L2: Yes, we’re trying to get them involved in the process and we will say that themotto of our teachers are ‘our students to be treated fairly and being involved in theprocess of their education’.

M: And what kind of strategies do you use in the classroom? And do your classroomsby their layout enable you to do group work, pair work, dynamic work? Or is itsettled like this and you can’t move anything?

L4: It depends. In some places yes, in some no. When you’re working in olderenvironment, you have older furniture, of course, you can’t move anything. But inclassroom like this I suppose we can move things.

L10: Personally I am dissatisfied with the seating arrangement in my classroom,because some years ago we used to have about ten – twelve students in a group andnow the groups are much bigger, even up to twenty students in one group, and weare seated in front of each other and they are immovable. And group work – forgetit!

L4: But you can arrange the work even if the furniture is…, you know.

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L10: But you see, the room is too small. Let’s say, I have environmental studies –twenty three students, they can hardly sit and use vocabularies, dictionaries. I talkedto the administration, but they just say, ‘Finances’. With some groups, yes, we can dosome group work, at least they can talk with their friends, make some small projectsin groups of three-four students, but not with all groups.

M: Do you use project work?

L10: Yes, we do.

M: Just difficult, isn’t it, when the furniture isn’t right?

L10: Impossible. Everything is ruined then, because the setting there is just sitting andnot comfortable for group work.

L4: Can’t you exchange classrooms with your colleagues then?

L10: No, because we have part-time students who also come in for two-three weeksand we are short of classrooms. We talked to our administration and also through thestudents.

M: What group sizes are you working with?

L2: Twenty. Even twenty-six. And that’s most probably not (good) for languageteaching and learning. That’s too many. They usually stress the budget and it’s themain reason why they are pressed to do that, because, possibly, according to therequirements, groups should be small, but it’s money that doesn’t allow us.

L9: And those groups tend to grow bigger and bigger, right?

L4: We are even loosing contact hours. More hours are devoted to self-study andthat’s again a kind of problem because of finances, because of money.

M: So how using the communicative approach are you developing skills and gettingthem to practice speaking and role-play or whatever? Is that just a dream or does ithappen?L10: It’s reality. At least sometimes in some groups and then students are also veryhappy that they can communicate and it’s more interesting, of course. And they areactive not passive.

M: What kinds of language skills do you prefer to be trying to develop notwith-standing these problems? Very particular language skills that you prefer to develop,you favour developing?

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L7: In my case it’s speaking most probably.

M: Being able to speak more freely and more interactively?

L7: Yeah.

L1: I do like, for example, case studies. More advanced groups study a topic, thenthey are used to writing all the active vocabulary, and then they organize meetings,and then they try to make decisions, and then they make presentations, they try touse OHP, switch on, regulate everything. They are afraid to do it for the first time.Not all students can do it.

L4: Presentations, I think, is a very good and very important method, because now it’sa tendency that they take exams in a written form and they still don’t learn to speakin front of the audience, but in our department we are trying to give hours forself-study to the students to get deep into the subject to find material and be able topresent it in front of the colleagues.

L7: Yeah, it’s very helpful to break down language barrier.

L9: But the problem with presentations is that sometimes as a stimulus to increaseteamwork it happens that only one person works. I always ask them to ask questionsand to make, you know, an assessment, so they are always aware of what is beingtalked about, to listen to that presenter.

M: So in developing the speaking skills of an individual you are using that as a toolto develop the listening and comprehension skills of the others, as an integratedpackage?

L4: Yes. And one more problem that we face is that teaching English for specificpurposes, of course, we can adapt some texts and get material in that way, but, let’ssay, cassettes for listening – that is impossible to get. So, that’s a drawback, becausethey really can’t hear that specialized language.

M: How do you assess your students? What assessment methods do you use?

L5: My college, we are supposed to give a kind of mid-term test. We finish one topic,we finish the vocabulary and so we give a kind of mid-term test and then afterwardsthere is the average of this mid-term test plus exam and this is the final mark fortheir term. So we have to give, let’s say, not less than five and it depends on howmany topics we take. It is sometimes, for example, at my college in a written form,sometimes it’s like speaking, they have to prepare a conversation; and presentationsalso are somehow evaluated. Also, let’s say, teaching language methodology, they have

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to prepare a kind of topic to present, kind of a seminar to have and they would beassessed: what was useful for us, what not.

L9: To start, we have to approve the assessment scheme with the department, but wecan include, you know, the assessment of written work or oral activities, the activeparticipation, for example, in projects or case studies.

M: And when you talk about the criteria and then you put a grade, how do youactually develop the grade?

L7: There are some scoring scales like ballistic method or a multiple method so youchoose one of them.

L4: It depends upon a task. Sometimes one method, sometimes another.

M: Could you give an example?

L4: Sometimes I use self-assessment…, and when we make presentations, studentslike to assess each other and then I put the final touch on it. That’s quite interesting,they like it.

M: And do you find your students are able to reflect on their performance?

L4: Yes, of course. And we have some teachers who discuss, design their assessmentscheme together with the students during their first lessons when they meet. And wehave agreed it’s up to the teacher to decide how he designs the assessment scheme,but the most important thing is that students should know it and follow it and be ableto change something, if they think something is not very good.

M: And do you within your institutions, within your departments as teachers, do youget together to talk about assessments, to see if you’re assessing in the same way, sothat students’ expectations could be kind of focused in the same way? Does thathappen as well?

L6: Yes, for example, in my college, I don’t know if all colleges are required to dothis, but we have to give at least sixty percent of the grade to the final exam. And theother forty you can – it’s up to the teacher – to divide it.

M: How a lot of all does this final exam take?

L6: The grade that the students get after taking this course, at the end of thesemester, so, for example, if it’s ten, the best grade, then he can get six out of ten justcoming to the examination.

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M: And is that a written exam?

L6: Yes. It can combine a listening test or whatever. But still you have to present apaper that he has written. It’s like this in my college. And the other forty percent youcan get for homework, for projects, for participation.

M: You’ve talked about motivating yourselves, but how do you motivate yourstudents? How can they want to really be in your classroom?

L9: Now it’s for the Net, for the Internet, for some interesting material that, youknow, is really unusual, but relevant for something. I just give them, for example, atopic in advance for them to prepare, then I bring my material and we have a kind ofseminar. But everybody is speaking, everybody is presenting their material that theyhave found.

L4: My students sometimes get unexpected tasks, let’s say, not related to the themethat we are analyzing. Sometimes I divide them in groups and give a task, let’s say, todraw a map of ... . And then they give really funny pictures and really excitingexplanations and we draw a total map, a combined map on the blackboard. I like itvery much.

L7: I have found that real life situations are very much motivating for them. Whenyou give them freedom to discuss, to have debates, they find themselves very muchinvolved, very much interested in, say, their mind. Selection of the material is basedon the real life situations.

M: Someone we were interviewing yesterday used the expression that the great thingabout being an English teacher is that the whole world is your studio. Everythingthat’s going on even if it’s the moods of the students in the classroom, that’s teachingmaterial. It’s quite interesting, because it’s real life, it’s there and it has to beexplored. Are you able to use that?

L5: I’m teaching my students to remember that a teacher is always carrying a bag.And there are so many things in the bag and you can have some ... out of your bag.And my students still remember, OK, we are still carrying our bag and I’m so happythat about 97% of our graduates from the college work in schools and that is, I think,very important. They don’t go to any other areas; they just go to school, because theschools still lack English teachers. That’s a good idea.

M: Do they go further on then?

L5: Yeah, there is an agreement with Vytautas Magnus University for extramuralstudies – four more years. Life long learning: four years at our college and four more

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years at Vytautas Magnus University, but then you’ll be an English teacher withuniversity diploma.

M: Can I ask you, if you could walk to the Minister of Education and you could say,and he is offering, what kind of help would you ask him to give? And what kind ofhelp would you expect him to give you?

L8: I would like to ask for motivation of the authorities of our university, because theauthorities of our university are indifferent to the English language and our studentsare indifferent too. The only thing that motivates them to work is texts, specific wordsor phrases, let’s say, related to their specialty. And they have always explained methat English it’s not the only thing that they are studying here. That’s what I’d like toask for.

L9: I would like to ask to limit the number of students in language classrooms by law.Or, you know, by any other means.

M: What do you think that limit should be?

L9: 10. 12. 15. No more than 15.

L4: I would like to ask the Minister to take care of the secondary school Englishteachers, to supply them with necessary resources and, well, everything what theyneed, because now we get students with really different levels of knowledge.

L1: And those marks, the evaluations, they don’t reflect the real situation. If astudent, for example, has seven or eight, it doesn’t mean that he or she knows thatlevel and it’s really very complicated. And then those same people suffer somehow,because they think that they are at that level and it certainly appears quite different.

L1: What I would ask the Minister about would be very closely connected withfacilities . First of all, to change windows in the building, because it is very coldsometimes and my students are sitting there in their coats and anoraks, their fingersare cold, they don’t want to do anything, they don’t want to move, they sit like this‘aha’. And the teacher too (laughs). I would also ask about a computer, and printerfor our building, because maybe we will have one in our head office, but it would benice to have one for each department, you know.

M: Where you, teachers, work.

L1: Yes. What else would I ask? And, of course, smaller student numbers, fewercontact hours, more hours for preparation, but they should be paid too, because it’stiring work: you have to select material, to adapt it, and somehow our, you know,

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authorities think that these hours should be paid less, because you aren’t so involvedwhen you are preparing your materials.

L9: And, for example, they do not pay for supervision of course papers, or BA theses.We are motivated, but not financially supported.

L6: I also think that the Minister should put aside the idea that English teaching isnot necessary on the university and college level, because the reality is that it still isvery useful. I think the very very little minority teaches advanced English on thecollege level and that means if they are still in the intermediate or evenpre-intermediate level, then they do need English or other foreign language teaching.

L1: The overall depends very much on the popularity of the course. Every year oursituation becomes worse.

L7: And I would ask the Minister to provide money for teacher training. Especially tothose teaching in high levels. They desperately need native speakers to be with them.At least occasionally, not on a regular basis, to consult and have consultations.

M: I think that was interesting. The last question on my list: What changes would youlike to face in the future?

L4: The status of the teacher whatever he or she is, English teacher or mathematicsteacher, should be much much higher. Because the requirements are we should beEuropean teachers, but we can’t be mobile, we are not supplied with really necessarythings that we should have in order to meet that requirement. I think that they shouldnot only raise the requirements, but give real material support for us to develop.

L5: And I know how much paperwork you have to do. I have a lot to do everydayand not connected with teaching English, so it really is to reduce paperwork and toget me more time for teaching or preparation. I have to fill in different forms andanalysis, what not.

L2: Actually, we are working hard translating all the programmes, all the informationand you work as a …– translators get more than teachers – and we must just coincideand try to manage both.

M: Now in a minute or two I will stop the tape. Is there anything that you wanted tosay that we haven’t covered, haven’t got on the tape?

L4: There were special seminars for teachers of English, teachers of English forspecific purposes, by the British Council some years ago, but they stopped. I thinkmany teachers would like to have them, to go on with this, because it was really goodresource for new materials and methodology.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 b

Focus group interview with university lecturers I

29 October 2003, Vilnius

L1: Shall I start? Well, I think we have a pretty uniform background, because we areof the same generation. We got pretty good English language training at VilniusUniversity. It was based, of course, on passive learning rather than active, becausewe did not have access to so many things. But with the little means that we had, wesimply achieved a lot. And the reason why we achieved a lot, I think, was that theteachers, who were training us, in many cases, came from the pre-war tradition,from the tradition of the independent country and also some of them were verymuch motivated of leaving this country and they were translating the needs of thestudents through their own needs. And that was very important. They tried to get asmuch of that language as they could and so did we and the start was quite good. So,that is the background. I was lucky to start teaching immediately after mygraduation from Vilnius University and I continued for a lot of years at VilniusUniversity. However, all the time I felt that my strengths, as you have asked, werein, say, in management, in discovering educational structures rather than classroomteaching. And I do not think I was a good teacher. I think as an educationalmanager I am much stronger than a regular teacher. As far as teaching concerns, Iam very much interested in integrated teaching. As a teacher I see the future forlanguage as a tool to achieve other purposes. And the sooner we implement theconcept of integrated teaching into university curriculum the better it is for us andfor our students.

M: And tell me, what kinds of students have you taught in your teaching career?

L1: Well, I am teaching the English language as a compulsory subject at bachelor’sdegree, year 1 and 2; and it is 6 credits which means forty by forty by forty hours.That takes three terms. And we finish usually after six terms.

M: Have you always taught years 1 and 2?

L1: Yeah. That is right. Thank you.

L2: All right, so, I have nothing to add to what L1 said about our background. Shespoke with a kind of nostalgia – these were the best years certainly. Now, whatconcerns my work, I work with the students of economics. Now, again we are

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preparing them for bachelor’s examination and our examination is based on IELTS so,at least we are teaching everything according to this programme and together withbusiness language. Now, what concerns teaching, liking or disliking it, I like teaching.I like working with students, I like being with them and seeing what they need. Andthe most important thing is when we meet them in some time after their graduationand they say that something was really good and something that has helped them. Iremember when a student, I met him in … , said: ‘Thank you for the interview thatwe had during our classes.’ It helped him a lot in his new job and in taking part in aninterview. I do not know what to say more.

M: That’s fine. Thank you.

L2: I am from the same generation, Vilnius University, from which I graduated in1976, and about the types, the categories of students I had, these were theschoolchildren; now I have students and I teach adults as well. So, I have to dealwith all kinds of learners. I enjoy my work and speaking about my present job,working with cadets, the main thing is to prepare them for their mission when wejoin NATO and they should be able to communicate and to operate on this militarylevel.

M: And how old are cadets?

L2: They are after school, so that is eighteen.

M: Thank you.

L4: To start, I think I have the same background. I’m a Vilnius University graduate.One of my teachers is here as well. What concerns types of learners that I have had,I started my teaching career as a secondary school teacher. The age ranged from 7–8year olds to seventeen most probably. Then I taught at Vilnius University for a fewyears, students were eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds. After that I changed my joband started working for public service language center and there our main learnerswere adults at the age range ordinary wide: ranging thirty, forty year olds as well assixty, so that was a great variety of learners. So that was my experience with adultsand now I am back to students and I teach first and second year students here at theInternational School of English.

M: What kinds of materials do you actually use with your students?

L2: We are trying to get in touch with, let’s say, bookshops, Oxford’s, thenLongman’s. And we try to encourage students buying …

M: What course books do you use then?

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L1: As for me, the main book is ‘International Business English’ by Jones. This iskind of a basic book. And then, a lot of additional books: ‘Insights into Business’,‘Business Today’. We have a lot of books.

L1: At Law University you immediately face the fact that lawyers are a very closedand nationally based community and the more they go into cases the less there aretextbooks, especially textbooks on legal English. So we still struggle with two booksonly: ‘English for Law’ and ‘Law Today’. That’s Fowell and Righley. However, havingrealized this, we do not attach ourselves any longer to the books that we have. Ourmain resource, I must tell you, I do not know whether that is good or bad, is theInternet, and, I would say, those are case studies maybe. We have several majors, so,especially if a student is majoring in law and public administration or publicadministration only they would not even quote what textbook they have got. This ofcourse imposes a lot of pressure on us, teachers, because we have to develop thosematerials. And this is a very flexible subject: what is true today is not true tomorrow.Like Roman … speech, you know, might be very important today, but it may beoutdated tomorrow. That’s why, I think, we spend a lot of time at the Internet bothstudents and teachers. Who spends more? Probably the teacher spends more time atthe Internet because of materials that might be from the methodological point of viewmore appropriate to students than what students find, because students usually tendto bring you extensive reading material while you go into the detail for language.

M: Thanks.

L3: We have the textbooks for special, specific purposes, i.e. staff purposes, AmericanEnglish language course, and again we use the Internet, the materials that is on BBCNews usually; the teachers just apply this kind of resource. And speaking about theInternet, let’s say, Military English, the British Council online, so, we get the materialfrom here.

M: And this particular programme is called Peacekeeping English?

L3: It is incorporated in our teaching. It is in the book for staff officers.

M: Do you search a number of sources to get information to support the otherdocuments that you have? When you are with the cadets, is it that you have aparticular book that you will follow as a manual or do you actually supplement themanual and materials?

L3: Oh, we supplement it. We have the main course book, let’s say, and then wesupplement. Each teacher just tries to find some extra material.

M: Where do you look for that?

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L3: That is mainly Internet, BBC News, for example; I like taking the latest news.That is because we have international relation, such a specialization for students.

M: So in a sense you’ve got access to long case studies?

L3: If we take, we only take the material we have here for discussions.

M: Good. Thank you.

L4: I think we are lucky to teach business English, because there is a variety oftextbooks that we use. We also have main textbooks that we try to follow which isMarket Leader. But the problem with books is that you like them very much whenyou first see them and then you start working and discover that something is notthere or there are more things than you’d like to teach and this is where the researchmost probably starts and you get into other books and the Internet, magazines ornewspapers for authentic materials. I think that is the situation with most Englishlanguage teachers.

M: Can I ask, when you get some of these course books, some of these manuals, theycome as part of an integrated package including video, most probably cassettes, thereis the manual, there is the work book, there is the teacher’s book. Do you have thetechnology to use them? Do you get to use the tapes, do you have the videorecorders, do you have access when you need it?

All: Yes. We can use them.

L4: I haven’t got a CD player, but it’s because we were so well supplied with taperecorders (laughs). So actually we rely on tapes rather than on anything else. But, asyou said, this is probably common to all of us to record, say, BBC news in theevening or early in the morning and bring them in and have this, you know, veryshort introduction of what’s happening in the world at the beginning of the class. Soyes, we are able to use them.

M: How about ISM? Have you got all you want when you want it?

L4: In most cases yes. Sometimes you might have some problems, because otherteachers would be using the thing, but it can be arranged.

M: A kind of a booking system?

L4: You just have to think in advance of what kind of equipment you would like touse and now, our students are very fond of using multimedia for presentations, moretechnologically advanced.

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M: What about the Academy?

L3: I’m quite happy with what we have. The technology is on high level. We couldeven host an international event at our Academy and they were quite happy of usingall the facilities and all the technology.

M: Do your students have or get to use that technology in part of their learning? Is itsomething they receive?

L4: The multimedia technologies are much more in the hands of students than ours,because when they get a project, for instance, if they do a project, they usually usethe pattern of presentations, this multimedia is always on the wall, on the screen. Thisis the technology that we are fighting for.

M: They seem much more comfortable using it than we do.

L4: Very much so.

M: So, in terms, you are trying to use this equipment yourselves, you use thistechnology, you use the various sources of information, how are you supported byyour institutions?

L4: It depends on finance, perhaps. What concerns, let’s say, the faculty of economics,they try to provide us with something, but you see, I also work in InternationalBusiness School which is considered to be richer, so, in this respect, we are using,let’s say, even the same tape recorders – what concerns University, it can not affordto supply teachers with tape recorders, so we are trying to borrow at the InternationalBusiness School. The same with textbooks: they can’t provide, our University can.

L1: Well, being the head of the department and very well aware that there are severalstages of computer literacy and this is something that really concerns me, because theUniversity finds neither means, nor money to introduce us to those skills. Those of uswho have brought those skills from somewhere else, like I was in private business fora while where I learned to use the computer, those of us who have brought thoseskills from somewhere, they have them, and, of course, they have all the advantage ofusing the computer and using the multimedia and using other things while there is acertain number of people who, sort of, stand, you know, at the wall, because nobodyencourages them. And there is no encouragement for a teacher of English to usetechnologies except for my reminding, you know, that you should. But, you know, thispersonal ‘you should’ would never come true unless the university really cares aboutits teachers.

M: You talked earlier about integrated teaching, and, how about integrated staffdevelopment?

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L3: Speaking about integration. For example, they have a topic, let’s say, in tacticsand later they come with this topic to the English lesson and we discuss it, let’s say.

M: And what about, if you want to apply a fitting technology to your teaching, isthere some kind of staff development programme there that could help you to do it?

L3: No, we don’t have such a programme. I haven’t heard about the courses forexample – you just have to go to ask somebody who may consult you. We have acomputer class and there is a person responsible and you may go and consult and askhim.

M: And what about ISM? How do you manage that?

L4: It is basically the same situation. We are just left to our own initiative and if wedecide to develop our skills there are special programmes that would be offered forthe staff.

M: That’s quite interesting, I’m just wondering whether there would be some staffdevelopment programmes within the institutions for which you work.

L4: That’s may be because the institutions are quite new and there aren’t manypeople studying and working in. The thing is, that we are living in the period in thehistory of this country when everybody has to give as much as he can and very few ofus can ask what this country can give us. So actually this is the period when we arepouring ourselves out and this is not the period of gathering the stones.

M: Well, in terms of your own professional development are there expectations onhow the institutions that you work in continue to develop academically orprofessionally? Even if they do not necessarily support.

L4: That’s a good question. Actually you might remember that our load of training,our load for which we are paid, is divided into our teaching load and academicachievement load. And these two halves which are equal, well, these have to bedeveloped side by side. Now your question would be probably how many hours are wedue to teach? The answer is, about twenty hours a week, classroom time. That’s atthe University, plus plus plus plus to make the living. Now, if you take twenty hoursof university teaching plus plus plus other pleasant encounters with students, then youhave these evenings during which you have to write your articles or develop, say,teaching materials, the students’ handbooks. Eventually we forget that we might wantsomething else, because this takes actually all our time. This would be my answer.

M: Same for all of you?

All: In most cases yes.

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M: What strengths do you have as teachers?

L1: My strength as a teacher is that I combine several activities and that I don’t closemyself in the University, that my business activities and activities at other schools, myfrequent travels abroad allow me to feel the pulse of language teaching. I have thispretty accurate idea of where English language teaching is going and this is mystrength. If I stepped back for a moment and, you know, taught only, that would bevery difficult.

L2: Now, what concerns strength, it is a very difficult question. Our students, whenthey come to our university and whom I teach, at first when I meet them, in the firstyear, they are rather cautious because they simply think that we are going to repeateverything they had at school, because some schools prepare students really very well.The day when I explain them that we are not going to repeat everything, that ourstudies would be based on academic English, mainly on IELTS and when we start thatcourse, they are really very cautious, but with the first test when they write it and seethe results, they understand that it was not useless. And final results are real, finalresults when they take this final examination for bachelor’s degree and they manage.

