Education paper by Gárdosi, Rita (withdrawn)
Preparing for Hungarian Junior Language Exam: Experiences with Young Learners in Montreal
Type of Abstract (select):Abstract (max. 250 words):
In November, 2016 five young learners passed successfully the ELTE Origó Junior Level Hungarian Language Exam in Montreal. This test is specially designed for children in primary and lower secondary education between ages 10-16 who have learned the Hungarian language for at least 200 hours and are interested in finding out their knowledge level. The junior level takes part of the range of the Hungarian State exams as starter level (A2). Every child who takes a test gets a certificate – it’s a great way to reward achievement.
My presentation is intended to show how to prepare young learners for such a challenge in Canada and to encourage curriculum development. The preparation had been taking part every Saturday morning for seven weeks in the Hungarian School of Montreal and was designed to make a child’s early language learning experience positive and fun as well as increase their self-confidence and language skills. The light of the foregoing, class materials cover familiar, interesting topics and develop the skills learners need to communicate in Hungarian.
The junior exam assesses how competent the young candidate is not just in understanding or speaking but reading and writing in Hungarian. For all these reasons, after placement test, a specially designed curriculum was also needed to develop in the following areas: spelling, vocabulary (ex. geography, literature), proverbs, cultural knowledge (ex. Hungarian national holidays, famous people, and customs). It was also very important to prepare children how to speak independently, how to describe a picture or how to complete a listening test in Hungarian.
Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Rita Gárdosi graduated in 2007 from ELTE in Budapest, with Masters Degrees in Hungarian Language and Literature and Hungarian as