L2: When they come to any universities they are really well prepared, majority ofthem, and they simply can’t understand what can be done by universities.

M: What about you?

L3: Perhaps I find the pleasure and I find my strength in conducting discussions, let’ssay, and I involve them into international projects and I see how a person changes,becomes more confident, more open-minded and feels the spice of communicatingwith other students from other European countries. And they can assess theirknowledge and, at the same time, present their country, so they find the spice indiscussion and giving their own opinion, even being cadets, military people.

L4: My strength is probably my experience with different kinds of learners anddifferent kinds of ages, I mean, in terms of the variety of students I taught and nowactually I’m really happy to be back at working with younger ones. And since they aremore open, more eager to do, to try new things I enjoy my teaching.

M: How do feel about casting control from yourself more to the student?

L3: I’m quite comfortable, but I see such a kind of transformation in a learner, let’ssay, that a person wants to get a direct, quicker, rapid result. And usually it happenslike that, so a learner is a bit lazy. He will say: ‘I can’t learn English at the Academy,if we go to a foreign country, so that is the place where I will learn English.’ Or,

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another statement says: ‘If we can express ourselves fluently, why should we learnmore words and synonyms.’ So, all the time I ask the question: ‘If you know twowords, why should you know four words?’ And they try to give the answer to thisquestion. I brought this question to different audiences. If a person feels comfortableknowing few words and every time gives another statement, it doesn’t matter what Isay or accuracy doesn’t matter a lot, they will understand me. So that is what I see asa transformation of a learner. And it is difficult to deal with this problem.

L1: You see, at the very beginning they can’t understand what is the reason for allthis and it seems sometimes that it is really useless, because they are sitting and itseems they are even bored. So, certainly, it is not very easy, I understand that it isdifficult. But somehow when they start… Let us take the very thing like how to writea proper essay. It takes a lot of time to teach them from the very beginning how towrite a proper title, the introduction, body and conclusion. And I try to make themtake some kind of interest in it. And when they start, when they start simply analyzingtasks not just reading, but critically evaluating everything, they start feeling the taste.And apart from this I am proud of the way they make presentations. So, first of all,this theoretical basis how to make presentations and then how they do it, is sowonderful, really. They are so inventive, they are eager to show off. And they reallyshow their colleagues very very interesting things.

M: Do your students respond to the more student-centered approach?

L4: Well, I think they do. They just may at first, as my colleagues mentioned, feel alittle cautious, they don’t know what might happen here, what is the differencebetween what they had at school and what they have here and first two weeks are justkind of research on both sides: the students look at the teacher, the teacher looks atthe students. But I think with time they get more and more used to thatstudent-centered approach, although sometimes, as I feel, they don’t want to take onthe responsibility for their learning. Maybe it’s easier for them to rely on the teacher:the teacher told us to do this, we do this. They somehow don’t want to put moreeffort. This is my experience.

M: Do the students have to interact and communicate between themselves not justwith you?

L4: Actually this goes back to the eternal question of time and lack of time. In orderto achieve as much as we can we introduce, first of all, to certain management skills.We teach them how to get in a team, how to choose a leader, how to do somebrainstorming about what they would like to do in the future, in what projects theywould be interested in, and then we together develop a plan for future – that takesprobably two classes altogether. And I have my teams set for future projects and Iexpect every group to present a major project at the end of the term starting

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November 15th. Now, what helps me is that all that language input that they get iscollected in the so-called portfolio. We haven’t got that, you know, registeredofficially, but I know that whatever the students find, what they have read, what theyhave included or not included into their projects will be in that portfolio. Anotherthing that I try to implement is that they themselves act without me visiting thoseinstitutions that are in one or another way related to language and languageapplications. For instance, we have here in Lithuania the EU delegation and on thefirst floor of the EU delegation building there is an information center. So I send mystudents to that information center always on the first day of their studies and I givethem some tasks which later on help them in very many ways, for instance, they havefree computers there and they can do free printing. They can very easily have accessto things that they don’t get so easily at the University. And also there are veryhelpful people, very good staff that helps them. So have I answered your question?

M: Yes, very interesting. Teaching language for doing skills. How do you assess yourstudents? What methods of assessment do you use with your students?

L3: It depends, for example, what concerns reading. There are different tasks andusually 60% good answers, so this is the lowest, i.e. 5, and then upwards, going up tothe highest point 10. The same with listening, writing and speaking. What concernsspeaking and writing, this might cause some problems, because it might be very very –I’m speaking about writing – partial on the part of the teacher. So that’s what we aredoing: we are trying to have the checking done not by one teacher but by two orthree, so that we could discuss and be able to assess the person properly. The samewith oral (assessment).

M: So you are trying to establish common standards?

L3: Yes, common standards.

M: What about group work? How do you assess group work?

L4: This is an issue how to assess that. Sometimes I just give the same mark toeverybody based on the result they produce, how well they perform. Everybody whocontributed to the result get the same mark. This is one way of doing it. Sometimeswe just assess the student who pulls back on progress. Try to do it in a variety ofways. And I don’t know which is the best one.

M: How about self-assessment?

L4: You know, speaking about assessment and self-assessment, I’ve come to aconclusion that the more creative you are, the more you are into these innovativeteaching methods the more disastrous your assessment is. If you have the cumulative

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degree and you have everything divided into percents, nevertheless, eventually youfinish up with 10, 9, 8 and the absolute bottom is 7. And that is the problem of allthe universities, if I’m not mistaken, because studying is so competitive, the groupsare trying hard to achieve, people really appreciate the ability to be in the classroomand the fact that their parents are paying. And it’s very very difficult to differentiatebetween the minute differences of this or that student. For instance, in the group thatI have now all the students had a 10 in their English, i.e. the top grade, at school.They are very good, very strong; they know what’s expected of them. And then youdon’t have a full scale marks, you don’t have a full scale of learners, you have a veryuniform learner actually. And, especially, if you expect initiative from the student andyou are operating on the level of the peers, then, actually, you get totally confusedbecause, yes, they evaluate each other for the project, yes, I look through theportfolio, I evaluate what’s in the portfolio and the result is: ‘Yes, you’re very good.’

M: Have you used criteria-referenced as opposed to non-referenced assessment?

L4: Of course. That’s because we have this essay writing which is essay writingprojects, we have debates, we have all kinds of activities.

M: Do you ever assess in terms of specifying outcomes the student needs to achievein order to be successful in an area of study that they know in advance as a generalframework?

L4: The very first lesson they come they have to know what is expected of them. Thesystem that we use is that they get 50% of the total, the final mark, as the result oftheir exam that they take at the end of the term. And the other 50% is somethingthat they can collect during the studies: they have to do assessment; they have to dothe projects, to prepare their presentation that they make, the essays they write, so allthese small things.

M: So how do you motivate the students to do this? How do you motivate them toreally be able to give of their best in the variety of teaching situations that you havewith different strategies that you use?

L4: Praising. And they don’t want to be of, let’s say, lesser qualification than theirpeers because, for example, they are doing some such practical activities presentations,negotiations, taking part in meetings, in conferences. Then all of them discuss just theparticipants; nobody wants to hear about himself or herself some negative description.So that’s why they are trying their best; and what concerns criticism, I remember theinterview activity that they had. Usually the panel for the interview is they, allstudents. They are interviewing and I am kind of an observer and their criticism ismuch stronger than mine in connection with weaknesses and strengths of thecandidates. So that’s why they understand what is needed and how to behave and act.

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M: What about the Academy? Is motivation a problem?

L3: I shouldn’t say that it is such an extra thing that they try to be the best, becausethey are going to be the future leaders and they have commanders and they know, sothat is a kind of a soldier who has to carry out his mission. It’s just learning not onlyfor him, but to show for his commander the good results and for his long-term futureas well, i.e. to pass this level exam. Motivation is the thing which a person has inhimself as a person. I think it depends more on a person himself than on a teacher.

L1: I think that future career is the greatest motivation, because they understand a lotand without the language there will be no future.

L4: But still, I think, that sometimes they find it a bit difficult to realize that, still thefuture seems so far away, and now it’s the daily life and there are so many otherinteresting things to do, not just the language. So I personally find it difficult tomotivate, let’s say, the students who have already very good knowledge level. So theythink they know things very well and how to motivate them to continue to developthe language?

M: So what do you do with them?

L4: I think, what most of us are trying to do is just give them more challenging tasks,projects, give them more reading to do, so that they discover for themselves thatthere are still so many things they don’t know. It is hard I think.

M: Is there any kind of help that you think could or should be available to you asteachers of English from the Ministry or from your institutions or from other sourcesthat you would like to mention?

L1: Some training courses might be very useful. At the very start the British Councilorganized a lot of good projects. It was really really great encouragement.

L4: Isn’t it quite a paradox that the administration of the University would expect thestudents to leave the University with excellent English language skills and whatstudents get is a year and a half, four academic hours per week, during which they ofcourse develop ESP, professional language, but they don’t have the chance ofcommunicating. And then so many years pass and by the end of their master’s degreethe administration addresses them: ‘Do you speak English?’, and they say: ‘No.’ Howcould they since they finished it two and a half years ago or even more? How couldthey speak good English at that time? It is the skill that has to be upgraded gradually.That is one. Another, the constant discussion whether foreign languages are needed atuniversity level at Eastern and Central Europe. It really demoralizes the teachers aswell as students, because we don’t have the confidence in ourselves, we don’t have the

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feeling what we give and what we do is needed at all. This is really an abominablesituation, I think, and I’m very much, you know, for asking where do we stand, do wewant those lawyers to go to the EU knowing Lithuanian plus some little English or dowe want the lawyers to be able to participate in the social discourse as it is? Becausethe language is no longer the language. The language is a tool of social integrationinto the EU structures, of political integration. And since this is not recognized wheredo we get? We get it as a classroom subject which seems to be, you know, likesecondary though obligatory but of less importance. And this is the key to the EU ascomputer skills.

M: What would you like to see changed?

L4: Attitude towards foreign languages.

L3: On the governmental level, if they say that language is a priority, education is apriority, speaking about teaching English, I see international projects as a verybeneficial thing. So why not to put money into this even to organize here inLithuania? Communicating with the youth from other European countries when theysee and they can assess their level of knowledge. We don’t ask too much – somemoney to put into the thing which is really beneficial for the students.

L4: Maybe we need a different attitude, because recently, I think, there has been thatshift, when students learn English at school, then at the universities, but that’s notreally true, because they start loosing the language if they don’t use it – so, to have akind of programmes that maintain the language at the level that they have. I think, inmost universities we have the same problem that we start with two years, four termsof English, and then it is not used. And case study based English is totally differentfrom the textbook English and this what we are doing here at the universities: we arebringing people closer to political, cultural issues, as I said, to the discourse, i.e.discourse that is common for all the EU. If we close learning of English, if we push itaway as a subject into English language teaching centers, in that case the academiceducation will lose a lot of...

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 c

Focus group interview with university lecturers II


M: Tell us first about your professional background. How long have you been involvedin teaching English and the type of learners you’ve taught?

L7: So, I’ve got university degree in English language teaching at Vilnius State Universityand it was long-long ago when I graduated from it, so I have over 20 years of practice inteaching English. I started with a secondary school on graduation of the university and ina couple of years I started working in Kaunas University of Technology, formerpolytechnic institute and I teach there all my life. We have been going through differentways of programmes we were having in this institution. When I started my work at thisuniversity we would teach reading and translating more; there were technical books,books of technical texts prepared or technical readers prepared and we would read withour students and try to translate and teachers would specify into fields their faculty waspursuing. So, some of the teachers would be learning mechanical engineering, someelectrical engineering. But step by step our development in search of communicativeEnglish started and the university – which turned into university after being polytechnicinstitute – this university decided also to take up the approach – communicativeapproach. Emphasis was made on spoken language, on communicative activities, ondeveloping all skills, not only reading and translation, but also listening skills, which areso essential in communicative approach, and speaking, lots of speaking. So we wouldcover… would take new ELT materials, which started appearing in Lithuania, which wasnot the thing before the independence, before 90s. Lots of ELT materials available onsale enabled us to take this material into our teaching.

M: I’m going to ask you about the kinds of resources that you can use or you areusing. Can you tell what students you have, what age range?

L7: Age range is not wide at all. Because mostly they are school leavers. So theycome from school. They just take this university. Instead of going to work theyevidently prefer studies and they come to the university. So they are just… ages… 18to 20, usually. Except for correspondence students. In the Correspondence departmentwe are having people… the age range is wider, much wider. And I think that’s it…about the variety. It’s not a varied audience I would say.

L6: I think I am the least experienced here because I have been teaching English onlyfor 4 years. After the graduation in Vilnius university I got into my master’s studies

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and I was invited to teach in Kaunas university of Technology, so while I did my MAI was teaching at the same time. And when I came here I got the students ofeconomics department, economic management, and then they asked (me to take) thestudents of design and social sciences as well and basically these are the students whoare freshmen and sophomores because I teach them sometimes for one academic yearor two years. And the age would be 18, from 18 to 25 sometimes, because we alsohave evening department in the same faculty. So I’m specialising more in economics,management, banking system, the issues connected with economics – English forSpecific Purposes.

M: How old would your evening students be? The same 25 to 18?

L6: The same, the same as the day time students.

L5: My experience is 8 years, I have been teaching for 8 years already and Igraduated from Vilnius university, Faculty of Humanities in Kaunas and aftergraduation I started my work at Lithuanian University of agriculture and the studentswere students of economics and forestry faculty that I had. What else to say? Thestudents age… so students also are school leavers. They start their studies at eighteenand we have English … the same group we have for two years. Usually the age is 18and 19 years. And we also have correspondent students, so their age is from 18 and itcan be up to 50. Yes, we have adult learners.

L4: I also graduated from Vilnius University, the Kaunas faculty of humanities and Ihave been teaching perhaps for 10 years as far as I remember. And also aftergraduating I started working at Vytautas Magnus University. And there we wouldhave all students from all faculties because our groups are mixed. Those who areteaching the English language they are separated and all the others must learnEnglish and English is compulsory at our university and after entering universitystudents usually take placement test and they are divided into levels. The levels arefrom 1st one to 4th. and levels 5 to 6 are for specific purposes such as English forcomputer science, English for sociology and… Myself I teach now… this semester andlast semester I’ve been teaching before for 1 to 4 level and this semester I havestudents of the 3rd level. So much perhaps.

L3: I have been teaching English at Kaunas Medical University for 3 years and thisyear in June I did my MA in English Philology through Vilnius University, Faculty ofhumanities. I teach English in the largest faculty that’s it faculty of medicine. Ourstudents… Most of our students are school leavers of course, and they have two hoursa week they have been teaching English for 6 semesters. Just this year, actually thisspring, we have introduced so called the professional language module which consistsof Latin, because we teach Latin, which consists of foreign languages: i.e English,German, French; and the third subject is Lithuanian language and culture. So it’s very

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specific. And of course we teach our students medical English and sometimes ourteachers are joking that we should be awarded a Certificate in Medicine, because wehave to prepare lots of medicine. Perhaps that’s all.

L2: Perhaps I’m the oldest here. I graduated from Vilnius University in 1965. I havegot Doctor’s Degree, defended also long long ago at Moscow University in 1970. I’vebeen teaching English some 37 years or so. I started teaching English at VilniusUniversity and I’d been teaching there for over 10 years. I taught practical English tolaw students there and some theoretical courses like theory of English grammar towould-be specialists of English. Then I moved to Kaunas, Kaunas Academy ofPhysical education. I have been working here for over 20 years. We are teaching asI’ve already mentioned English for two terms to our students besides we are doing…we have English language course, but mainly professional English, to … teachingEnglish to Master students, students doing… studying for Masters Degree. So theyhave English for one term, 3 hours per week. We have got 4 directions perhaps intheir studies. They are: tourism and sports management, physical education and sport,pedagogics – that is would-be teachers of Physical Education at school – and sportsbio-medicine. So we are teaching them professional English, business English, businesscorrespondence, things like that. I have been teaching mainly students of tourism andsports management and I am sorry to say that until this year… until this year we hada lot of English. That is we are teaching those would-be tourism and sports mangerstwo languages – one language is they continue the language they have been studyingat school and the other language they used to start from ABC. Now the situation haschanged drastically this year. As I have mentioned only two terms of English would-betourism and sports managers include. I think that this will give bad results becausesimply our graduates will not find jobs as I have told to our rector, to our vice rectorfor academic… I don’t know how to say… for academic affairs… it’s not a good wordperhaps, but nothing else… you haven’t got anything else. So this is the situation.

L1: Well, I’m the same generation as Roma. Graduated from Vilnius State Universityin the soviet period of time when English was taught as ancient Greek without anypossibilities even to listen on to radio due to those interfere sounds. We used to go tolingua-phonic, special cabinets as it was called then. And after that I had a few years’experience in teaching at school and a gap, and it’s about 7 years that I’ve beenteaching art students. Well they study design, painting, graphics, sculpture, all kinds oftrends in art. And age 18 up to 30 and even older students study sculpture…especially sculptors. OK. Abilities are mixed. I am the only teacher of English andstill they don’t manage to give me full salary payment for teaching about 130 students.So the statistics also says something. Literature at our library – well, latest issues arefrom Stalin’s period where they write about Konenkov’s Mashenka – Russiansculpture – you can guess what I mean. Abilities mixed from students who don’t speakat all. It’s difficult to evoke…some ideas in Lithuanian even let it alone English, andthere are students who really have very good skills, and have finished special schools,

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etc, so really very often… I am very much confused about such situation. And now Ihave discovered that best of all they open their ears and eyes, everything they can,when things are related to the subject they are studying. And if sentences would benot ‘Mr Smith travelled to London’ but ‘Ghainsbourgh moved to some place’ thenyes, they somehow adopt it easier.

M: What type of resources do you use? Do you use coursebooks, do you design yourown material? Where do you go for this?

L7: Whatever we can lay our hands on…

L6: Coursebooks, Internet sites.

L7: Well, libraries or methodical…

L6: Computer labs, bookshops…

M: How easily are they available for teaching needs?

L2: Since finances are very scarce, so our students for instance do a lot of xerox andthey pay themselves for their teaching materials.

L3: Not just students but teachers as well. We have to pay for our own designedmaterial. It costs.

M: Who selects the materials for you? Is it selected for you? Or do you select ityourself? How much freedom do you have in it?

L1: I am completely free, because I am the only one.

L5: We have some guidelines, but we have freedom to use.

L7: We ourselves decide what coursebooks to follow.

L5: There are programmes. They are developed and we have them but our choice tochange something.

L6: We introduce the materials that our students need, well to meet their needs.

L7: It’s not authorised from above. No.

M: You are given a curriculum or you have a curriculum to be involved in and thenyou find the resources to deliver that?

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L7: Yes. We have.

M: And what about in the field of medicine. How easy is that?

L3: It’s very very difficult. Despite the fact that our university has an access to thelargest database, like PapaMidline, Cambridge University Press library, and lots lots ofothers, but we can’t be… our department of Languages and education can’t beconnected to our university centre of information for a very simple reason – we don’thave computers.

M: What kind of facilities are available to you to gather your information?

L5: If the teacher has such a possibility. For example I have a computer myself and Ihave access to Internet so I can use. My students they can do it only twice.

M: Do your students have access to facilities that you don’t have?

L1: In many cases yes.

M: Do they then make things available for themselves and for their peers? Does thatever happen?

L1: Yes. That happens.

L3: But it’s not enough. Our students don’t have time, because they have to studytheir pre-clinical clinical subjects. They usually ask us teachers to help them to findmaterials.

L5 They don’t have skills for that, professionally…

L3: Yes, professionally…

L5: It takes a lot of time for them. They just get lost in that information and that’sall.

L3: I agree…

L5: It’s better for us to find something for them than ask them to do it themselves.

L1: Usually they like to have the material compiled by teachers.

L3: Yes, sometimes I give such tasks for them to find something, but not always, onlysome tasks based on that.

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M: And do they do it? Do they find?

L4: Of course they find, but it’s difficult for them, so you know I can’t … every taskcan’t include such amount of work. Sometimes I include may be one project whichincludes, you know, such work.

M: Does that make them understand how it’s difficult for you to get the informationfor them?

L4: Yes, yes, yes… they evaluate our work.

M: What kind of resources are available for you in the classroom? Do you havevideos, tape-recorders, all the usual stuff?

L1: Skeleton and a tape recorder available in the room I teach.

L2: Tape recorders, no videos.

L3: Only chalk and the board. But only one also.

L4: We have tape-recorders. Video is available to use.

L5: Only one for the whole department. We have one TV set and one video.

L6: Everything. And even multimedia if we need. But we have to arrange.

M: As a kind of share? You can book and reserve these?

L7, L6: Yes.

L6: It’s usually in faculties, because each faculty usually has their own labs for that orother sort of material compartments.

L7: We have a couple of computer labs. Also we use them for language teaching. Wehave just this software material installed in computers. Also we have one verycommitted teacher who has a special programme, kind of easy TOEFL for ourstudents, so this is called ‘Errors’ so just students have to correct sentences and theyare given explanations, they need to find choices which are good choices. So we usecomputer labs for that, but we ask our students to buy their ELT material frombookshops. Also they have a small library in our university where they can find thismaterial in English, in German, in French because these languages are taught at ouruniversity. So quite a range of…

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M: Do you have kind of a sharing force in terms of people generating information,sharing it with colleagues to help each other?

L7: Absolutely, of course.

L6: Especially with the younger ones. They sometimes ask for pieces of advice of ourcolleagues who have been indented? for a number of years, because they know ourinstitutions better.

L1: We too from time to time… I occasionally take lectures at Vytautas Magnusuniversity. And well there I have had better colleagues and later on we share. Theyhelp me and we meet we discuss things whenever we meet.

M: What about if you are teaching just one particular topic highly specialised one likemedicine? Where else can you go for resources?

L3: Well, I have my own computer at home and internet so I can use it. But forinstance we don’t have in our department any copy machine as I have alreadymentioned and we have to go to the city centre and look for the cheapest you knowcopies and it makes me feel… And sometimes I make material copied and ask mystudents to pay money, you know. It’s very difficult to understand.

M: And you are saying that you have tape recorders. You don’t have video and youdon’t have television?

L2: Just tape recorders and I wanted just to add that for instance if we have six oreight groups of English in the same faculty, we usually cooperate. The teachers andthen we write the final test. So we usually gather all the groups together and they getthe same test in a large room, so that there is quite close cooperation between theteachers. For instance there are six teachers of English at my faculty.

M: How much do the books actually cost in terms of people trying to buy them astheir own resources? Is that a major issue for you, let alone your students?

L7: It is. It is. It’s not cheap. It’s not cheap. But if you think you can divide itthrough the whole year it turns relatively cheap. But it’s…

L1: If you don’t teach one level, then it’s quite a sum.

M: How much support do you get from your institution, from your kind of schooladministration for what you to do? Do they understand the problems that you’ve gotand that you are trying to solve in order to teach your students?

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L7: Our authorities do. They do understand. They try to be helpful. As much as theycan handle the finance which is a lot of the institution… actually, they are ready tohelp us. This is not a question of buying ELT materials for every student, but ingeneral ordering books which are necessary for courses, theoretical courses so thatthey can be found in libraries for students. Then also trying to equip us withcomputers. Tape recorders. We started teaching translation and interpretation in ouruniversity in the faculty of humanities, so the necessity of good tape recorders … Andsimultaneous or synchronic translation class was the issue and the authorities camewith their help and now we have installed that class.

M: The courses are designed for you to use different approaches to the language thatdevelop different skills which require the technology which you may or may not have.Do you actually have this equipment? So many of you are saying that you don’t. Howdo you get around those things?

L1: Well, the students buy those who can afford it but only one third studentsperhaps can do that. Others copy it and they even even… that beautiful design turnsto sometimes insensible pictures or some places are omitted, which are printed incolour… colourful. Those … should be emphasised they are not seen in their copies.

M: Designing course material. Have any of you have had any help with doing that?Does your institution help you, to think about ways of designing? Or have all theideas come from yourself?

L3: Yes, the ideas come from ourselves.

L4: We compare what we have already done…

L6: We’re simply trying to meet the needs of our students because the education isstudent-centred education. Well, are for…

L5: Comes from our experience what we know…

L6: We have to make better…

M: Do some of your students have access to better facilities than you have?

L1: Yes.

L7: Some…

L1: Last computers… colour printers…

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M: Actually, it’s becoming interesting in the case of students beginning to have accessto better facilities than their teachers and they expect you to know what they know, tohave access what they have to. That can cause some interesting tensions.

L1: What is most important – they travel much more than we do in… spending muchmore time in English speaking countries than we do and really have good commandof natural spoken English. And this is… I find it very very problematic issue.

M: Is there support from your institutions to help you have access to those kinds ofthings?

L3: Usually universities don’t have any resources for such kind of improvement,qualification courses.

M: Do they have facilities for putting you in touch with organisations that can fundyou for this kind of development?

L6: We are trying to find ourselves… So we have our aims and our goals…

M: What do you see as your strengths?

L7: Commitment into the teaching. We are committed, we are patriotic aboutteaching. Because well, really people who just search for bigger salaries, for betterworking conditions, they leave universities. They don’t stay here. So, we are kind ofpatriotic and once you are a patriot you try to find out.

L6: If there’s a way there’s a will.

L7: …what is necessary and just… it depends very much on the teacher.

L6: I think it’s possible to add flexibility. Because we easily… we are flexible people, Ithink.

M: So, do you find it increasingly difficult to actually be more student-centred in yourteaching than teacher-centred?

L5: Yes we are trying to do it…

M: How do you do it?

L5: With the help of such task, for example where they need to show their initiative,yes, they have to find the material themselves, they have to prepare for some projectsor presentations or… in this way.

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M: In your institution, how do you manage with this? When students come andmaybe they expect from secondary education a teacher-centred approach to learning,how do you help them to move away from that? To become more independent aslearners?

L2: I really don’t know what to say. Attendance of classes is obligatory. Plus they aresupposed to work at home. For instance in our curriculum one term is 48 hours inclass, 32 hours at home. So we usually give them home tasks. In term one they dosome revisional grammar. And we give, say, out of those 32 hours approximately 8–10hours to grammar, refreshing their knowledge of grammar. And the other time theyspend on preparing topics which they will have at the end of the term and during theirfinal exam in the second term they are also reading special literature. I usually give alittle bit of fiction. The first two months. They have got the so called private readingand they are supposed once a month to read 50 pages of fiction. It depends upon theirlevel of proficiency, so usually adapted books, say from level 4 to level 6. It dependsupon the students’ proficiency. So, that means 100 pages of fiction and starting with,let’s say, November they have no fiction, they have professional, special things.

M: Do they work individually? Do you get them to work in groups? Do they everhave home assignments?

L6: Yes…

L2: Usually when I have this private reading, their choice is theirs, so they choose thebook they like and there are 3 stages of getting a chapter for this private reading. So,usually I say them, ‘you must present your vocabulary, pages numbered, let say page3, page 4, page 5, page 6, 50 words underlined, words and phrases, I usually ask themto choose not separate words, but phrases, prepositions are very important. So 50words and phrases underlined and if you don’t know a single word, out you go, stageone, stage two – reading and translating 4 or 5 passages. You don’t know a word, Isay, look it up in your vocabulary. Oh, you haven’t picked out this word, out you go.And Stage 3, short presentation of what they have read. About the author and abook, let’s say 3 or 4 minutes, it depends upon the tempo of the student. So, the firsttwo months and then special literature.

M: Where do you see yourselves, what is your main problem area in trying to deliverEnglish? In trying to teach English within this context?

L3: Computers.

L7: Facilities.

L5: Access to computers.

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L6: We would be very happy if we could have overhead projectors in every class. Tohave multimedia for presentations would be great. We are just gorgeous.

L3: Copy machine, overhead projectors. That’s it.

M: What about the students? Are they a problem? What about their level of Englishwhen they arrive? Their expectations of how they’ll be taught? Do you have anyproblems with them?

L1: We have. They want to learn everything being in the classroom, without workingat home. They expect the teacher to teach them everything.

L6: Sometimes they rather not finishing their activity because of critical thinking.

L1: Our students also lack time. In the first year they strive to establish themselves asartists and all other subjects are afterwards.

M: You mentioned critical thinking. Is there any opportunity working with yourstudents to develop some kind of reflective capacity on their part?

L4: We are trying to include such tasks that develop their critical thinking. Teamwork, decide which material is suitable, which is not, encourage to try to think newideas.

L6: Conferences.

L7: Co-operation. Publishing of surveys. We usually distribute questionnaires to them.And some questions include what you liked and what you disliked about this module.What was easy or difficult, your level – not your level. What suggestions you have?Was your teacher well helpful to you, was the group or classmates helpful to you? Sousually we get that feedback and on the basis of this we can discuss this later. Todecide if the material was good enough for this or we should switch to group work orpair-work more than teacher instruction teacher-centred work. These are tools for...

M: What kind of language skills do you like developing, or do you feel what’scomfortable developing? What are the skills that you favour in your teaching?

L3: I would say speaking skills and reading skills assumption. And writing as well. Butlistening… we do very little listening. Just because the material we have is … veryspecific. But now we are going to introduce so called problem-based learning and Ijust on Friday got this material, I read it I like it very much and what I noticed thatour teachers unconsciously are trying to introduce this method and I noticed that ourstudents like it. It’s very interesting.

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M: How do you help students who have problems with speaking skills? Or readingskills? What techniques, what strategies do you have?

L2: I usually say, if you haven’t learned English at school during 8 years, it is not mytask to teach you speaking. My task to teach you to get information form your specialtexts, be able to summarise texts. That’s it what I say my students.

M: So you focus on reading and writing skills?

L2: Reading, writing, summarising. Speaking skills I don’t know. If my colleaguesachieve in this I say that they are wonderful then teachers.

M: How do you assess? How do you assess these different skills that you are lookingfor?

L5: We have tests for assessing grammar. We have oral examination … for speakingskills. We have reports. Different reports. We have presentations for which also theyhave to account for.

M: So use a variety of assessment tools?

L1: Not much writing because they may rewrite, they may take from internet, albums.But speaking yes, speaking. When I have access to videos, it is very useful for them ifit is their level. Sometimes the language is too complicated. They like to commentthings like that. Then they really get interested. The problem is that groups are ofmixed ability.

M: How do you actually motivate your students?

L4: Marks… They don’t have to take exam they don’t have to pass it. They won’t geta good mark if they won’t do that.

M: When I was a student, yes ok for now, because the exam is not for 6 moths 8months, I can have some fun now. The question was how did my lecturers get me torealise I actually working through the year. Not simply try to cram everything in theend. What do you do with students?

L4: We usually write many tests, many of them. My students during three monthswhich is a term, they get usually 15 marks. So I think they have to… they must workhard to pass the examination and to pass all these little tests.

L2: And how do you punish them if they don’t come and don’t write the test? I forinstance take 0.5 from the average mark. The average mark is 8.3, you have missed 3tests say minus 1.5.

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L5: I am not so strict. I try you know just to connect what I teach with the real life,try to show that for example this or that you know task will show them how to usethis how it can be used in real life and try to connect. I try to show the benefit ofthat.

M: Do you have to assume that because they learn medicine, they are motivated tolearn about the English terms?

L3: I was just going to tell that they are more motivated than my colleagues saidbecause sometimes our English lectures help them to be motivated. For instance wegive them lots of knowledge in anatomy and we are trying to match our subjects tothe subjects they are studying. And they say that it helps them.

L6: I think one of the best ways to motivate learners, well, integration into theEuropean Union. This is a very good fact well they know that soon they will get apossibility to work abroad and they’ll need English or German, or French or anyother language. Well just competition, they won’t be able to compete in the market.That’s it.

M: What kind of help would you like to get to making you a more effective teacher?

L1: Fully equipped class. Posters, all kind of material to have it at hand, not to carryto every lecture, well, lots of bags with myself… tape recorders sometimeseverything…

L6: Quite an issue…maybe courses in the United States or Great Britain just twomonths a year or three months a year.

L1: I wouldn’t mind this kind of help as well, assistance as well…

L5: More hours of English. We are short of time and we don’t have enough time.

L7: More advanced school leavers.

M: What changes would you really like to see in the future as teachers of English?

L6: To change dramatically towards science and education in general and lecturers,teachers, university teachers, professors. It’s really hard work we have to do.

M: So there’re issues about status of teacher?

L6: Oh, yeah.

M: Anything else?

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L2: Perhaps entrance exams in English, because the marks they bring from school areno good. Let’s say 10 points usually 6 in our evaluation.

M: Is there anything you wanted us to know today that we haven’t mentioned orgiven you a chance to talk about?

L7: Fewer students in a group. Groups are too large.

L2: Yes exactly. By the way I got some paper three weeks ago where the number ofstudents in different professions in a group is given from above and foreign languages… it used to be 15 students, now 20 students in a group it’s too many.

L5: 22.

L3: It’s a surprise for me because an average is 11 students.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 d

Focus group interview with Ðiauliai and Paneveþys universitylecturers

14 January 2004

L8: I have been teaching English at Ðiauliai University for over ten years. Right nowI’m a lecturer and the Head of the department of Foreign Languages. Actually all ofthose years I have been teaching at the Faculty of social sciences. First and secondyear students are studying major in business administration, public administration andeconomics.

M: Could you also tell what students you teach in terms of the age? Is it a widerange?

L8: Yeah, actually, in undergraduate programs, so, from the age of, most probably, 18to 20, and post-graduate students studying for master’s degree, so they are a bit older,at the age of 23–24, and all of them are working, so actually they do have someexperience in their working environment and certainly their needs are a little bitdifferent because they already know whether they are going to use and actuallywhether they are using this English and ESP, so the situation looks like that.

L7: I’ve come from Paneveþys and I teach at the KTU. Mainly right now I’ve beenteaching first and second year students for the last four years. When I startedteaching we used to have four years of the foreign language so then I used to teacheven such a course like life management which doesn’t exist nowadays. Well, they arefirst and second year students, some of them study engineering, so they are at theDepartment of Technology, and then business administration, two groups of studentsand that’s it. I started teaching at the university eleven years ago and that wasthrough quite an unfortunate situation because when I came back from the US afterFulbright scholarship and after working in the US for one year my school, mysecondary school refused to accept me and then I was all of a sudden with no job andI started looking for, well, I just knew somebody at university and I was interviewedand since then I’ve been working quite successfully.

L6: I’m also from Paneveþys, KTU. I’ve been teaching students for four years andmostly students of evening department. I have two groups: also engineers andadministration. Their age is eighteen to twenty and more. And there are many people,adults, who finished secondary school long ago, for example, over the age of 35.

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L5: I joined the faculty in the early 1996 and before that I spent six years at VilniusPedagogical University, and before that a year with Paneveþys school No5. Right nowI’m teaching public administration majors as well as engineering majors, both full-timeand evening department students where I come across in type of different needs, theage range is between 19 through 30. All the students tend to study at eveningdepartment. I’ll tell you more if you ask me.

L4: I teach English here in Ðiauliai University for about five years. I teach English tothe non-English major students, students who major in the variety of fields: physics,mathematics, education, social sciences, business administration, business andeconomics and so on and so forth. Mostly I’ve been teaching to the students of the 1st

and 2nd year so their ages from19 to 20, something like that. For the last two years Iteach only Faculty of Social Sciences plus the students of business administration so Ispecialize in Business English currently for both full-time and part-time students.That’s about it.

L3: Well, I have been teaching English for non-native speakers just for two years.Currently I’m working with two groups: economists and last year I managed to workwith public administration students and economists. At the moment I do have somechallenges just before me, quite a broad ... because I’m working with extramuralstudents. It’s quite interesting challenge. If you have any questions, please ask me.

M: What is your academic background?

L3: I have BA in English Philology.

M: Vilnius Pedagogical University?

L3: No, Ðiauliai University.

L2: I graduated from Kaliningrad University and before joining Klaipëda University asan assistant, as a lecturer, I taught English for college students and the age range wasfrom 18–19 up to 25, I guess. And these students were of law specialty and businessadministration and even of accounting. It was sort of a challenge as well to teachEnglish for them because it was sort of English for special purposes.

L9: First of all, I represent English Philology Department although I work in theEnglish Language Center in Klaipëda University. So here I taught English languagefor students of economics, Lithuanian language and informatics students. So they arefirst year students and I also give lessons to students of English Philology and I teachthem social English. They are second year students. And I’m working in languageteaching for the first year after my studies in Vilnius University where I got master’sdegree.

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L9: I’ve been working at Ðiauliai University for about twenty five years. Doublequalification: English language teacher and teacher of the blind and visually impaired.I’m Associate Professor. My students are mainly from Special Education Faculty.Their future qualifications are speech therapists and special educators, specialeducators and kinetotherapists, social educators and psychologists. Their age is 18–19year old students. Now I’ve been doing some research work. My field of interests isspecial education terminology, in particular classification of terminology, compilingdictionaries and so on, and so forth. Thank you.

M: So it seems to me that many of you actually teach English for specific purposes.Could we talk about resources, materials that you use? What kind of materials do youuse? Are you happy with materials you use? How do you get materials?

L9: Well, I think that the situation is getting better in comparison with the Sovietperiod. You being young people maybe don’t know very much about the situation inthe Soviet period but being an old man I can compare and tell you that Internetreally helps us and it depends on the authorities of the faculty I should say, I meanthe resource situation or any other things we need. We get from our InternationalDepartment, from the Library of the International Department, books we need onspecial education, especially on educating, I mean, speech-impaired people orintellectually impaired or blind and so on. Great help is from Oslo University – wereceive books free of charge. And the strongest students are able to read.

M: When you speak about all those books and help, are they books in English forspecialists or are they English ESP course books?

L9: For specialists. You see, our attention is to develop, perhaps, their specialvocabulary. What concerns their everyday English, they can speak, they are quite well.I mean, my students about 90% are fluent at everyday English but special educationterminology is the complicated thing. And as we get the materials we make copiesand then, you know, let’s say, we can divide students into three groups: those who canread and translate with the help of dictionary, those who can answer the questionsand maybe join discussions, and those who can make extensive and comprehensivereports.

L3: Honestly, the acquisition from Norway is quite a positive aspect, so I just wouldlike to mention that this information is from time to time provided only for someteachers because students have simply to use the Internet just to search for the bookswe need, just to find out some information. But on the whole they do manage to useIT quite successfully and some professors even manage to organize some assignmentsfrom their English and account on them on the Internet. Also, just, multimedia isused at the Faculty of Social Sciences so students are able not only to improve theirEnglish but also again computer skills, they use some computer programs just to

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develop their presentation skills so it’s a positive aspect. This thing hasn’t been someyears ago, as the Professor mentioned, so we couldn’t use this equipment.

L4: Well, first of all, I have to make photocopies for my students. We cannot affordto buy books. Of course, the ideal thing would be if everybody had the same coursebook and we could use it in our courses, let’s say, I have many Business Englishtextbooks which are great, I’m very happy to work with them but unrealistic thateverybody can buy them, at least in this town, so what I normally do I make handoutsand we work this way. But basically I’m quite happy with the materials that I have. Ofcourse, it would be better if I had more resources to buy this material but that’sanother question. And students would also benefit from more access to this material.

L1: I wanted to try the supplement to send from British university to give us somethree or four books at the library, but the library cannot supply students.

M: Do your students buy these books?

L1: We make photocopies.

L3: Well, actually, quite honest some students are eager, you know, to buy sometextbooks. They just dislike those handouts. They say that it costs, then I just explain,I motivate them that it’s not possible to develop their English using only onetextbook. They need just to photocopy some texts.

L1: Still few students buy textbooks, of cause it costs a lot.

L8: One more point might be added that somehow our policy is to use not only onebook, one textbook, and actually, somehow, what we can suggest and what we canoffer with our students’ needs and when we see that, for instance, they need someimprovement then it’s quite advisable for students and for the teacher to change oneor another textbook. One more thing probably might be added that teachers ofÐiauliai University are encouraged to compile sort of materials by themselves andpublish them and make use of them in their classes, for instance, our ProfessorKapuðevièius has compiled already three books, me, as well, two books and I usethem quite widely in my classes and students find them very useful. Actually, onemore thing, we work in the Faculty of Social Sciences and have very good access tomass media, mainly the magazines and journals such as Business Week or The

Economist and for their, for instance, home reading, or presentation development, oftheir presentation skills students are asked to read, to make copies and read thosemagazines and this way enriching their professional vocabulary.

L3: Also I would like just to add that the same type at the library: they just collectsome English books but, unfortunately, they do not consult some English specialist,they just compile.

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L5: OK, all the young crowd that comes into university on the 1st of September theyare streamed into two levels, internally we call it level 4 and 5 for autumn and springsemester terms and level 5 and 6. We have 3 and 4, 5 and 6 … All of them arestrongly encouraged if not forced to buy textbooks, we have an agreement within theForeign Language Center that everybody buys there Student’s books and Work bookswhich means that 60% to 70% they study the course in general English and the rest30% to 40% depend on the student own work, it’s our own initiative. If we look atthe curriculum, it is a big book published by Kaunas University of Technology ‘StudyProgrammes’ we see that the courses we are supposed to teach is a good compilationof general English and ESP altogether, as I said a minute ago. There is very muchroom for our own improvisation while we use the assigned textbook as the mainframework for the autumn and spring terms.

M: Could you mention the titles of the books you use?

L5: In the recent three years we used ‘Cutting Edge’ intermediate for level 4 and 5and upper-intermediate for level 5 and 6 which means too easy for certain number ofstudents, good enough for another big chunk of students. But we do what we do.

L7: We also use handouts.

L5: Yes, as I said, we can really initiative and improvisation as always do.

L7: And sometimes students make…

L5: 20, 30, 40 per cent.

M: How do you decide what materials to use?

L5: Just we know…

L9: It’s very easy, it depends on the needs of the students. If I teach speech therapistsso I try to look for the material, to compile, or something like that.

M: So you have flexibility in what to choose?

L9: Yeah.

L7: And we have to follow the textbook but there it depends on our own initiative: ifwe feel that they would benefit from something then I go and try to find and givethem.

L6: Our colleagues at KTU, they use the same.

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L5: And very much the same at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas.

L8: So the thing what makes our students just to have some content, general contentfor all students studying at Ðiauliai University, is the program which is common for allbut there are some peculiarities that are introduced depending on the faculty thestudents are studying at, for instance, specialization, the students at the Faculty ofEducation study and teachers are asked to introduce more texts and more materialson education. For instance, at the Faculty of Social Sciences I myself use suchtextbooks as ‘Business Objectives’, ‘Business Opportunities’, ‘New Insights intoBusiness English’, ‘New International Business English’ and text books like these.

L2: Speaking about ESP purpose I should add maybe that living in Klaipëda we areteaching such aspect a marine lexis, marine vocabulary, so we usually use journal‘Jûra’ which is published in three languages, Russian, Lithuanian and English. Andthere are already articles so it’s quite easy to use them as comparing the same articlein Lithuanian, English and, maybe, Russian. And another thing should maybe bementioned, that using Internet we somehow feel the lack of new addresses, so itwould be very nice if even British Council would provide us with upgraded, updatedaddresses about new resources.

M: Many of you mentioned that you use Internet resources a lot. Is Internet orcomputers easily accessible? Are they available to teachers and students?

L9: Yes, it depends on the faculty. Some faculties are richer.

L4: It depends on the students also because I already for the second year connected allof my students to a … virtual classroom and some of them do participate and some ofthem complain that they never have the access to the Internet and stuff like that. I justthink it takes some enthusiasm on the part of the student to find the access to theInternet and to be more active, more technologically oriented like most of them are.

M: Do your faculties have computer rooms?

L9, L4, L8: Yes. There are several rooms at the university library and students do getaccess using those computers there. So they are encouraged that they do that.

L4: It’s a little problematic at the library because they have few computers there.Students have very limited access at the library.

L8: I wouldn’t agree.

L4: I would rather take them, if there be computer labs, I would take them duringthe time of my classes and, let’s say, the second half of the class we go and we dothere tasks.

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L9: Encourage them to by their own computers!

L4: That’s another question.

L3: Well, quite honestly, they do have at home so from time to time I distribute somehandouts on the floppy, on the CD-ROM. That’s quite a nice approach. They just like it.

L8: And they do the same thing, they do prepare quite a lot of material using thecomputer, let’s say, when they are asked to write some sort of essay or sort of test, sothey do that, instead in a written form they have it in a floppy.

L9: It depends very much on the attitude of the student, I mean, if student is a brilliant.He finds the material in the Internet and sometimes he brings to the classroom – Ihaven’t seen, I’m astonished and happy that the student found such a thing. He canmake a report and enlighten us, enlarge our knowledge and so on, and so forth. Itdepends on the student. And one of the things we are forced to make or compile ourown manuals or teaching materials, even dictionaries. This is one of the ways out.

M: In Paneveþys do you have problems with computers?

L7: No.

M: Klaipeda?

L1: No, but these computers are very slow. It’s difficult to do something during thelecture.

M: And what about support from the administration? Do you feel you have goodsupport? What kind of support do you have from them?

L2: Maybe I should mention that sometimes the university officials seem to be ratherindifferent from some teachers. They don’t to be very indifferent and maybe theyshould provide more freedom for us and should allow us to be more initiative becauseif we come out with new ideas, some new prospects, initiatives they don’t feel anysupport and it brings us back.

L9: Maybe we are happier at Ðiauliai University because it depends on the facultyauthorities. If the faculty is rich and if they have specialists who can work out, whocan prepare, who can compile necessary materials, they simply supply us with evidenceand they help us with publications.

L5: Historically KTU as representing the technocrat of the academic democracy, wealways felt as if been neglected from the politics of the Senate of KTU in Kaunas all

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that regarding teaching humanities and teaching foreign languages and looking backto 1996 when I started when English language instruction lasted for eight semesters,eight terms, right now it’s only two or four terms depending on the level. I feel thatwe degrade in what Business Administration or Engineering students get in regards toall languages.

M: And in terms of your personal professional development, do you have support toparticipate in different events?

L8: Teachers should show initiatives and initiate various programs. Actually if youapproach administration with some project they always support at least morally. But,well, when you get a moral support and it simply pushes us to do. So the idea is, butit’s again stressed by administration, teachers should work on their own and find theirown niches, and this market economy and actually in this competitive world of evenof our professional development, if you compete, if you show off, if you demonstrate,then you are supported if you are aggressive enough with certain projects.

L6: Mostly moral support. Personally I participated in several seminars organized byBritish Council different from KTU and I was somehow left for myself.

L8: I’m sorry, if I could add, the university administration encourages us to do someresearch work, write articles, research articles, so it becomes a little bit stressful for ateacher to be a professional and to develop in teaching and also doing research, forinstance, participating in conferences, organizing conferences, writing articles,compiling textbooks or some manuals for students. Well, the sphere is too wide for ateacher.

M: I was going to ask you whether you feel pressure to develop?

L5, L8: Yes! x 2, very big pressure!

L5: In our university it is called a preparation of scientific production.

L8: It’s just the highlight in all visions, missions of our university to produce as muchscientific research material and concentrate on it. Somehow our teaching practicesshould be done on teachers’ initiative.

L5: If the requirements have not been fulfilled, you don’t qualify as a teacher 5 yearsso you are honestly pressed to do this.

M: What is the curriculum in your institutions? How many hours of English do thestudents have? And how many hours do you teach per week?

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L8: So, if I may start, actually a teacher is paid for giving 680 contact hours per year.So that’s what I do and these non-contact hours are included and calculated in ateacher’s workload. But how it’s paid is another question.

M: And students, how many hours do they have to do per week?

L8: They have four hours per week mainly for two semesters.

L7: Four hours in the first year and then two hours in the second year.

L5: Levels 4 and 5 – five hours, five hours and in the second year – two hours, twohours; levels 5 and 6 – five hours, five hours.

M: And your loads?

L5: Twelve to fourteen teaching hours per week.

L8: And how many contact hours per year?

L5: Eleven to twelve hundred, something like that.

L3: At Ðiauliai University all lecturers have to sign one document just before theacademic year and on that paper all lecturers may see the time allocated for Englishclasses and the time allocated for students to work independently at home. So all thisjust stresses that they do have to work independently at home, just show thatdocument, motivate them to study at home because the time allocated for theirindependent work, not in the class, is doubled.

L2: Twelve, sixteen hours. Up to sixteen hours. And students have ESP which is sixhours per week.

L1: Students specialists have two hours a week and only one week.

M: What do you feel about being a teacher?

L8: Proud. Being a teacher at Ðiauliai University (laughs).

M: What are your strengths?

L4: My strength is my realization that what I’m doing is really useful, I mean, inpractical terms. It’s not something like Professor mentioned was twenty years ago itwas like learning Latin or learning Greek which was no practical use almost. So whatwe are doing now we realize that it is really really necessary in life: they need to learn

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English; and European Union; so this, at least for me personally, gives meenthusiasm, to help them, because I feel I’m helping people because if they don’tlearn English they will be disadvantaged. That’s for sure.

L9: Being greatly underpaid we are forced to sacrifice.

L8: Most probably each year we see more and more self-motivated students who dounderstand that they need competence in English, communication competences, notonly professional. So actually the competences, the skills in English are considered bythem as start of their professional competence. So it’s again quite rewarding to seehow conscious students are in their attitude towards learning and gaining skills inEnglish.

M: Underpayment was mentioned, so apparently this is already one of the problems.

L9: My colleague receives ten times more in their payment for the same work I dohere, or even more than ten times more.

M: Any other problems you feel you have? Any other issues?

L8: Somehow it’s again sort of stress, a challenge for teacher to do some researchwork but, on the other hand, are you paid for your research work?

L9: (laughs) Never.

L8: So it’s quite a problem for teacher to match those two challenges and to developyourself as a teacher and also to do something meaningful in research area or evenwriting articles and publishing them, things like that, so most probably, it might belooked upon as a problem.

L4: Another problem, I want t return we were talking about professional develop-ment, maybe I’m not active enough in searching for opportunities but what I miss isour university’s Foreign Relations Department. I miss the supply of various opportu-nities of my professional development courses abroad.

L9: You mean mobility schemes, exchange and professional mobility?

L4: That’s right, that’s right. Maybe I’m not active enough, maybe I should be more,as the colleagues said, more aggressive in searching things.

L8: No, it’s market economy to show yourself, reveal yourself, find your own ways, sothat’s what encouraged. In this sphere sometimes you have to use some entrepre-neurial skills.

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L7: I don’t think that professional growth is very important in our place because, well,when I was deprived of that seminar which I believe would be quite useful for me,and maybe not only for me but for my students as well, because, well, it was pointedquite clearly, that doesn’t count. All these seminars or workshops that you attend areless than zero. Everything that counts is your research, your scientific articles in aspecial journal, there is the list of those journals, and even the conferences where youhave your report or when you prepare your students to participate in the conferenceis nothing. We just work and that doesn’t count.

M: OK. How do you do your research? Without developing, meeting new people…

L9: Nobody asks, simply nobody asks. It’s up to you.

L5: Be modest, just brand new text is out, not brand new any more came out lastspring, compiled by Lucija and myself, designed for master students. One of plusesthat counts into the research direction.

L4: We don’t complaint, yes…

M: How do you motivate your students? I mean, what kind of assessment do you use?

L5: I’m quite direct with my students, I say: ‘Look, 60 to 80% after graduating docome back soon. Part sign evening courses, intensive or non-intensive, whatever youcall it. You’ll pay from your own money. If you don’t learn now, you’ll pay moremoney when you graduate. Go to job, get your first job, now look guys how yourEnglish would look like.

L7: I use European Union and their way of testing. I introduce the theory of testingand how they are going to do that and I keep emphasizing if you want to have a jobin another country or to study, you’ll have to take exams. So that helps to motivatethem.

M: And how do you assess them? What techniques do you use for assessment?

L4, L8: Tests. Presentations. Reports.

L4: I, as the colleague mentioned, make a cumulative assessment – many differentassessments and then sum up during the course of examination, during the course ofthe semester. I don’t have an examination as such; I only make this average mark.And then maybe we have some kind of examination to improve that mark.

L8: Not maybe but for sure.

L4: The most important point is the evaluation of the effort during the semester.

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M: Do use lots of group work, pair work?

L8: Right.

M: How big are your groups?

L8: 25.

L5: Over 25.

L8: Over twenty. Only group work, pair work.

L8: Good attendance sometimes. We often have no more than twelve or fifteenstudents.

L3: Well, going back into details, I just present a cumulative formula during my firstlecture and just show them that they are given mark for academic achievements aswell as for attendance. Also presentation and discussion groups. So during their firstlecture they just form the bulk of what will be studied, what is required. So they justwork.

L5: This is very much based on the skills they learn. To demonstrate writing skills theydo written assignments. To demonstrate oral skills they give a presentation or theygive an oral exam. To demonstrate the general feeling of the language, the pre-position, the article, the verb form, they do this formal test.

L8: So actually the idea is this: we grade their competence in both oral and writtenform. And again it’s combination of various tasks mainly stressing and focusing onstudents’ skills and their abilities to communicate in their future professionalenvironment. Here at Ðiauliai University we are considering the possibly to haveintroducing and using this TOEIC ‘Testing of English for International Communica-tion’ but again we have some problems, because we know that Vilnius University hasmonopolized it, administrating this sort of test but we will manage and we areconsidering possibly to reproduce it.

M: If you wanted to see any changes at all in your faculties, institutions, teachingsituations what would they be?

L5: Increase of hours.

L4: Increase of years.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 e

Focus group interview with school teachers I

28 October 2003

T1: I graduated from Vilnius University, English langauge department, and I’ve beenteaching somewhere about 29 years. And a year ago I graduated from Kaunastechnological university and acquired speciality of economics teacher. Before that Ijust participated in a number of courses in Lithuania and the United States especially,because they were greatly interested in the market here and what the parent/teacherswelcome. … I started working in a normal school, as I say, where English was not amost important subject at all, and then only 9 years of my career I moved to KaunasJablonskis school which is an English-biased school and where English is one of themost important subjects. I started with primary school, teaching students from the firstform. And I am happy I had one generation – whole generation – of students that Istarted teaching, and finished with them the secondary school. It was really a greatexperience seeing how well they were doing, how they were growing and I wasgrowing together with them. Now I’m mainly teaching upper-intermediate, advancedlevel more or less, because, well, they say that I had too much input in teachingsenior forms, though this year I have a new kind of a new experience for me –six-formers who are beginners and, well, again I’ll be learning how to teach beginners.That’s it.

T2: I graduated from the same University, but only Kaunas evening department. Asan English teacher I’ve been working for 15 years since I came to Jonas Basanaviciussecondary school. And almost as everybody I started teaching from the beginners leveland then together with my school students I was going up, up and up. Also now it’salready, as T1 has already told, the second generation – I’ve reached theupper-intermediate level. For my qualifications I also have attended some courses inLithuania, but I haven’t been anywhere abroad to make my qualification higher.

T3: Well, it’s a shame on me, but I am at school already 40 years. So, you know, it’s along career and I can’t even remember where I worked. But I know that 27 years Ispent in Jablonskis secondary school. Together with my younger son I finished Vyturyssecondary school, so I stayed here for 12 years. At the same moment I was working atdifferent schools, because I was doing a kind of experiment with a programme whichI prepared for those elementary level pupils. English was not yet introduced just as itis now… for 4 years it seems to me … to be taught in all schools. There were onlysome schools with bias on English which had this beginner level. So I tried to prove

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this is necessary, and I am happy now, but it is already done. But still there are verymany problems. I’d like to share my opinion about that later. What concerns myteaching… work… well, I remember myself being at Jablonskis school where I… myson felt as a student and I was learning together with my pupils I should say. Therewas a very good atmosphere here, because that was the only school where you couldhave motivated pupils. That’s one point. And the other point – there was a very goodteam of teachers working, I should say. Those teachers who were growing together.And I think that this experience helped me much in my work. And later when Imoved to Vyturys school, you know, they also tried to do something like that, startingto teach pupils from the lower classes.. But the school was biased in music. It seemsto me that these things are very much connected, music and English, but you know,it’s always a question about the hours we spend on teaching. What concernsintegration processes it’s very difficult to… well, inspire even, everybody to take it.Just sometimes we work very separately, I should say. Well, I see the ways of doingthe things. But you know… Sometimes it’s very difficult…

M: Where did you do your qualification as a teacher?

T3: Well, at a various, you know, conferences, seminars, starting from, it seems to me,1991. I was in Great Britain, but well, you know, the experience was not very long, wewere 4 teachers of Jonas Jablonskis secondary school, we spent there a month. It wasa good experience. Later I attended some conferences in Graz.

T4: I graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University some 20 years ago and I’ve beenteaching English since then. So, I work in Lapes Basic School and maybe it’s the firstschool where I worked, the only school where I work and I hope it’ll be the last one,because I live in that place and so far I am not going to move. So my students: Iteach practically all grades, all forms from the second form to the tenth form. Earlierthere was only one teacher at the school, now we have more students and there aretwo teachers. We are two and, well, the problem is that the second teacher is, as wecall, none specialist. She has got a certain qualification. She is a teacher ofLithuanian, but she teaches English, because she knows a little… well, she knows thelanguage from some courses.

T5: I graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University some 33 years ago. And I havebeen teaching English untill now. I can say that I used to be… participated indifferent courses, not only in Lithuania, but in the UK. This year I had a wonderfulchance to be in the courses in the United States. I teach different levels, practicallyintermediate and upper-intermediate students and we use different modern techno-logies in our work. I can say it, of course. We have got computer classes, we usecomputers in our work and Internet is also of great help nowadays. I could say that itwould be very interesting for you to know that we’ve got a very different system, anassessment system…

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M: Can I hold you there for now. That’s going to come up later.

T6: I graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University in 1976 and for 27 years alreadyI have been teaching English, mainly in Kaunas Palemonas Secondary School. As Itold you already I work with different levels. And, of course, it’s a pity that I work inan ordinary secondary school and all the gifted children go to gymnasiums and I thinkit’s really a pity. So, I like integrated teaching, integrating different school subjectsand personally I had lessons integrated with physics, music, art and so on andinformation technologies, of course, and I attended a lot of courses, seminars, but inLithuania here. I’ve been the assessor in the state exam for two years.

T7: I am in nearly the same situation, 27 years ago I graduated from VilniusUniversity. I’ve been teaching English since then. First, Kacergine children’ssanatorium, or the recovery centre it should be called. Sanatoriums are for mentallyill children, and these are physically ill children. Ten years ago I was working withstudents at the university of agriculture and now I work both as a teacher at theschool and as a university teacher. I’ve been participating in courses and seminarshere in Lithuania, at the British Council and others as well. I spent one month in theUSA. There was a special excursion to Britain to London for teachers of English lastyear… introduced to the system, education system of Great Britain… culture.

T8: I’ve been working as a teacher of English for 22 years. I graduated from VilniusUniversity Kaunas evening department. And five years ago I got my Master’s degreefrom California State University, Northridge, and as I work now at four-yeargymnasium, the high school level, what we have there… but before going to study inthe United States I’ve been teaching class five through twelve, the secondary level.

M: What kind of materials do you actually use with your students? Do you usecoursebooks? Do you develop your own materials? Do you get teaching aids fromdifferent centres? What do you actually do to get materials you need?

T1: Actually, it’s not very difficult on the one hand. On the other hand it’s quitedifficult, because of a very big choice of different kind of teaching material andsometimes you get lost among all those books and sets. In our school just a coupleof years ago we decided to stick to two series and have them starting with the fifthformers, as our school is from the fifth form, we decided to have Enterprise seriesup to the tenth form and Fast Track to English for the third and fourth gymnasiumforms. It’s good because, well, Enterprise series have coursebooks, textbooks andseparate grammar books for each level and it’s very easy for kids just to keep trackof the things they forgot and come back to their previous books and read themagain. Well, and of course, that set is supplied with cassettes and video cassettesand, of course, we have just a big chance to make our teaching more interesting,showing … varying listening activities and video activities and, of course, they give

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wide floor, as I should say, for different imagination activities for teaching. Becausethere are a lot of very interesting topics and a lot of interesting hints for teachers towork with students.

M: Does anyone else use that particular series of books or do you use similar ones?

T5: Yes, some of them are the same. We use the same. Fast Track to First Certificatefor the eleventh and twelfth formers. It’s rather a good book, because it has got allthe exam techniques, all the exercises that are used at the state exam and schoolexam. Very good books, quite new, or brand new we may say. But of course, the sameas you are using Enterprises, we are using, for example, Reward starting frompre-intermediate level, going to intermediate, then we have Fast Track. We used tohave Reward for all classes and now we made a change because of the state exam.And at the same time we have Chatbox, that’s again Macmillan publishers in the fifthand the sixth forms, so something similar and something different, you know. And atthe same time I would like to say that Reward is a very useful book on the one hand,because it has got video tapes. Well, the textbooks are not so good for the exam, butthose video are very big help and we’ve got them, for example. As we’ve gotMacMillan center in our gymnasium, it’s some kind of a present, because they arerather expensive I must say.

T1: The only drawback of these books is that they are very expensive.

All: Very expensive.

T1: Schools can’t afford to supply all the students with books and they have to buytheir own.

T5: And that’s why… you are quite right. We want to have continuation, becausestudents, for example, choose the higher level and then they sell the books to theprevious classes for a lower price, because it’s very expensive for them to buy – everyyear a new book. Very expensive.

M: Does anyone use any other kind of material?

T7: Most of them are similar. Now most of the new books that are appearing arebuilt already for preparation… I am talking about intermediate or upper-intermediate(level). This year there’s a new book Upstream, and I’m really fond of it… we areusing them with our eleven graders…

T2: Matrix.

T1: Mission, yes very good.

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T7: Upstream is pretty good. And other books. I just spend hours in the bookstorejust trying to find out which to use. It’s really important. But there are a lot of good,really good, textbooks for different levels, however, different teachers in our school –we have 12 teachers of English – and that is very important that we stick to a certainset because if somebody just suddenly…

T5: Too much mixture is not good.

T7: … decides not to work there any more, you just bring your textbook and you arelost. Continuity is very important…

M: Who decides what materials you use and what books you use? Is there kind of aschool policy, is there departmental policy?…

T7: During the Soviet… some years ago… was the Soviet system you know… Therewas the Lithuanian textbook, Stsiuleviciute’s English textbook, there was no choiceand the school library was full of these books and they’re still in my school library.And when students come from different parts of Lithuania, they come to this recoverycentre – they have either teeth or some trauma or stomach deseases – so, they comewith their textbooks. So I come across different kinds of, different series of textbooksand coursebooks and I have to take… just to learn, study nearly every textbook.

M: How do you manage in the village school for materials?

T4: I teach students from the families with low income and they can’t afford buyingthose modern expensive textbooks. So there are forms / grades where we use thoseLithuanian outdated textbooks by Stasiuleviciute. Now we are trying, we already havegot Shool English, it’s a textbook by Lithuanian authors…

T2: There are books from Education departments – such as Compass.

T4: Yes, Compass.

T2: Even new edition books. Sometimes you can use (them)…

T4: Little by little we start introducing those new books…

M: Somebody said it’s really good that you have those books – you get the books, youget the grammar books, you get the cassettes, you get videos. What technology haveyou got in your classroom to use all those additional materials? Do you have all theseresources?

T1: Available are just recorders. You can use those tapes. I don’t know how it is inother schools, but in my school when I want to show a video film or so, I must order

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TV and the recorder, so that nobody else could take it, and then when I take it, Imonopolise it for a week or so. I don’t have a TV in my classroom where I teach, ofcourse, I wish I could (have one).

M: Those books are so well integrated. There’s material in the book that links with thetape, links with the video… You want to use it all, so how do you go forward with that?

T5: I could say that practically if there is a video film, for example, it’s not for everylesson, I suppose. I think we can share this, for example, … as far as I know. We‘vegot a technological centre. If I want, for example, to watch a video I tell I would likeit for that lesson. If it is free, ok, you can come with your group or two groups. Andno problem. It’s very convenient by the way. Because we’ve got an overhead projector,video, computers. Very convenient. So we can have it, no problem…

M: So you have a booking system. You can say in advance what materials you want…

T5: Yeah, in advance… Because we organise, we plan over. Nothing comes by chance,you know.

T2: You see, it’s only available, let’s say, in some ten schools in Kaunas and in otherschools?… they do not have computers, video, TVs and so on.

T5: Perhaps, yes, perhaps.

T4: We have a tape recorder, it’s OK (smiles).

T2: And if the tape recorder is broken you have nothing to do, only your mouth tospeak, chalk to write… a blackboard and the chalk.

T1: I am lucky I have that overhead projector, so I can use a lot of visuals during mylessons.

T6: But it’s never enough to use textbooks. You still need to look for additionalmaterial. And it’s the internet, for me at least, the main source. Every night I printout something and then make copies, for reading, for grammar exercises and … justtalking on any topic. It’s a great resource – the internet. Plus the library, that each ofus has. And it’s copying. Those who have sets of textbooks, then you have everything– grammar, texts, reading, writing techniques, still you need additional material andhandouts. That’s a must.

M: So you generate quite a bit of your own material?

All, T6: Yes, it’s a lot of time spent on it. But you need it, you use it once and youput aside for using it for next year or two.

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M: Do you as colleagues within a school actually share materials between yourselves?

T2: Not very much I’d say.

T5: It depends.

T1: With friends.

T5: We are trying, but sometimes, you know, say, I have prepared, I put so mucheffort into it, why should I give it to you? But not often, sometimes we do share.

T2: We just put it on the shelves.

T1: Inside schools. It’s easier to do that than with other schools.

M: Is there any kind of network between the schools?

T5: Oh yes, there is. I hope so. If I am interested for example in Jablonskisgymnasium, I can come. I am quite sure that some teachers will help me if I havesome questions. I think, (there is) no problem.

M: How many of you know each other?

T2: Practically we know all.

T1: We know faces.

T5: Recognise. If we don’t know the names, practically we know by face.

M: How much does your school support you in finding new materials or in terms ofgetting equipment?

T3: They try to avoid this.

T2: It’s out of question.

T5: Let’s not be so strict.

T1: As much as they can. But they can’t very much.

T6: I’m very sorry to say, but at our school we get no support at all. For example,I’ve got a tape recorder myself for my own money. We buy coursebooks and, as T5told already, pupils buy the coursebooks from one another. And I’m very sorry to say,but we have no support at all.

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T5: I won’t be so strict. I have to say, we’ve got tape recorders. Practically, there areten teachers of English and all of them have got school tape recorders. And goodenough, you know, some Sony or something like that. By the way, some video TVsets, three not one. I can’t say ‘no support’, but not as much as we would like.

T1: What concerns handouts and the material to get, everything is on the teachersthemselves.

M: What about access to photocopiers, photocopying paper?

T6: We must pay.

T5: But we pay not much, but still we pay.

T3: We can make three hundred copies for free per semester. 600 copies per year forfree. It takes a week to use it.

T2: It’s rather good.

T6: It’s a great plus, but not in all schools. We ask for those teachers teachinglanguages to give a number of copies to be done at school without paying.

T6: Then that text is multiplied, copied by school expenses. We don’t have to pay for that.

T5: Not expensive for the students to pay some 10 centas for one copy…

T2: But they have to pay not only for the English classes, (but also) for history, formathematics, Lithuanian, so it makes litas or two litas per day.

T7: I make copies for the classroom. I don’t take money from them, I pay myself. Ikeep those copies. If they want to have a copy of their own, they pay. But usuallythey give their answers on a separate sheet…

T2: But if you give them a test, do you pay or do they pay for the test paper?

T3: Usually I pay.

T2: Then it’s nice, you are a very rich teacher.

T3: Usually they pay. I don’t dare to ask, that’s my problem.

T5: The problem is the test that you ask about by the way. It can be like that – Youcan give them a test and they can write on a special sheet of paper and don’t write inthe gap. And there’s no need for them to pay. If they want to have it then they pay.

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M: But there is another area of support. Would your school involve in yourprofessional development support?

T1: They allow us, they give us permit to leave, but just usually we write anapplication asking for a holiday on our own expense. At least we have an opportunityto go, let’s say, for a week or so and spend time developing our qualification. So thisis support already, but well, actually, they don’t pay any expenses that we pay for thecourses.

T5: At the same time I’d like to add that for example we particicpate in differentinternaltional projects and I can’t say that we make profit out of it, but still a verygreat support. For example, we participated in one project with Norwegian BurgenAsane gymnasium and got great support. For example they brought us as a present aused copying machine or something like that. The same was with Sweden (…) againsome support, yes, the exchange of students, large groups of 15… we stayed for aweek there, four teachers came and stayed in our families with their students formore than a week again. So that’s also a great support for the students. And by theway, for example, they even paid our travel expenses. They came on their own money,but they paid all expenses for the whole group, imagine 20 people, quite a lot youknow. And… I participated for example with our school in such a project – 25European countries – Language Culture communication Every two years we arrangeinternational conferences and it used to be in different countries of Europe. It’s againa great support, because teachers and students go together, stay there for a week andwe make some issues, project or something like that there.

M: That’s good if you are getting involved in large organised projects. What aboutpersonal development? How do you find out if there’s something available? Where doyou get information?

T7: The internet.

All: The internet, yes.

T8: What’s going on is very public. We get every month, we get a schedule of theevents. All seminars, the workshops and all the stuff. The only thing, that you need isto take days off, if they last two or more days, and the other thing – you have to payfor them, for some of them.

T6: Usually the school administration want you to improve your qualification, but theydon’t want you to miss your classes and everything, so they make a schedule whenyou will have these classes if you miss them. Or they want extra schedule.

T2: They require to find a person who works instead of us.

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T6: A substitute, yeah.

M: So they help you a little bit, but they also don’t make it too easy. That’s what Iam hearing. OK. What do you think your main strengths are as teachers here inLithuania? What do you see as your strengths?

T: A difficult question.

T1: Well, I can say what my students say. They say, well, ‘Teacher, you can do alesson out of nothing’. Just something interesting out of the smallest detail whichcomes to your head. Well, usually I know that learning the vocabulary is a very boringthing for students. They never want to do that. And whenever you give the task justto… just new vocabulary or so, they always try kind of escape from doing the task. Sothen I have to find ways of making them do that. Usually I think of some role-playsituations or whatever. Well, they have an amount of work and then after they cometo school they have kind of create stories, create plays, create poems or whatever.They like it very much. Then I think, well, they always are busy in the lesson.

T6: It’s easier for us than for teachers of other subjects, because our lab is justeverything. You open your eyes and it’s our lab. Or you can use the wall, you can usethe weather, you can use anything, if you feel that they are not in the mood to dosomething special or something happens that your plan for the lesson and it has to bechanged, you just can do anything, you are teaching communication. And the problem– I am really jumping to some other question – but the problem is that I really thinkwe need to teach them talk, to express their ideas freely, to communicate. Not to beafraid, shy. But the problem lies in the exam. We lose the pleasure of teaching andlearning, because of certain, well…

T2: Requirements.

M: …difficulty of the exam. But that may be another question that we could discuss.What I am hearing from you as teachers is you are quite resourceful.

T6: We are teachers, we have to be.

All: Yes.

T6: You can work without being resourceful for a year or two. Look at our practiseand that’s it.

T5: Difficulties are the same. Let’s say, the state exam and I have to say, I hope youwill share my opinion, especially in the 11th and 12th forms, our lessons – of coursethey are sometimes very interesting and so on – but very often they are not so

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interesting As for example in younger classes. Because the requirements of the stateexams are very high and we have just to stick to it, we have to teach grammar,different exercises, perhaps very often they are too boring, but nothing doing withoutit, you know.

M: ... What’s your prefered style of teaching? Which way (student-centred orteacher-centred) would you rather teach?

All: Students-centred.

T8: Because they need this language not we.

M: How much are you able to actually use it before the alarm bell rings in your headand the big red light flashes and says ‘examinmations’?

T3: Up to the eleventh form.

T8: Yes, up to the eleventh.

T3: But most of all in the lower classes. Here you can find yourself.

T5: But despite of this, we use, for example, … projects. Project work… We teachthem to write projects. At the same time they present their projects, they show on …they use overhead projector, they make research when they present and it’s very hardwork. Just we give them practical long projects, for example, some three months, orfour months. They go to different institutions, they’ve got special questions, they makeresearch, then they write their own opinion, use the internet material. So, it’s of verygreat use. And usually they present their projects, well, at school for teachers andstudents.

T3: They are doing too much homework for different subjects, and sometimes theylack time even. They would like to… work at English, but they say, well, ‘Teacher, youknow… we haven’t got time’.

M: If they had this kind of communicative approach in the teaching up to age ofeleven or twelve, and then suddenly they meet with another style, how do you put thekid back in the bottle?

T1: Sometimes letting him out and then putting back again.

M: Sometimes letting him out means getting to do project work, work in pairs?

T5: Yes, or just some drama after school… A lot of things, you know.

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M: What do you think your main problem areas are?

T3: I would like to share my ideas about that primary level teaching. I see here threemain problems which are existing at the moment. Well, I mean early English teachingof the language. You know, just we have started doing this three years ago, it seemsto me. It was already recommended by the Ministry of Education, but in our Ministrythere are people maybe who are not practitioners at all. Because they gave us twohours for the starting level and no division into groups. So, imagine, we have 27pupils or even more for two hours a week, and we should start early coursebook,because the parents want to have (one). So we introduce an oral course for just onemonth or two only, and at this moment we must teach them phonetics, you know,sounds, or something, because we don’t use here transcription or something like that.Well, imagine you have not even a minute to spend on a child, when you must openhis mouth, when you must teach him those things that are so necessary. Most oftenwe just find that, you know, there’s no individual work at all, so they work in chorusand just in small groups sometimes. That’s all. And it is very difficult for the teacher.Parents require, you know, the pronunciation of the words. They ask us to write themas soon as we can, because they want to follow how the process is going on. When weintroduce the texbooks, those pupils are not used to such kind of coursebooks,because they are constructed in the way that they have the workbook and textbook.So, you must acquaint them with those textbooks, and it takes also much time. Andon the whole, what concerns me, last year we turned to that Welcome book, becauseEnterprise is the continuation of it, and we decided that it would be better, but theygive so much material that I can’t cover it. In those two lessons.

T6: I think we must be glad this year, because this year we have already groups andwe have our new textbook and this textbook is written by our Lithuanian teachers andI think they know everything about the pupils, because they are the teachers of theelementary school. Primary school. I think that they decided to publish books for thethird-formers, fourth-formers and so on. So I think it’s very good. The problem in theupper forms, I think the main problem, is the lack of time and it would be nice thatwe could have more lessons.

T1: I remember we used to have five or six lessons a week.

T2: And small groups of six or seven students.

T1: Now usually we have four lessons, four-five lessons in the eleventh and thetwelfth forms…

T3: Four lessons. Do you have five lessons?

T2: In your school. But in my school, for example, three hours a week. And it’s all.

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M: Is that an issue? Do you have problems with group sizes?

T6: Last year we couldn’t divide the classes into two groups. For example me, I had27 pupils in the second form. It was awful. And two lessons per week.

T5: At primary level.

T7: Same with me.

T6: But this year we can divide them into groups.

T5: Beginning with the second form.

T6: We only started in the third form because they say that music takes these hours.

T5: Decision of school.

M: What did you mean when you said ‘then we had smaller groups’?

T2: You see, it was easier to teach them, because working in a small group you canpay attention to each child, divide the lesson asking him, telling him, explaining him.And now if you have a group of 16 or 17 sometimes a child says a sentence perlesson.

T3: Or sometimes nothing. No chance to speak.

T3: Avoid. Avoid to do this.

T2: Sometimes they are afraid to speak. The same is with the teachers. There is a bigaudience of teachers. Some teachers are afraid to speak in front of the audience,because they have never been abroad, they have never spoken in big audience andthey are elderly ladies now, they are afraid to speak. They can speak only in front oftheir students. And the same is with children. If he is not a very brilliant one, he isafraid to explain his opinion and the problem still exsists with explaining opinion evenin own language, in Lithuanian, they can’t express their thoughts. They have nothingto say and usually when you give him or her questions, ‘I am sorry I don’t know whatto say’.

T1: There’re jumpers, who jump whenever you ask a question, they simply shout ‘me’,and some students are very shy, they simply stay behind them and sitting, and beingquiet and happy that…

T2: And in a smaller group you force them to speak, yes.

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M: Given that range of activity and these different styles, how do you assess yourstudents?

T5: I can say something, because I want to say that. Perhaps our gymnasium is the onlyone in Kaunas and perhaps the only one in Lithuania. We’ve got a very differentassessing system, because we’ve got one point system. And as we’ve got two semesters,it is divided 50 and 50. No average mark. And it is a very big job for the teacher, youknow, to calculate the whole work and for the whole year. For example, some 7 pointsfor this test, some 5 points for that one. And then we are summing up… 7, 5 … butwhat are the advantages of it: no gaps in knowledge. If there is for example the texteverybody has to account for this, otherwise he gets a zero. So, that’s like in a higherschool at the university. Just they plan. … for every topic. Of course it’s a very big jobfor me to think how and what. Sometimes I make some changes, you know…

T3: You do this while planning.

T5: Yes, while planning. It takes a lot of time to think about it. But students knowthat they have to account. And no excuse for him. If he is ill, he knows he has tocome later and, for example, in all the other schools, if he doesn’t know the topic, hemay not come to the lesson. No mark then. And he will get a better one for what hewants, for god knows what, you know. And so the average mark may be good for notthe whole material.

T4: What about the lack of time?

T5: So, that’s why everybody writes. Practically more or less we are giving writtentasks and of course there are role-plays, topics... But they have to account.

M: And what are you doing in village schools?

T7: This is meant nearly the same. Or it again depends upon, as I said, my school…one student has Enterprise, another student comes with Opportunities, so he has toaccount let’s say for his homework or for the task in class, some grammar or maybesome retelling or expressing his opinion on some issue.

T8: And we use ordinary ten points system. We give them marks from two to ten.

T2: T1 usually gives one (laughs). She is very fond of one.

T1: Well, I say if you want to get a one you might not do anything, but if you want toget a two, you must work for it.

T3: I want to tell you that I’ve been working for 3 years in the junior classes andthere is no assessment with marks. So I’ve got used to work without marks already.

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And you know… it is discussed before, you know, with the pupils. And we decide ifyou get such a task, for example, thank-you words, let’s say, writing or spelling orsomething like that. So, if you make two mistakes, it’s one point. Because… theyknow, so we decide. Now the oral work is done, also, I got those stickers for ‘welldone’, ‘perfect’, ‘bravo’ and so on. So I give them.

T6: For my pupils I made some kind of money. I chose a small rabbit, and on the earof the rabbit it was written, for example 50, 100 or something else. And when theydid some job very well, I presented them with this money and at the end, forexample, of the term we had some kind of an auction and I had a lot of presents andthey could buy something for this money.

T2: Imagine doing it with twelfth formers.

T1: I think that this is really an interesting idea. And not only with primary students,because from time to time I do it with my eleventh and twelfth formers…

T2: But maybe with real money (laughs).

T1: No no. It’s not an auction, but different contests, let say, groups and differenttasks for groups and then calculating points and then they get some prizes. And theyare really happy and what I am happy about is, that my senior students never ask if Iam going to write a mark for whatever they do. They know that they do it for theirown sake, but younger students always ask ‘Will you write a mark?’ and I ask ‘If Idon’t, aren’t you not doing it?’ They say ‘No, but well…’ It’s also very interesting, andthose even bear-like, who are much bigger than me like those games very much andeven while preparing for the exams, they don’t feel so much frustrated working ongrammar or whatever. And sometimes just saying ‘Now I will sell you an exercise, andif you get on the crook like fish, then you will blame yourselves’. And usually makingsome, well, very small mistake… I know where I can catch them. And well 99.9 % Icatch them on that crook of mine.

M: Any other ways of motivating students that you use?...

T5: …As I am teaching literature, you know, – and perhaps the teachers can sharetheir experience – we officially write no marks for literature, it is just like a moduleand just one lesson per week. And then students know that there’re no marks forthem, just a credit without any marks. Sometimes they try to escape, you know, tomiss classes or something like that and the teacher has to be very inventive in orderto make students come to your lessons. Sometimes I make prizes, you know. Forexample, especially when teaching literature or writing, when we read some poetry…who invents or just creates the better poem, making special tasks to get a prize.Usually literature is the last lesson, the seventh or the eighth, at the very end, and I

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know they are always hungry. I sometimes buy buns at the canteen… they are sohappy, but it is great fun and they say ‘how interesting (the lesson) was’, I hope thebun was the most interesting thing, you know. Because even big ones, the schoolleavers, they like some entertainment as you say, because everything is so boring.They are very tired at the end of the day, you know. Tests and all the answers and soon. They are very tired.

T8: It’s not only about putting marks, but to my mind it’s important to notice theperson who grows.

T3: You know, sometimes getting six is already good, but noticing and telling thestudent that you see that he or she has improved, that’s the important part to mymind. Seeing not just the grades and seeing not the results of the test, but seeing theperson… the growth.

T2: It’s good up to the eleventh form, marks and evaluations and prizing, saying thatyou improved yourself, ‘It’s very nice of you, this time you did better…’ But then…but closer to exams…

T4: In September, I think, each of us prepares the syllabus. And the syllabus explainsthat we are doing this and preparing for examination that consists of this, this andthat, and we will spend some time on… just certain syllabus must be. And you explainwhat you put marks for and all that stuff and just getting back to the last year, Ipersonally didn’t have school leavers last year, but I was (…) as a teacher of English.Our students asked us many times what is included in the examination and we gotexplaining and practising letters and… you know… I need to get back to that becauseI feel some problems start here – disrespect to the teacher. I was offended by mygovernment, by the Ministry, because I didn’t tell my students the truth. What am I ifI don’t know what’s included in the exam? They say, ‘We didn’t say what will be butsome… hints…’ This is not just the problem that they had to write an essay. It’s aproblem that we teachers don’t know what’s included in the exam. It’s as ifschool-leavers don’t belong to you, but it’s our result that is tested – our and ourstudents’ result. And we were teaching them to be proud of themselves. So theproblem is somewhere high.

T5: Yes. I want to continue, because as a state assessor of the state exam this year…I don’t know… because all papers are coded and I don’t know whose work it was, buta person wrote ‘When will you finish experimenting on us?’ and there was nothingwritten. He said, ‘I don’t know what to write, either a paragraph or a letter or acomposition’. And nothing was written. By the way, all the other parts, I mean thelistening part, the reading part and the use of English, were done perfectly well and Isuppose that student, of course, passed, not with a high mark, but he passed. Isuppose he could write something, but he was so offended, he was, you know, sonervous that he didn’t write anything.

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T4: Those who didn’t know anything, wrote well. Weaker students did the task, butstronger students (didn’t)… It depends, of course, on the level of anxiety. Thesethings, if they happen, we teachers lose points.

T5: Yeah, some kind of protest. Nothing was written, just an empty page, you know.

M: So what kind of help would you expect to have in dealing with this kind of issue?

All at the same time:

– If we keep silent, this problem will grow.– the Ministry should cooperate with school teachers– teachers should talk– teachers should know– what is included this year?– Who knows?

T5: This year we are preparing everything, compositions, essays, because god knows.


– How much can a student…– Pictures to discribe…– Difficult to correct…– orally parctically no value…– I’ve got to teach my students to communicate.– There seems to be a conflict. With the system now.– They say if a person can speak, they will write.– (…………………………)

T5: But have you ever seen the tasks of our state exam? I showed… I went to theUnited States this year and I showed the tasks (there). And the Americans weresurprised. ‘This is for a school-leaver? Is English your first language?’ ‘No!’ they weresurprised. ‘Too high.’

M: May I ask you the final question?… What changes would you like to see in thefuture?


– More classes.– Less students.– Easier exams.– Fewer requirements for the exam.

T2: … only very celebrated students go to study to the universities. Not for theaverage student, it’s for celebrated ones.

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T1: For example, I can’t understand why a pupil must do three listening tasks, threereading tasks. If I want to check the knowledge…– (………………………)– Luck.– They are not gamblers.

T2: Those who are somewhere in the middle from average to the most brilliant ones,they usually are the most successful.

T1: I think we must give them what they will need in their future. For example, howmany of them will become writers? But they will need to write letters – official letters,personal letters… application and so on.

T2: Most of all they need application and some formal letters… writing experience.

T7: They need to talk. We need to teach them talking to American students… theyknow what they want, they can say what they can do, they are ambitious, motivated…You see, you asked us what are our strengths and nobody answered. We are shy… Iknow we have them. But… they are in the competitive society, they need to say ‘I ambright, I am smart… I am a good sportsman. You take me… the university will beproud of me’. This is what we are trying to teach.

T1: If they write their application letters, especially. Putting their strengths first. Andthen not being afraid of showing what they are really good at…

T2: It’s our national drawback, I would say…

M: What would you have father Christmas to bring you?

T4: I don’t even know. Maybe more financial support, not to be so poor. Sometimeswe say… We have no internet. We have no good computers. Three old computers atschool. So, we want to be like other students. To have better conditions of working.And we try to do our best. We still work and our students go to gymnasia, go toKaunas schools. And they show good results.

T5: What I would say, I don’t know, I hope you will agree with me just on the wholethat not only English… but our secondary education level is rather high. I hope, youwon’t be offended. According to the European countries – because I used to be inmany European countries – we watch their lessons and, for example, I want to saywhen our students participate in those exchange programmes, they stay for some three– last year we had some students who satyed some three or four months in Norway inNorwegian schools and lived in Norwegian families – they sent us e-mail letters andthey wrote, ‘No problems with all those subjects except for computer classes’… or

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English, or say Norwegian. So, I mean, not only English, I mean all (subjects)mathematics, physics, are rather high level. Our secondary education is very high…

T2: Yes, it will be the same as everywhere in Europe, in the United States…

T5: I want to say, the only thing is that we are destroying our system. Just to mymind, because it used to be very good and even people from all European countriesthat we meet and talk to, they say, ‘Oh, don’t destroy what you have got’, but we arefollowing them, we are following the European Union and we are destroying…

T2: We’ll have to do it if we want to be in the European Union, we’ll have to havethe same level as everybody has.

T1: Yes, but on the other hand, while speaking and reviewing all the programmes andwhile remembering when I was a student, just a school-leaver, we were no worse,though we worked much less than they do now and all the programmes andeverything were much… on a lower level. But we didn’t become worse than ourstudents are now, they have so many things at school which they don’t actually needat school. They are overloaded with a lot of things… they will learn a lot of things atuniversities... What’s the good of teaching at school higher mathematics, if they go touniversities and they are taught here (the same) again. Just the requirements, thewhole syllabus of the whole secondary school and gymnasium is so very high that it’svery difficult to work on.

T5: Yes. And that’s why sometimes they go to universities and their level falls. Theysometimes come to me and they say, ‘Oh, give us the book that we read in theseventh form’. Goodness gracious, you are a second year student, so what are youdoing there?(…………………………)

T5: Students from our school when they go to university they say, ‘We don’t haveanything to do in our English lessons’…– Those who study English.– They could take French or Spanish or whatever. Why should they learn again?(…………………………)

M: Thank you very much for your coming. (…) Is there a last thing that you reallywanted to say?

T4: Our students would be healthier, if they were not so overloaded… and we arehealthier than our children.

T1: And we will be healthier.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 f

Focus group interview with Ðiauliai region school teachers

14 January 2004

T1: I have been teaching English from 1981, that means 23 years. I have beenworking at the same school for 23 years and I work for secondary school and I teachusually profiled classes. The junior students are tenth formers and the senior studentsare twelfth formers. I graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical University.

T2: I have been working for about seven years as an English teacher. I work atRadviliðkis basic school with all forms and I graduated from Ðiauliai University.

T3: I’ve been working for twenty four years as an English teacher. I have been inÐiauliai just from the very beginning and Ðiauliai is my birthplace that’s maybe whyI’ve come here and started my career here. Now I work in profiled school and teachsenior forms, I mean eleven-formers and twelve-formers. The junior formers I haveare nine-formers. I have graduated from Vilnius Pedagogical Institute.

T4: I’ve been teaching English for twenty five years since 1979. I graduated fromPedagogical University. Now I’ve been teaching at the secondary school. I’m teachingdifferent forms but, yes, teaching the 12th form, because… maybe it’s difficult to dothat but, it’s more useful for me to teach to the younger forms because, you know, Iknow what I should do in order to achieve results.

T1: And when teachers change it’s difficult sometimes, because they don’t know thestudent.

T3: Yeah. It takes some time especially in senior classes until you know his or herproblems. And you have the same students for some years and you know theirproblems and how you can help them at once, experience to explore what’s new.

M: Can I ask you how you made a decision to become an English language teacher?Is it inherited, your mothers, fathers were teachers? Is it the call from the heart?

T3: Maybe it is because we had started learning English from the second form and wejust got used to it (laughs), because it was very close to our hearts maybe, I don’tknow how to express myself.

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M: Do you agree?

T4: My parents were teachers, both of them, but they didn’t…

T3: As for me, I could remember my first English teacher. I loved her very much.Maybe that was one more reason why I have chosen this.

M: A good model?

T3: Yes, that was a good model.

T4: I liked my English teacher very much…

T2: It was a call of my heart, but there were a lot of other ways I have chosen when Igraduated, but my English teacher suggested after some years to start again.

T1: Maybe my English teachers influenced me. I had only two of them. And I wasn’tso practical as you were; I wasn’t thinking at that time that I would be a teacher. Ithought about studying English, but I wasn’t thinking about working at school, aboutbeing a teacher and wasn’t thinking that, oh, English is better, because of the groups,smaller, and of course, at that time studying English maybe it wasn’t as popular asnowadays, because after graduation students usually went to work in kindergartens,especially if they wanted to stay in bigger centers. So we had problems. So, I think,my English teachers influenced me.

M: Can you tell me a little bit about the resources available in your schools? What doyou have in your classrooms? What is there at school that you can use? I meaneverything – equipment, books, materials? What is the situation?

T3: The situation, I could say, is not very good. In our secondary school we work invery small rooms because they usually think that we have half of the group and wecould work this way, having very small space. The other problem we have is thatusually all our students, nearly all our senior formers, have to buy textbooksthemselves – parents must pay for the textbooks. Well, we haven’t got somethingspecial, let’s say, some special center in our school for foreign languages, let’s say,copying material, collecting books. Everything is put in our library and we go andtake, if we need the books we have. And the choice of books, I mean, literature, let’ssay, encyclopedias, dictionaries, is not very big, the choice itself. Usually each Englishroom has got a dictionary or two, but not more. Teaching materials are not availablefor our students. Usually we teachers make copies, if we want to give some additionalmaterial. Or students just have to pay…

M: Do you use videos, tape recorders?

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T3: We usually take video recorders from English Center we’ve got in Siauliai,Janonis [school]. There is the association of English teachers and they’ve got thelibrary at the Center and if we need we go there and take everything we need. Justwe could say that the choice of the material they have in this library or centre isusually not very modern, outdated, charity.

T2: I think that the situation depends on the school authorities, because this year webought sixteen dictionaries, the biggest dictionaries for our English classes, four goodtape recorders and this year our students didn’t buy course books, only work books.And we can see that the situation has changed a little.

T2: At school we’ve got one video and each class has got a tape recorder.

M: A copying machine?

T2: We have got two copying machines for both teachers and students.

T1: I’m happy because I have got the English room, because not all teachers at schoolhave got their rooms as we are short of them. So I am happy, even if it is not big, Ihave a lot of space. Nowadays equipment at school is of low level, but I have newfurniture, we bought it a year ago, when I worked with a volunteer of Peace Corps(USA) and there were projects, then we earned four thousand litas, we boughtfurniture, so the furniture is new now, I am very happy and the students like sitting(there).

M: But it is new just in your room?

T1: Yes, yes, In second year we also had a project, so I could buy two cassetteplayers, books, maps and textbooks. So now we are a little better of, but of course Iwork in a very small place where are no British centres, no libraries. Our school hasmany connections with many countries, so we get a lot of books from charity. Ofcourse, these books are quite old, but you know, everything is different and it isdifficult to use sometimes. Our school has got a copying machine, which a couple ofyears ago we didn’t have, so the work is easier, I don’t pay money, somehow studentsare not used to this, so I take money and I copy for them. What I need for myself, ofcourse I pay. Textbooks are very important in teaching every subject. Of course, it isimpossible now to look and find a text book that could be good, one for one class.You have to find a textbook and then to copy, that is what I wanted to say.

T3: Our students do not copy… Somehow they want to obey the educational laws andrequire that the students get money for textbooks. Therefore our students don’t buytextbooks. What we have we give to them, but if we don’t have then, here is the newtextbook, please go and buy it. We think the students don’t understand what they

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need, so they usually buy one. I have worked on Socrates projects for three years, so,from this money you can buy textbooks, and I bought one copy of many text booksand now we are copying and trying to solve the problem.

M: Who is paying for the copies?

T3: Students.

M: Isn’t it more expensive than to buy a book?

T3: No, we don’t use every page in the book. When you copy, you may take twopages together. It makes one copy. And we think, of course, we take one thetextbooks and give them for their homework usually what the students don’t know.

T2: Senior pupils are who copy. In junior classes it’s better to work with the book.Each unit contains material and it is the same in each unit you have to follow…

T3: Continuation. Well, but I think it’s quite a clumsy situation when you don’t have –the senior formers don’t have – a textbook.

T1: One has!

T2: Everyone has!

T1: Each student has? Sorry, I didn’t catch it.

T3: It is impossible to study from one textbook.

T2: Well they have each

T4: In our secondary school there are some English teaching traditions and thestudents have already got used to buying textbooks themselves, though some of themdon’t wanted to buy. They try to sell their books to other students who will belearning this material as well, and also we take the book and read or study from it fortwo years… and that costs less.

T3: We have those backups as well, buying one textbook for two years, becauseusually they take any book… course in the textbook this year.

M: When you use modern textbooks, modern course books, usually they havesupplementary materials like videos, sometimes they ask you to use Internet, searchfor certain things in a certain website, so what realistically are you able to use in yourclassrooms from these things like audiocassettes, videocassettes, Internet, software forteaching English?

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T2: Of course we use audio materials and as to video, it’s not popular at our schooland we plan it...

M: Do you have video?

T2: Yes, we have. But we plan to have video lessons maybe at the end of May or atthe beginning of June, but it’s not very popular. We haven’t got enough lessons.

M: And computers?

T2: Computers, sometimes, but…

M: Do you have a computer class?

T2: Yes, we have it.

T3: We have even two computer classes and sometimes, not every week, we practicethere, students do I mean. We have got a video and usually we take it when we needit, because it is mobile, it’s just put on special shelf and every teacher can take it andhave it in his room. It’s very useful.

T4: Speaking about videos, we have got one video in the reading room, one in thephysics room, and we’ve got one video for English teachers, for all of them.

M: Do you use it?

T4: We used to use it in the reading room, but I think that when we have got it forus only, now we do this more often, because we had to arrange things with thisreading room.

T1: We’ve got one personal video in the reading room, one in the French room andone in the school board. If we want, we come. And it is quite big, so we can do that.

M: Internet?

T1: Yes, of course, we’ve got two classes of new computers and two classes of oldcomputers, with old computers – no Internet. We’ve got four computers plus one inthe reading room and, of course, the Internet, but usually Informatics [computerscience] teachers take these rooms, they need computers and usually with internet, sowe used to have some extra lessons…the background [programmes] of this computeris in English which is for English classes and we used to have such a lesson forstudents of the 10th form and of the seventh form. We work in this room.

M: Can you mention titles of some of the course books, main course books?

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T1: ‘Welcome’, ‘Happy Earth’, ‘Happy School’, ‘Enterprises’, ‘School English’.

T3: We work with ‘Opportunities’ and the senior forms with ‘Fast Track’.

T4: We use also ‘Matrix’ as the main book and have got ‘Fast Track’, but not forevery student in different class to work. ‘Opportunities’, junior classes ‘SchoolEnglish’, ‘Welcome’, some other course books.

M: I’d like to ask what support you get from the school administration in terms ofresources. And is the English language considered to be an important subject at yourschool?

T1: When the students choose the exams, the state exams, I try to show how manystudents choose English and then I say to pay attention to this, to those students, sothey should have got maybe more money from the school basket and maybe they getmore money. And when we look at the list of the books, recommended text books,usually we change… but if they weren’t recommended by the Ministry of Education,these textbooks, maybe we should buy new ones or (get) some copies. But it’s verydifficult, because every teacher of every subject wants something new, because of a lotof titles, new textbooks for every subject...

T4: I can tell that this year our director, because she teaches English as well, knowsthe situation and she supports us in every way giving more lessons if it is possible, ifthere are some lessons that she can get more, on the decision of the school, of theschool authorities... of course, she would finance some grammar books, for example,this year we’ve bought some grammar books, some sets of textbooks, video, a newtape recorder and one computer for the classroom.

T3: To tell the truth, our authority pays attention to English teaching process at ourschool, but it’s not enough, we think so, the English teachers. But each English roomhas got a tape recorder for sure, it is out of question but the Headmaster says thatwe ourselves, English teachers, should be more active, initiative, doing some work onprojects and this way trying to get money and buy something. We are… very active, totell the truth. But there are some problems and we can’t solve them with ourHeadmaster, because he is a physics teacher and he pays more attention to science.But we hope that in the future the things will move somehow in a positive direction.

T3: Integrating… we are thinking about it. This year already we’ve made some plansand they are starting with the next year, having some Economics English. In this waymaybe we shall find the solution of some problems.

T2: I’m very proud of our situation. It’s quite good. But I should add, that ourEnglish teachers are very active. We show a lot of English projects and some lessonsto our authorities and they can see that we work.

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T3: I want to say that all of us work. It’s not the question of…

T2: But we are not shy to go and to ask for money and we do it every year.

T1: I think that it’s important to have a good team of English teachers as well, inorder to share things.

T3: To share, that’s the main idea, we usually do this.

M: What is the support in terms of your developments? Is your administrationsupporting your development? When you need to go to seminars, do those projects,are you encouraged?

T4: Especially the projects.

M: Let’s say you want to attend some seminars, conferences.

T1: Sometimes they say, you should go once, only once and you will share. But, youknow, they knew, for example, just one thing…for example, one thing is important forme and the other for you.

T3: We have to join groups if one teacher of English is leaving, so we have to join tohave a lesson, and on the whole, to arrange the things, if the colleague goes to aseminar.

T4: If you work with senior classes, you have more chances to go to seminars. Butaccording to the law we must go to seminars, but somehow we have to arrange itourselves. If we must and if there is such a law, so maybe the authority shouldorganize (things) for teachers to come and it has to be their law, such a law, theyshould observe, because it’s very important for both the teacher and the students.They count how many days we have attended in seminars to show it for a specialprogramme.

T3: And our Headmaster is for attending seminars, courses during summer holidays,during your free time.

M: Some of you mentioned that you have to join groups if your colleague goes away.How big are the groups?

T1: It depends. I have one containing twenty students.

T2: At our school we don’t have (split) groups, so it’s 26, 27 students. That’s aproblem. They have one lesson.

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T3: We have two plus one: two separate groups, just about thirty, plus the third lessonwhich is joint. I also would like to mention that in senior forms students can choosethe teacher. For instance, when my students came to the eleventh form, they wantedto work with me, because I was their first English teacher. And according to the listof names the division was made in the way that they came to my group and theothers had to go to the other group.

T4: We don’t have this problem. If I have been teaching those students from thestart, I go on teaching whether they want it or not. However, students may changegroups.

T2: There are situations when some parents come to school and ask for one oranother teacher, but our authorities don’t let to choose a teacher.

T3: Because the student has to mention the reasons why they want to change ateacher. If you give serious reasons, then you are allowed. I can’t say it happens veryoften, but it happens sometimes.

M: Can each of you tell me what you feel your strength as an English languageteacher is? Is it using new teaching methods or finding resources for projects andfacilities and equipment or networking with other teachers?

T1: Maybe the project making. I have some experience.

T4: As for me, experience in working with students.

T3: As for me, I like using different teaching methods: I like group work, especially,in junior forms and in the senior forms I try to apply this. Working more oncommunicative tasks. I enjoy it when I see the result.

T2: I’m also experienced, but I think that my strength is that I’m creative and, Ithink, I love my work.

M: What skills do you favour teaching? What is your favourite skill that you teach?Speaking, writing?

T1, T2, T3, T4: Speaking.

T1: Speaking. But nobody pays attention to your good results.

T3: We can pay much attention to speaking. It is a plus.

M: But why do you all love teaching speaking?

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T1: You know your students better, even your relationship with the class becomescloser in the course of this process.

T2: When I start teaching in the eleventh form, I always think ‘no (speaking)’, whenthe exam comes I always think ‘no (speaking)’, next time when we start with theeleventh-formers – no speaking at all, I won’t teach them. What’s the use if they getfour out of ten, if they are required only to know a lot of words, to read very quickly,to know a lot of structures. I bring listening tests, but again it’s too boring.

M: How do you motivate your students? How do you motivate them if you haveunmotivated students? Or even if you have motivated students, how do you encouragethem to develop their skills outside the class?

T1: I’m happy when I see that my students are busy during all lesson – motivate themwith my work.

T4: Final goal, maybe. They know that they should use English in their studies andfuture, maybe at work, with computers, the Internet.

T1: And they saw job advertisements in newspapers.

M: And what about the assessment? How do you assess? Do you use criteria? Is itunified? Do you ask them to make presentations?

T2: With junior students we use self-assessment.

T3: For students it’s the most serious problem. They usually want to have goodevaluation for each work they do, because of the results, they want to have the finalmark, let’s say, 10, but for us teachers it’s very responsible. We should be very veryresponsible for putting down the mark of evaluation. But, well, somehow weunderstand each other and the mark is the best assessment for them, but sometimeswe have this praising or just spoken feedback, some written down.

T1: Sometimes we encourage them. Yeah, both project work and communicative tasksrequire understanding of the student. And sometimes words written after the test, let’ssay, ‘work more than the mark’. It’s not difficult to write a mark, if the student writesa test, but if he writes an essay or a composition, it’s very difficult sometimes.

M: Are you in favour of using group work? Well, what is the balance betweenindividual work and group work?

T3: With the senior formers we do more individual work and with junior forms it’svery popular to do group work, because they enjoy it.

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M: And individual work in the senior classes?

T3: More or less, each of them has to show his own result on, let’s say, grammar oruse of English.

M: So if I asked again each of you individually to tell me what you see as aproblematic area? What would you say?

T3: Teaching materials.

M: Acquiring them or choosing them?

T1: Financial problems. We should ask the British Council somehow to sponsor(laughs).

M: You should ask publishers.

T3: Publishers? I don’t know how it should be arranged…

T1: And I’ve seen that all the French teachers went to France and they had specialcourses. So we’d also like to go to England and to have some courses. I think, if ateacher had worked for twenty years, he or she should have studied in England,because we’ve visited England only just for fun.

M: Do you have your techniques how you cope with your problems?

T4: Sharing resources. Some time ago we used to get some materials from the BritishCouncil Library. But now, as we have to bring books back in a month’s time, it’s tooexpensive to go to Vilnius. It is difficult, and, of course, we have this English Centerand we have got some things there and we are glad about what we have got inJanonis, because we have got some….M: If you could change some things in your teaching situation what would they be?

T1: Mainly speaking and writing, not listening and reading.

T3: I’m not against reading.

T1: They need more writing and speaking.

T4: Somehow we must teach lots and lots of things, I don’t think we are so good.Programme is not good, letters for instance all kinds of essays, the writing of letters…if you can write an application letter of the courses, a complaint letter maybe, getinformation…

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T2: And more lessons, more English lessons.

M: How many lessons do your students have?

T2: Three or four.

T3: In the senior forms they have four plus one additional lesson and in juniorso-called specialized classes those who studied English from the second form theyhave three plus one… in the sixth form – three plus one, just one additional lesson.

T2: In each school students start English classes from 2nd form. It’s 25 or 20 ofEnglish lessons, but it depends. The number of (classroom) hours depends also on theauthorities.

T4: I think we should teach something, at least pronunciation.

M: Is there anything that you thought you would really like to say, but I didn’t askyou? Anything on your mind that you really want to say, express your opinion?

T3: I wanted to and I was asked to ask you to arrange / organize more seminars with,let’s say, with native speakers if there were such possibility, and to arrange courses forEnglish teachers giving us a chance to see, to study, to work at some school, get moreexperience. As usually we have seminars with people we know more or less, who arenot native speakers (of English). We appreciate the information, their knowledge, butwe’d like to meet native speakers.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 g

Focus group interview with college students


S1: I am learning now in Kaunas Technical College.

M: How old are you?

S1: I am 19 years old.

M: Thank you.

S2: I came from Marijampole and am studying in Marijampole College.

M: How old are you?

S2: I am 22.

S3: I’m studying in Kolping College. I’m 19 years old.

S4: I am studying now in Kaunas College. And I am 19 years old.

S5: I am studying in Kaunas College now. And I am 18 years old.

S6: I am a student of Vilnius College. I am 20.

M: How long have you been learning English?

S1: I am learning from the 5th form. So it’s 7 years and now I’ve been learning for ayear in Kaunas Technical College.

M: So that’s 8 years.

S2: In secondary school I studied English for 8 years. Then in Kaunas ManagementCollege I sudied for 2 years and now it’s the second year. I’m studying again English. 12.

S3: In secondary school I studied English for 12 years. Since the first form and nowI’m still studying English. It’s my specialisation. I’m trying to get my English speciali-sation in Kolping College.

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M: So how long have you been studying in college?

S3: Only 3 months.

S4: In secondary school I studied for 4 years and another 4 years I studied in KaunasFood Industry School and now I study in Kaunas College for 2 months.

S5: In secondary school I learned for 7 years and now in Kaunas College for about 2months.

S6: My situation is a bit different, because I learned English in London for 1 year andnow I just started to study English in Vilnius College. 2 months.

M: And did you study English before you went to London for one year?

S6: No.

M: How do you feel about learning English? Does it make sense to be learningEnglish?

S1: Of course, because if you want to travel somewhere, first of all you have to knowEnglish, Russian, German, and maybe French, but the main language is English. Andyou can find a lot of information in English and so, I think it’s necessary to speakEnglish and to learn a lot.

S4: Computer language is English and we must know something to use it.

M: Are you able to use English outside your colleges or schools very much at themoment? Do you have to?

All: No. / Yes.

S4: Sometimes we write letters to English speaking people.

S3: Sometimes we meet people from England, from America. It’s a very little timeyou spend talking in English.

M: Do you all think that learning English is going to be important for your careers?

All: Yes.

S1: Very important. In Lithuania you almost can’t find a job. You must go abroad andyou need to know English, I think…

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M: Are your English courses general or for specific subjects? Are you doing a coursewhich is, for example, English for business or English for business and management?or English for computer technology?

S4: We really study for technologyn and it’s something about food.

S1: In the secondary school lessons I had general English and now in the college Ihave it for specilization, specific language, technical language.

M: Is it easy to get the materials in English for subject areas? English for foodtechnology?

S4: Yes.

M: Where do you get it from?

S1: Literature. Internet.

S3: Books, a lot of books. There are a lot of books in English about those things thatyou are interested in.

M: What are you interested in?

S3: I am interested in gliding. Paragliding, base jumping and other extreme stuff.

M: The things that they don’t teach you at school. And you have easy access?Magazines, internet? Is it mainly internet?

S3: Mainly on Internet, I think.

M: Do you all have access to the Internet?

S4: Yes.

M: At college?

S4: At college. At home.

M: What kind of teachers have you had so far? Young teachers, old teachers,interesting teachers, boring teachers… What have your teachers been like?

S4: Strict. I had a very strict teacher at secondary school. She always put me very badmarks. How hard I tried, but she always put five and five and five. It’s hard to learnthen.

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M: When you were learning English what was the major stress – was it on writingEnglish, on listening, on speaking?

S4: Grammar.

S3: Sometimes the teacher was very boring. Students were sleeping in the lecture.

M: What about the teachers you have got now? Are they more exciting?

S5: Yes. Interesting.

M: So did all of you had education in English that was very strictly about grammar insecondary school?

S5: Our English teaching was not very interesting, because our teacher was not anEnglish language teacher. She was a Russian teacher, but she has a certificate ofEnglish teacher, I think. She always talked to a school girl who was not very good.And all other… There were no other classroom at all.

M: How did you manage to learn?

S5: I took private lessons. I paid money.

M: What do you think of English that you have now? Teaching that you have now?I’d like to talk a little bit about the kind of resources that are available for you. Whatare your lecture rooms like? What is the equipmet like?

S5: We have a video equipment in our classroom. When we need to listen, theteacher brings a tape recorder. She uses many materials not from our school. She hasher own library. She brings everything from home.

S6: CD player and that’s all.

S4: A lot of dictionaries.

S2: We have a lot of dictionaries. But when I wanted to find a word, I couldn’tremember the preposition or something and I couldn’t find it. There wasn’t that wordin the dictionaries. We’ve got cassette recorder or CD player, I don’t rrmember now.

S3: In Kolping college we sometimes use visuals, like product or cinemas.

M: A video?

S3: Yes.

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M: What kind of technology would you like to see in the classroom that you don’thave?

S6: I think a video recorder would be useful maybe, sometimes for people to watch amovie, English movie. English and leisure. That’s what we used to do in London andI learned a lot.

M: The rooms that you study in… What’s the furniture like?

S3: We sit in groups of 4 people. We can do tasks together.

M: So you can arrange the room how you want it. Is it true for all of you?

S6: In our classroom we all sit like here, around. Only during exams we do rows oftables. Because like this we can do group work.

M: How many people are there in the group you are learning in?

S6: 13.

S1: 6 or 7.

S3: Maybe 12.

S4: About 15.

S6: About 15. There should be about 15, but it is about 10. I don’t know why.

S4: Well, our group is… Some students are learning German and some English.

M: Tell me about the course that you use? Do you have coursebooks you work with?

S1: Workbooks.

M: Can you remember some of the titles?

S5: Landmark.

S1: English Grammar in Use.

S4: Snapshots we used in Kaunas College.

M: Headway?

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S3: Yes, in secondary school.

M: Cutting Edge?

S: No.

M: International Express?

S: No.

M: Do you have cassettes with these books?

S: Yes.

M: Do you have copies of the cassttes?

S3: Yes, only the teachers.

S2: I have.

M: Do you have many things that are copied? Do your teaches give you photocopies?

S5: Yes, we have to photocopy ourselves. We just borrow the book from our teacherand make photocopies.

S1: Cheaper.

M: What about these dictionaries? Are they all old dictionaries that don’t have allwords or are they quite modern dictionaries that you have?

S6: Some are modern, some are old.

S1: Some are very old.

S2: Some are very new. Some new ones are in the library. There are new ones, but inthe classroom we have old ones.

M: And is there a library in your college that you can go to?

S: Yes.

S2: But I don’t think I can take dictionaries home. I think we should use them in thelibrary.

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S4: We can read here.

M: You can read only in there?

S4: You can borrow for one day. Another day we have to bring back.

M: What are the libraries like in the city? In Kaunas? Do they have good sections ofEnglish books you can use?

S3: There are lots of books in the libraries. In public library. I don’t know, you canfind any book in English that you want to find.

S1: Not always. … I’m learning technical specialisation. And you can’t find a lot oftechnical books in English or in Lithuanian. It’s impossible. A lot of books are inRussian in technical world. In English there are some, but not a lot.

S3: But in English language there are plenty of them.

M: Do you take books from the public library youselves?

S1: Yes, if it’s possible.

M: Is it possible?

All: Yes / No.

M: Why is that?

S1: We have all in our school. We don’t need.

M: So you have a good library in your school?

S1: Yes.

M: What are your teachers like now? Are they anything like the teachers you had insecondary schools or are they different?

S5: Very different.

M: How are they different?

S2: For example, if you don’t understand or something is wrong, you can just ask andthey’ll explain everything. They won’t say ‘I don’t explain, go away’ even if you havepersonal problems, not only about English.

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M: Is that true in the college you are in?

S1: It’s easy to communicate with our teacher now. She is not so strict, very smiley,always smiling. Nice to talk with her.

S3: It depends on the teacher. If she is smiling, not very old…

M: So what’s your teacher like that you have now?

S1: 75 years old. It’s horrible. All the lessons are very rude, like… I don’t know howto say that.

M: Are they like the lessons that you had in secondary school? Are they any different?

S1: there’s difference from secondary school. I don’t know how to say, but it is hardto sit in the lesson, it’s hard. Because the teacher’s always sad. Something’s wrongwith her.

M: So you wish you had a different teacher?

S1: I wish I had.

M: Are you OK with your teacher?

S6: When I compare my teachers now with the teachers I had in London, Londonteachers were very friendly and helpful. And our teacher now is very formal. Wecommunicate in a very formal way. Every time. She even calls us – in English, I know,it’s the same ‘you’, but in Lithuanian it’s different, there is friendly ‘you’ and formal‘you’ – so she calls us the formal ‘you’. I don’t feel very good about that. I’d likemore friendly way of communication.

M: Do your teachers use the informal form when they speak to you or whether theyuse the formal form?

S1: Formal.

S3: Informal. Friendly.

S4: Our teacher calls us not by surname but by name and I think it’s better thancalling by surname.

M: How important is English within all the subjects that you are studying? Is itconsidered as important as some technical subjects or some of the special subjects infood technology? Is English equal in value?

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S2: For me it’s the main subject. I am studying English pedagogy. I’ll be maybe ateacher. So it’s most important. The second subject by importance is Russian.

S3: But if you want… if you finish the studies and if you want to find a job in somekind of technical stuff and something like that, you must learn English. The employeewho knows English very well is more popular, than the one who doesn’t.

M: Do you think that going into the EU is going to make difference? That’s going tomake English more important? It’s going to happen very soon, isn’t it?

S5: In my college English is not very important. But as I study business management,I think it should be more important. There should be more English lessons or... Idon’t know, because business management… I might need to communicate with theEnglish or people from other countries, business people. There should be moreEnglish.

M: What do you think about your strengths and weaknesses? The good things and thebad things where you are, what you are learning? Are you satisfied with the Englishlanguage teaching that you are getting? Is it good quality teaching?

S4: I think so. Our teacher tries to make us remember better all that we are learning.When we come in the morning she always gives us questions about the last day andwe must remember everything we learnt and recall it. In the first course she made agame to remember our names. And we must talk, we introduced ourselves and shewas first and she must say what her name is and where she is from and we mustremember. And the last one must tell all (names).

M: Do you think you are learning as quickly as you can? Or do think you can learnmore quickly, if the teaching was somehow different?

S1: If it were more important, if it were more necessary, I could learn faster, but Idon’t think it’s necessary. When you are learning slower, you can find more thingsthat you wouldn’t hear or you couldn’t learn, if you learn faster.

M: How much do you contribute to your learning of English? Does it all come fromthe teacher or do you go up and search for English? Do you watch Englishprogrammes on television, do you see English films? What kind of things do you doto improve your English?

S4: I have a computer at home and also internet. We now see all the new films andthey are in English and we must know English to understand what we are talkingabout.

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S3: sometimes I watch TV like CNN or BBC to know what is going on in the worldright now.

S1: If there are some friends in America, so you have to talk in English.

M: do you send each other e-mails?

S1: Yes, e-mails and sometimes phone each other.

S5: We have pleasure reading and we must read English books. Not adapted tolearners.

M: what kind of books have you read?

S5: Now I am reading Love Is Always True, but I don’t remember the author. I readnot only love romance, I prefer adventure books. And today I bought a new book bySharlotte Bronte and I’ll read it.

M: what kind of books do you read or what do you do to improve your English?

S6: It’s hard to say, but I don’t do a lot to improve my English. But sometimes Iwrite a letter to my friend in Germany, but in English.

M: What was the last time you did that?

S6: Maybe two weeks ago.

M: When you are studying English in your classes do you ever work in teams?Groups? Do have opportunities to learn from each other?

S4: We are working in groups a lot, a lot of discussions… and it’s all in English.

S2: We usually work in pairs. We write dialogues.

M: Do you ever do presentations? Do you ever get involved in having to make areport?

S5: Yes.

M: And do you have to stand up and tell what you found out?

S5: Now we can choose to stand in front (of the class) or (speak) from our place.

M: And how often do you do that?

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S5: Last year we did it for one a month. This year we started with a report and nowwe are preparing (one) again.

M: What about the food technology? Do you do a lot of group work?

S1: Maybe dialogues, talk to each other and… in our workbooks there is anotherpage, 2 pages, or maybe a lot more… and we practise, I know some information andmy friend knows the information I don’t have. We must talk.

S6: Fill the gaps.

M: And do you ever do projects?

All: Yes / No.

M: And what kind of projects do you do?

S1: Like socialogical projects. Asking people what they are doing on their free time,how they spend it. Only socialogical.

S2: Yes, we do pedagogical projects and now we started a new project aboutadaptation at school.

M: How many would be involved in the project?

S2: Two persons.

S1: We have chosen about 12 people. Students. We are going to ask them what theyare doing on their free time.

M: How many of you are involved in asking?

S1: Only four.

M: And at the end will you have to report?

S1: Yes.

M: Do you have to use OHP?

S1: Yes, we can also make a film. We can do whatever we want to present thatproject.

M: In technical areas do you have a lot of project work?

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S3: Well, I don’t think it’s like a project. Not in English, but I had to write oneproject and I found literature only in English. I had to translate first of all. Last yearI think we had one project. We had to represent one technical firm. We worked 3people and we wrote and we had to present it to some class, to some groups.

M: When you were doing these projects, where do you think…? Your English is verygood in some areas, not very good in other ares. You have speaking skills, listeningskills, writing skills… Where do you think your best skills are in using English?

S3: Maybe in listening.

S4: Yes, listening.

M: If you could improve your skills, which is the skill you would like most toimprove?

S5: Talking.

M: When you come out of class do you straight away switch into talking inLithuanian?

All: Yes!

M: Do you use English outside?

S1: Not always, but we had in secondary school one delegation from Poland. Theycame to our school, we had to tell them all about Lithuania. And they didn’t knowRussian, well the language that we spoke was English. Then I translated everythinginto English for them. Sometimes I forgot… I came home and started talking to mysister in English. She said ‘You are in Lithuania not in England. Wake up!’

M: When you are in your English classes, do you feel comfortable using English?

All: Yes.

M: Do you feel that you are improving, that you are getting better at using English?

All: Yes.

S1: As you talk, you have experience in talking.

M: Do you think that your teachers are accurate when they assess your level ofEnglish ability? Do you think they get it right? Is their assessment of you accurate?

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S1: She asked for our marks from secondary schoool and gives us tests and ischecking what we can. Compares with our marks…

M: What kind of a teacher would you really like to have? What would your idealEnglish teacher be like?

S3: Teacher should be very funny, interesting, not old, married (laughs)…

M: Thinking of the teachers you’ve got now, would it be a kind of teacher who wouldmake you speak more? Would it be a teacher who would be able to provideadditional resources? Would it be a teacher who would be a bit harder with you?Stricter with you? To push you more?

S1: I think it’s enough what she is teaching and what she wants from us.

M: Are you very happy with the teachers that you have right now?

S5: Yes, very happy.

M: Do your teachers make you laugh?

All: Yes. Sometimes yes.

M: Is it important?

S1: Playing games and stuff. Interesting to learn, study.

M: Do you find you learn more easily when it’s fun?

S1: Yes. If your teacher is strict you must to do it, you don’t want to do it, but whenit’s funny you want to do it.

S2: It’s funny to do it.

S: Studying like a game.

M: What kind of changes would you like to introduce, if you were responsible forEnglish teaching? What kind of chages would you make in the way English is taught?

S4: More examples… I’m talking about technical. She could show some films ontechnical in English, of course. Because not everything you can find and not always itis interesting to read. Sometimes it’s more interesting to see.

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S1: Meetings with interesting people, maybe from England or America, to talk withthem in the English language.

S2: Now I think about my secondary school, and I maybe I would change the lessons.Make them not so monotonical, more different sources of literature, I don’t know.Not only reading, speaking and listening and that’s all… maybe more relationshipswith children, more close.

S1: Maybe more exchange programmes with students from other countries, It’s verygood.

S5: Maybe more programmes.

M: What kind of programmes?

S5: I don’t know. I think like S2 said. Knowledege, I think, was very poor. It’s onlyreading, writing, listening, that’s all.

S6: I’d like my teacher to be more informal. And I would like to get moreinformation not just from the cooursebook, not just answering the questions, onlyexercises, but more discussions, more talking, more talking in groups. I would like tochange my classroom, because in my classroom there are only two rows of tables. Ithink the langiage classroojm should be… The tables should be around… and seeother persons and communicate.

M: Is there anything that before you came you thought you want to say it? Youthought that is important and you haven’t had a chance to say it? Anything youthought important that you knew and we hadn’t asked you?

S1: Two main things that the teacher has to have are knowledge and to know how tocommunicate with students. We have one teacher… he has a lot of knowledge, butcan’t communicate… very very poor.

M: So it’s about communication skills and the ability to use them?

S1: Yes.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 h

Focus group interview with university students I

29 October 2003

S1: I was born in Vilnius and I’m 19 years old. I have been learning English for sevenyears, at first as second (foreign) language and now as the first.

S2: I have been learning English eight years.

S3: I’m not sure, but I’ve probably been learning English for eight years.

S4: I have been learning English for ten years and that’s it.

S5: I’ve been learning English for seven years.

S6: I am learning English for ten years.

S7: I’ve been learning it for seven years.

S8: I have being learning for eight years.

S9: I have been learning English for eight years.

S10: I have been learning for nine years.

S11: I have been learning English for years.

S12: I have been learning English for twelve years.

M: OK that’s great! So, tell me what do you feel about learning English. Do youthink it is important? Do you think it’s not important? Why?

S11: It’s important…

M: Why is it important to you?

S12: For me, for example, I like English as a language. I think it’s easy, not toodifficult as a language to learn, and I think it’s important to learn languages. It’simportant to learn any other language...

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S3: … because it’s one of the major languages and the most frequently spoken in theworld and, actually, English is like a first language for most other people in the world.

S12: And it’s the science language. The English language is the language of science.

S6: I can probably say it’s becoming the international language of the world, like theglobal language.

S12: And the thing nowadays is necessary to know… to learn English.

M: Do you think next year it will make any difference to learn? 2004? Is that goingto change peoples’ ideas at all about learning English?

S12: Not about English. It will change the ideas about all languages. … All languagesare important, not only the English language, but also French, German and so on.

S6: It’s probably not that fast. It will happen gradually. It becomes more important toknow the global languages…

M: Is it going to be important for you as you go out looking for jobs? When youfinish the university?

S6: Sure it will!

S12: Actually for us, it’ s important first, because we are studying this language. Soit’s like our job will be like… the English language, you know. So it’s our future,actually.

M: What kind of jobs are you hoping to do when you finish university?

S12: We are studying the technical English language, and (will be) translators andinterpreters of the English language, but not at schools a teacher…

M: If someone came up to you in the street and say, ‘Why are you bothering to studyEnglish? You should be studying more Lithuanian’, what would you say?

S6: Lithuanian is important, but to study English means to expand your view, toexpand your knowledge, because lots of things are going on in the world lately, all theinformation, most of the information probably, comes here in English.

M: Where do you get that information from? How does it come to you?

S6: We can look at media, Internet. Probably you could say that English is thelanguage of the Internet.

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S12: Yes it is! ‘Cause I prefer chatting, so (does) almost everyone. You can go to talkto a Chinese pupil or a French pupil… All, almost everyone knows English and youcan talk with them.

M: Tell me about the teachers of English that you have? What have they been like?Have they exited you? What about school? How were they?

S6: None of them excited me, I should say. Because what you are learning is lesspractical and more theoretical. Like, I don’t know, those things that you are doingyou have to do, like, you know, the grammar and stuff. That is important, but moreimportant is still just to know how to use the language, not the exact rules of thelanguage.

S12: For me, I started English from seven years old and my first English teacherexcited me so much, that till my second form I knew that my future studies would beEnglish studies. Because, she was so… she was not the real Lithuanian, you know, shehad lived for several years abroad. She knew all the things, not as Lithuanianteachers, and she was, how to say, teaching us not some theoretical things, but sheshowed a lot of examples. We were trying to do conversations… And my last teacherat the gymnasium was awful and I always had to go to another teacher… after school,and she was wonderful, she was great, she was that person who persuaded me to gointo English. But at school… all my classmates hated English, you know.

M: Who hated English when you were taught in the school?

S1: Me.

M: And what was your teacher like?

S1: Well, my teacher was very good, the first one, and she left quite a goodimpression for us. I perfectly understand why. But still, I don’t like learning Englishand… it’s not just English, it’s other languages. So she couldn’t inspire me. It’s justbecause of me, not of her.

S3: As to me, the teacher is not the most important person… It actually depends onthe person. If you want to study something then you study it. And in my case it waslike that. I actually like English, and I like studying it. My teacher was quite OK,lessons were interesting, but I had also attended an English school and there lessonswere more exiting, because in schools we are learning English in big groups, it’s agroup of 20–24 people. And it’s too difficult to study English in such a big group.

M: Were all of you learning English in large groups when you were at school?

?: No.

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S7: 14, maybe 12 students. Usually my class was divided in two parts, one group (had)English at one time and another group at another time.

S12: In my case, as I went to gymnasium after another school, my English level wasvery high. But in gymnasium my English level was very low, and all my classmateswere like beginners, you know… And my English teacher’s level was like mine, youknow. And there was nothing for me to do. I was just sitting almost for two months,and (when) I went home, I cried, because there was nothing for me to do. Theteacher was angry with me, because I was angry with her also. I was saying my truth,and I wanted more exercises. I was talking in some difficult way and so on, and myclassmates didn’t understand me. So, she was angry; and I hated her and she hatedme.

S11: For example, I had a teacher who I can say knew English as us. Actually,sometimes we taught her. I can remember there was a text and nobody couldunderstand it and when we asked the teacher what a word meant, she said, ‘Well itmeans it means… Look in the dictionary’. And that teacher I mentioned said, ‘OK.I’ll look in the dictionary and I’ll tell you tomorrow’.

S8: And my teacher was a workaholic. She had no personal life, so that was very easyfor her to teach us, but she was too hard, and there was too much pressure on us,and we were doing a lot of grammar at school, but no talking lessons. I mean, shewas thinking that we were talking fine, that we were excellent at talking, but we werenot. But we couldn’t tell her, ‘Look at us, we aren’t speaking’.

M: Were you sitting at desks as opposed to having discussions? Did you ever work ingroups when you were at school?

S4: Well, for the last two years I had really a great teacher. We did everything in ourclasses, and we discussed a lot, and we did grammar, but when it comes to youngyears, I had such a teacher who was very interested in various performances andplays, and we were making various plays like Prince and the Pauper and somethinglike that. And I noticed that I began to forget my vocabulary. So that form wasn’tvery good.

S12: With my teacher we were not talking at all, you know. For example, when Icame to gymnasium we were going past simple or something like this. So, forexample, there was one example of a sentence and all the class was telling the samesentence, you know. Just changing maybe a name, maybe instead of ‘the theatre’ used‘to the station’ or something like this. Well, talking, for example, of grammar, we hadlots of exercises, but there was the teacher’s book on the teacher’s desk. She wasgoing out, you could look at the teacher’s book, write all the answers down and noproblem. All the tests were 10, 10… OK, everybody learned English perfectly (well).

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S7: When I entered the gymnasium my English teacher was a great person. But shewasn’t a very good teacher. She knew English very well, but she wasn’t able to controlus, to force us to learn it, so we just passed through… And when I was in the 12th

grade, I went to another English teacher, Olia, to prepare for my examinations.

M: Are you happy with your learning facilities that you have at your universities? Isthere anything that you would like to see different from the way it is now? Do youhave access to things that you really need to help you learn English?

S7: It’s quite different learning in the university and learning in school. Here Englishteachers always give us a lot of work, a lot of tests, a lot of activities. She forces us towork in groups and that is very interesting. It’s quite different. We make presenta-tions, we use computers, we use all the equipment.

S5: We are actually learning at school and the universities two different things.Because at school we learn for the examinations and at the university we are studyingfor ourselves to learn to speak fluently and easily. To communicate, to continue ourstudies somewhere abroad and something like that.

S12: What I like here at the university about our teacher is that she makes us talk.For example, if a person doesn’t want to talk, she tells to talk.

S11: It doesn’t matter if he wants or he doesn’t want. It’s a discussion and two orthree of us are talking and all the others are sitting and just listening, and she asks us‘What is your opinion?’ and if the person just says ‘Yes, I agree’, (she asks) ‘Withwhat?’

M: There’s an opportunity for the individual speaking? And you tell you are workingin groups as well?

S4: Presentations and discussions were exactly the way I was learning English atschool not the university. Of course, we do discuss a lot, but more about variouscompanies than at school, that’s why I am so happy. I really enjoy it.

M: What kind of materials do teachers use for you?

S9: Well, we got news, TV. She types CNN news and then she brings it. So that’sinteresting.

S8: We watch films. News. And discuss.

S7: Our teacher gives a lot of handouts. She orders us to read magazines and thenwrite summaries and then present it to the whole group. She shows us some TV for

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making presentations. And for something else. It’s two different things from schoolEnglish and here. I am studying business management, so whole English here isbusiness English and exact words for the English which I will need to use. And inschool it was only preparation for examinations.

S6: At the university you like using the practical English which you will, might, needin life whatever you are studying. And at school you know you just had to know thebasic stuff, like the theoretical English, like what is present simple…like ‘the trainarrives then and then’, you know. Nothing you could use… They weren’t teachingwhat we could use actually in free life.

S11: For example at school we had one lesson for grammar, one lesson for speaking,one lesson for reading. And now we have discussions, news, terms…

S12: At school we are just going through programme which is made for all schools, soit’s not very interesting.

M: Do your teachers ask you to get the information yourselves?

All: Yes, sure.

S1: As for us, we had to make, for example, a presentation and we had to preparethe material, because she didn’t give us anything. But still it was very useful.

M: What was the topic?

S1: Endangered species.

M: So where did you go for the information?

S1: Well, I have… the Internet and some National Geographical magazines. And forexample, next month we are going to make another presentation on genetics, so I amgoing to rely on the same sources.

M: How many were there in your group?

S1: Ten.

S12: For example, in our university in our faculty we all know about the holiday ofHalloween and so on. Our English teacher asked us what Halloween is. We said, well,pumpkins and so on. She said, but what is it? What is the history of it? Well…wedon’t know. So she… tomorrow we are making a Halloween party. Our not club, buthow to say, our group. And we had to find a lot of information about Halloween and

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when we found we understood that we knew nothing about this celebration ofHalloween. It was a surprise… We are making the pumpkin pie and we are makingeverything.

S7: Our teacher ordered us to read 15 pages of home reading, and we needed tochoose it by ourselves. So I went to our library and copied Business Week issues,several issues. And I made summaries.

S3: But it depends on what we are studying. For example, we study philology and ourEnglish is more linguistic and we read some linguistic materials about English and westudy grammar, … tenses and all this. But more sophisticated English, on a higherlevel.

S12: Especially phonetics, BBC English pronunciation, all those consonants andvowels. Aspirated and so on.

M: So, the materials that you get from your teachers – are they very useful?

All: Yes.

M: What do you find for yourselves? What proportion of information do you thinkyou are finding for yourselves? Is that increasing as your course goes on?

?: Sure, yeah.

M: So you are having more control, more responsibility?

S12: Yes, at schools the teacher comes to you and she tells... The teacher is like agod, you know. You don’t want to… but just you have to do exercises and that’s it. Atthe university you have to look for information by yourself and it’s interesting for youand it’s useful for you. You have to do it for your own, for your better.

S7: We can choose the article we would like to read, which is interesting for us, notthe article we are just given.

M: Do you think you get good education in all skills? Now.

S6: Lecturers are giving us the skills on speaking, probably more work is done writingand talking.

S11: As for us… as we are in a lesson we are listening, we are speaking, we aretalking about a topic, we are writing something. In sequence.

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M: After classes do you speak in English or do you speak in Lithuanian? Whatlanguage do you use?

S12: There was a very funny thing that I noticed – the first lesson this year we allwent to the English lesson and there was a discussion. The first lesson and while theteacher was writing on the blackboard, we started talking in Lithuanian. The teacherstopped writing and she turned to us and she said, ‘What? In English please.’ Wesaid, ‘OK OK’. Then we forgot and we started talking in Lithuanian again and shesaid, ‘Am I hearing Lithuanian again’. We said, ‘No no’. And after that we nevertalked in Lithuanian again.

M: You talked about several projects that you’ve done. Tell me to get feeling for therange of projects, for the range of activities.

S2: I am in the same classroom. I have also done the same project on endangeredspecies and just now we are doing a project on genetically modified fruits andvegetables. A lot of such things. Here at the university we study English mostly that isrelated to our profession. Many special words.

M: Is it possible to do projects as a group when you study English philology?

S3: We are from one group of English at the university and actually we don’t doprojects.

S5: Actually we are from the same philology and she is from a different philology.English group for Lithuanian and classical philology. Now we are just learning to seesomething in a text. For example, a text or a novel. And when we are reading it, weare learning to see what is in it, about the characters and so on.

S3: It’s more linguistic. And we speak a lot. Actually all our lesson is like adiscussion.

S4: Yeah, but when it comes to a text we pay a lot of attention to all the structureand all these parts...

M: You are business English? What was the last project you did?

S6: The last project… we had to do a presentation on, I think, any topic.

S7: I picked bugging the world. About bugs, computer bugs. Phone devices.

S6: I was presenting Coca Cola and aspects of International marketing. I was usingdigital aids: computer and projector. Yeah, I did a powerpoint presentation.

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S8: I am from public administration and I have written the essay… about thepossibility of higher education in the European Union. And our teacher sent us to theEuropean Commission Centre which is not far from this building. Well, we wentthere, we listened to the information, we took books from there and we just wrote.

M: Were they happy to give you those resources? Did they give you the information?

S8: It wasn’t so interesting there, but we got what we needed.

M: Did you have to present the findings of your essay or you handed it in?

S8: It had to be written. And the second project was about our university and ourspecialisation about public administration, so I had to invite other students, that wasthe point – I had to say how good our speciality is and just to do informative work.

S9: We study ethics. We are not doing any projects. We are just learning differentthings of ethics, etiquette.

S10: Home reading. We can choose different books about it.

M: What kind of topics are you studying recently?

S10: At this moment about education in Lithuania and Britain. And we do exercisesof grammar. Conditional sentences…

S12: We are not making our projects. We are going deeper into translation.

S11: We are writing compositions, news, summaries, and we do a lot technicaltranslations. The texts making into something else.

M: Do you learn in groups or individually?

S11: Sometimes in groups, sometimes individually. We are making it individually andthen we discuss it and we are searching for a better idea.

S12: Actually, we speak a lot, discuss and we find one version…

M: Now, it sounds from what I’m hearing that by large you are quite pleased with theteachers that you already have. If the teachers could be changed in any way, could beimproved, what would you like to see?

S12: Not so boring. At school, for example.

M: Are your teachers models of teaching?

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S1: Our teacher is very good, but one thing that irritates me is her English accent.She is trying to speak in the English language and somehow it’s really irritating me.As I am used to American English.

S6: Probably the best teacher is a foreign teacher, I think, because when you useEnglish in your class and there is something you don’t understand you can ask inLithuanian. But if the teacher is foreign, you have to try to explain that in English inother words. So, it makes you actually speak English.

S12: It depends on the teacher. Our teacher never tells us (things) in Lithuanian. Wehave to find a better, the best version among us.

S6: I mean, it’s like motivation to speak English. I wanted to say that.

M: Do you have much access to native English teachers?

S6: I do. Well, I was learning one year in the United States last year, so I got manyfriends and I am still talking to them quite a lot.

S12: I often go abroad, not for work just for travelling. When I was young, everysummer. When I was travelling alone and I coming back to Lithuania, it was alwaysstrange for me to start talking Lithuanian, because you get very used to speakingEnglish. And it is so interesting, for example, when you are talking to a foreigner whoknows English not very well and you have to explain him what you need. It’s veryinteresting when he doesn’t understand you and you are trying in every way to showwhat you need, to tell him what you need. It’s very useful.

S7: It’s very nice to find a person who speaks English very fluently without accent. It’smostly like English, real Englishman. My father has a friend in England and he comesto Lithuania sometimes. It’s very interesting to speak with him, just he has perfectEnglish and he uses English so interestingly. Speaks very nicely.

S12: And then you see that your English is very poor when you are talking with aforeigner who knows English very well…

M: One final question. Imagine it’s Christmas Eve and you have a chance to changeEnglish teaching, what change would you make? What would your Christmas presentbe?

S12: If it’s for my English teacher, for my English class, it may be technicalequipment in the class. Like television, like computers for all students, maybe if youwant to watch a film in your class, you don’t (have to) go out. We have to go to otherfaculties to search for free space and watch there. I think more equipment would bemore interesting, more important.

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S11: I would like to hear more interesting topics for the lessons. Various kinds…various things from science, from politics, from everywhere.

S10: I think about computers. It would be good if there were more computers foreach person.

S9: Really, I also think more computers. Maybe to see more films.

S8: I am happy about the equipment at our university. The only thing I wish for isour teacher is unstressful, but she is very absentminded, she is very easy to talk to,she is like our friend, but I never understand what she wants from us. When I comeback next lesson, I ask her for our whole group, ‘Teacher, sorry, but what is your…about this or that?’ That’s the biggest problem for me. She has to say what she wantsexactly. Not just ‘oh, like this like that, do it’.

S7: I am absolutely satisfied with the equipment here. I’d like to have more contactwith foreigners speaking good fluent English.

S8: Probably my present would be a chance for everyone to live in Englishenvironment and… that would be the best learning.

S5: Probably mine would be the technical equipment and communicating withforeigners, with Englishmen.

S4: As to our classes I think it would be useful to write more and listen as well,because we discuss a lot, but no listening and no writing.

S3: We can listen to each other. I am satisfied with my teacher and… it would begreat to have a chance to go somewhere to an English speaking country. I had beento England, to London, and I had been studying there two weeks in a college. And itwas very good for my English. I expanded my vocabulary and speaking skills.

S2: I actually would like to go back in time to the fifth form and have really aqualified good English teacher, because I didn’t have. I sometimes miss basic skills inlearning.

S1: Well, I am quite satisfied now, but we are studying molecular biology and this isspecific field even nowadays, so we don’t have special literature and I would like toget… useful latest. Especially the vocabulary.

M: Is there anything you really want to say? That you think is really important?

S7: I think learning English at school or university won’t give the result if you don’tlearn in England for a moth or two months. It improves skills a lot. A whole of a lot.

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I have been to England for one month when I was 14 or something and I was tooyoung for that and now I would like to go to England to study there for a month.That would be a great thing.

M: Did any of you have access to exchange programmes?

S6: Yes. It’s a possibility from the third year at the university.

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A P P E N D I X 1 2 i

Focus group interview with Ðiauliai, Klaipëda and Paneveþysuniversity students

14 January 2004

S7: I have been studying English for nine years. I started to study English in the fifthclass and I think that knowing at least one foreign language is useful, so that’s why Ilike this language. I’ve chosen to study this language at university, because I thinkthat it will help me in future, maybe in travelling or job.

S6: I have been studying English from my second class. Besides, when I was in theeleventh form I studied in International Baccalaureate class in Vilnius Lyceum and Istudied all subjects in English. That’s why now I know this language a bit more thanmy friends do. But what about English, is it useful for me? Yes, it is because, well,perhaps, I like to learn languages in general, because I know not only Englishlanguage. Besides, for example, when I do not have money enough for something Ican teach some people the English language and then I get some money. Besides,when I meet people from different countries I can speak with them of coursecommunicate, that’s why I like English.

S5: I’ve been studying English from fifth class, until now, and I think English is veryuseful because this language is everywhere.

S4: I started the English lessons from fifth class. I’ve chosen this language because Iknow that this language is the most popular in the world and I like this languagebecause I’m often watching movies and listening to songs in English. I learned Englishwatching Cartoon Network when I was little and movies.

S3: I began studying English from the fifth form as well and now as I’m in the secondcourse I think that English is very useful for me because it helps you not only tocommunicate with people, it helps to get acquainted with many interesting people, tolearn more about other countries. It seems that it is the most popular language.

S2: I’ve been studying English for nine years starting from the fifth form. Language isvery useful for me and I think it’s very important to learn languages, especiallyEnglish, because it is an international language.

S1: As my friend has mentioned, I also study English from the fifth class and I alsothink that it is very useful language, just it helps us to communicate with others, to

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understand other people from different countries and it gives us an opportunity totravel, to talk with others.

M: What kinds of teachers have you had so far? Are you happy with your teachersboth at school and university? What methods do they use? How do they teach you?

S7: When I was learning at school my English teacher was very boring, and lessonswere boring and not interesting and schoolchildren skip her lessons because it wasboring and we used not to go there because everything was the same everyday, thesame paragraphs, the same things and no new things, that’s why I had to go to theEnglish courses because I wanted to study this language. And now my Englishlecturer is very good and interesting person and she makes all these lectures veryinteresting and I want to go and study there even if it’s sometimes harder or easier.

S6: I was always satisfied with my English teachers because some of them were verystrict and we were not allowed to skip the lessons and the last teacher was fromArgentina, so her lessons were really very interesting, not the same as from the onesfrom Lithuania.

S2: We also had at school a teacher from America. And the lectures were really very,how to say, interesting and we wanted to not to skip the classes and we waited foreach lesson. During eight years at school I had five teachers. The first was very goodbecause she laid foundations, perhaps I should thank her for my knowledge, but twoteachers, to my opinion, were under qualified, not qualified enough. And especiallyone whose manner of teaching was quite, I would say, stupid. He organized suchgames as crosswords and even he wrote marks for it. It was to my mind, easy to getmarks that do not reflect knowledge.

S3: I’m very satisfied with my English teacher which I had when I studied English atmy school because she gave me the basic knowledge. I suppose, usually it depends notonly on the teacher: if you want to learn language the teacher gives usefulinformation, the basics but if the students or pupils do not want to learn then I thinkno one can teach them.

S7: But it’s hard to learn when a group of students wants to study and others do notwant because, I’m talking about my school studies, in our class were pupils who didn’twant to learn, they were happy because the teacher let them only sit and lookthrough the window and others who wanted, I also wanted, my friends, we just had toask the teacher to give us maybe some reading, maybe some plays, not role-plays,because we knew that we had to prepare for the exams and knew how we have tostudy for software courses and it not only depends on those who want to study.

S4: My teacher at secondary school was very strict and we practiced mostly grammar.It’s good too as it is very important as speaking. But in secondary school I was very

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lazy and didn’t learn very good for this grammar, so I think that in the university Ican learn to speak like if I can write in grammar.

S6: During my last two years at secondary school I can say that I really forgot theEnglish language because our English teacher, her lessons were very boring and weonly go through the book and did the boring practice and she always, it was bad thatshe was always talking in English only with the pupils who were clearer talking inEnglish.

M: And you were neglected…

S6: Yes.

M: What do you actually study now? Could you explain?

S7: Economics.

S5: Special pedagogics and logopedics.

S6: Public administration.

S4: Business administration.

S2: English Philology.

M: How do you feel about course books that you study from? Are they easilyaccessible? Do you like them? What books do you use?

S7: We have many copies from different kind of books. So we have just to copy.

M: Do you have to make copies or teachers make copies for you?

S7: We have to. And I had to buy books because those which were written by mylecturer (laughs).

M: What about others?

S4: I don’t like these books too, my English lecturer copies for me and from differentkind of books, idioms, grammar practice, reading.

M: Do you like the situation?

S4: Yes.

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S2: Well, we get the books for lexis and for other subjects we have either to makecopies or to buy a lot of copies... (laughs).

M: So could you mention a few titles of the books that you use? I mean, even if thecopies come from the books, can you mention where they come from?

S4: My lecturer gets books from Internet. I know one book at idioms. That’s all.

S7: Headway and those which are written by my lecturer, Censoring by Education ofpersons Environment and other…

S3: I don’t know the real title but it is from Longman publishers for advancedstudents.

S5: When it is necessary to tell something, we should copy some articles from variousmagazines for net group administration, for example of business, e.g. ‘Business week’,‘Economist’, because my studies are connected with.

M: What about other things? I mean, do your teachers use tape recorders, videos,other things?

S6: We used to watch many films in English which our teacher brought from theBritish Council.

S1: We are doing listening, that’s we are listening and then answering questions.During the lectures we use Internet during the lectures.

M: You use Internet. Do you have access to the Internet, computer rooms?

S1, S2, S3,…: Yes, we have a class, a .special class.

M: Do you have computers at home?

S1, S2, S3, S4,…: Yes, we have.

M: Do you like using Internet?

S1, S2,…: Yes.

M: So, in general, are you satisfied with the situation in English language teachingthat you are in at present? Your teachers, your materials, your course, what do youthink?

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S2: I’m unsatisfied because certain sections are separated, for example, phonetics,lexis, syntax and morphology and we go deeper in that subject.

S6: I see that my lecturer really works hard to prepare for his lessons because heneeds many copies and so on but sometimes I feel that he doesn’t understand mebecause when I speak about some article or something, he says: ‘OK, consider on, yougot 10 or 9.’ (laughs) But he doesn’t understand or he doesn’t catch my mistakesbecause when I speak, well, I remember that I made this or that mistake but hedoesn’t catch it.

M: And you want feedback?

S6: Well, yes. But, perhaps, he’s too young because he’s still a student (laughs).

M: Perhaps you speak too quickly.

S6: Yes.

M: OK, so, do you feel that in general in your universities English is considered to beas a very important subject to study?

S7: Not really. Of course, in the first course yes, it is important because for me thisyear it was may be the hardest subject.

S2: As I study English, it is very important language to us.

S4: I think English is very important for me too, because I want to go to study inother countries for I think third course or fourth.

M: Yes. So I understand that all of you feel that you need English professionally, butwhat about the university level? Do you feel that the university policy really is the onethat states that English is a subject in the curriculum? Does English really matter?

S4: In university all lectures are very important.

M: And was it the same in secondary schools? I hope you remember. Was English avery important subject then?

S3: Even our Lithuanian teacher said that for us English was more important thanLithuanian and she was not satisfied. Every teacher said that his or her subject wasthe most important.

M: The same experience here?

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S3: Yeah.

M: OK. You mentioned that you’re not really happy when the teacher doesn’t indicatethe mistakes?

S6: Yes, he only catch when I pronounce some words incorrectly.

M: Can you tell a little bit about assessment and how teachers write marks? If youcan, try to remember your secondary school how you were assessed and how you areassessed. What system do the teachers use? What criteria do they use?

S5: Well, I think, it’s very objective because my last mark was nine from English, herein University and it was only because I was making a presentation and I had a slideand I wrote not ‘t’ but ‘d’ instead. And because of this mistake I got a nine. So, Ithink, I don’t know it’s very objective. It depends upon the lecturer.

M: Do you know how you are assessed? Do you know when you will get 10 and whenyou will get 5?

S1: Sometimes we don’t know how much we can get from that or this subject.

S6: If I’m writing a test I don’t know what will be in the test so then I don’t know.But if I’m preparing at home so I can imagine. Yes, imagine how much I will get.

M: But do your teachers explain you how they write marks?

S1, S5, …: No. Sometimes.

M: What about school? Was it the same?

S1: At school it was very different because you knew how much you can get, youknew the teacher, you knew the methods, what she wants from me. And now whenyou have four-five teachers of English and every one use different methods are usednow.

S5: At school there is no problem because you feel like closer to the teacher andsometimes the teacher knows that you are a good girl (laughs) so she always writesyou a high mark. And if sometimes you have a seven, she says: ‘Oh, perhaps you sleptnot good’ and she doesn’t write any mark. And at university it is different.

M: And what are you given the marks for? Do you have to make presentations, writetests, to read a book and retell? What do they write a mark for?

S2, S3: Translations, talking, letters and paragraphs writing, dialogues, presentations.

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S1: We have to read a book and then to write a report on it and then represent it.We also make topics and also write essays.

S7: Sometimes we may discuss some topics. But I think there should be morediscussion on search or that topic.

M: Do you do project work? Or is it mostly a teacher teaching you in the classroom?Do you do group work?

S5: Yes. We do the work in groups. e.g. we discuss about what situation in Lithuanianor in English and then we should find, we did the project about work and our topicwas lang? work, and we need to prepare to have a lesson, to quit the topic and to doit.

M: So, individual, group work?

S7: Individual.

S1,S2, S3: Both.

M: Which one do you prefer?

S4: In groups, I think.

S3: In groups it is more interesting.

M: Do you like doing projects, those who have experience?

S4: I have never done a project. Most of time we are talking, reading, translating,sometimes we make presentations and I like presentations mostly.

M: Do your friends, other students give you feedback after that, when they listen toyou in the class? Are they commenting on?

S4: No, they are not interested in that.

M: Only the teacher?

S4: Yes.

S6: Once we did it and our lecturer said that we have to get only negative impact(laughs). So it was a little bit, I don’t know, because one person standing in front ofall the class and everyone has to say what was wrong. So we didn’t like this.

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M: Do you do projects?

S3: I can’t say that we do projects. Teachers do group work, we present our works onthe course books, we just discuss some questions, topics from our course books.

S7: I think we should do more debates.

S6: I remember one interesting lecture. Then we hadn’t what to do exactly in thelecture and then our lecturer asks us to choose one word and when this wordbecomes a topic and we should talk about it for three minutes. And if we talk forthree minutes then, for example, we pass the exam. It was very interesting becausethen you had to think, quickly what to tell about one word and it was very interesting.

M: So what language skills do you feel you would like to use more? For example,where are you good at: speaking, writing, listening, reading? Which is easier for youand which skill is problematic and you would like to improve?

S5: I think we all should improve grammar.

S5: Well, I’m good in essay writing. Well, I think so. And what should go, maybereading because there are really some difficult books, for example, we were readingfrom ‘Proficiency’ and it was hard to answer the questions after the text. So may bethese.

S6: And I would like to improve my speaking. I would like to talk more.

S2: I don’t distinguish any skill. I’d like to improve all of them together.

M: Next question. What do you do to improve? Do you do anything else except formaking your teachers work hard? Do you do anything on your own to help yourselvesto improve your English?

S7: Just one more thing. When I listen to music and if I hear an unknown word Ifind it in the dictionary or somewhere. Also even if I know all the words I try totranslate everything in mind from Lithuanian to English, from English to Lithuanian.

S1: When I find a new word and if I like it I just write it on the sheet of paper and Istick on the floor and learn it. And it‘s easier to remember then.

S4: I’m watching films in English and sometimes I at first watch the film in Russianor Lithuanian and then the same film in English.

M: Where do you get English versions?

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S4: From the Internet.

S7: I have a friend who just three months ago went to London and he wouldn’t knowthis language very fluently so he asked me to talk with him everyday in English,doesn’t matter if he understands it or not. So it was also interesting and even if hedid not understand such a word like ‘buy’ and I had to explain him what is ‘to buy’,to go to the shop, to pay money and it was interesting. I remember that.

S5: I also have friends from some part of the world. We are writing letters to eachother. They live in England…

M: Regular letters or e-mails?

S5: E-mails and regular letters.

M: Do you use chat rooms?

S5: Yes.

S3: And another one way how I learned English language is perhaps to participate inan international conference where there are no Lithuanians and you have to speak inEnglish.

M: Have you ever tried this?

S3: Yes. As I remember now, three years ago, when I was at secondary school I wentto Lithuanian Cristian College which is in Klaipëda and there were summer courseand we had to talk, to communicate with native English speaking teachers so it was agood opportunity to develop my speaking skills.

M: As you study English as a subject, do you speak to each other in English whenyou are not in the classroom?

S1, S2, S3: No, sometimes, some words in English, some words in German, somewords in Spanish and the rest in Lithuanian. We dream at night in English.

M: If you could change anything at your universities now what would you change interms of English language teaching? Would you like to change anything in yourteacher, in the materials or in the curriculum?

S4: I wish our teacher was from other country, for example, from England orAmerica.

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S3: Well I think if there was any teacher from English speaking community, I don’tknow, perhaps from Australia or somewhere else it would be more interesting anduseful.

S2: I would like to have more than six classes in order to advance my level.

S1: I would like to have more debates (laughs).

M: Do you have your debate club?

S1: No, just at school we had a debate club.

S7: I don’t know maybe that at school those who knew English better were in oneclass and those who knew less or were not so fluent were in other classes and now inmy group all the students are very different. Some even are afraid of speaking andothers know and our teacher, for example, for me she says: ‘OK, I have a question,you be silent, I know that you know and for others’ and he asks, and I knoweverything what to say and he doesn’t let me to talk, and that girl who’s asked justlooks at him and that’s all.

M: So you mean you would like to see groups for different levels?

S7: Yeah.

S6: And the level in our faculty can’t develop high due to the fact that people whoare in my faculty are better in mathematics, another subjects but not in Englishbecause our faculty is the Faculty of Social Sciences, that’s why and their knowledgeof English is very poor.

M: And if you go back to your secondary schools now, if you had a chance to meetyour secondary school teacher, and you had to tell her one thing, what would you tellher?

S2: Thank you.

S3: Interesting but be more strict.

S7: If your lessons were a little bit more interesting.

S5: Why don’t you communicate with these pupils who think they talk in poorEnglish.

S2: I’d like to say that English is not only grammar.

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S4: The last two years in secondary school we were learning different practices:reading, listening, grammar... I think that our teacher should be more strict.

M: Can I ask you to tell the towns where you come from?

– Klaipëda,– Palanga,– Maþeikiai,– Palanga,– ... region,– Ðiauliai x3,– Panevëþys.

M: For the very end of this discussion I would like to ask you to tell whatever youwould like to tell. What you didn’t have a chance to say. Anything that you would liketo say or you wanted to say but you were not asked?

S7: It’s said that in my university, in my specialty English is taught only first year andit would be better if I could study, others could study maybe for two, or three, oreven four years. Because when you are in the third course you have more free time,you can maybe exchange, you can be asked to student exchange programs, to goabroad and if I study English only this year, then no practice and I can forgetsomething.

S1: And I’m happy that I had a chance to participate here and to meet you all.

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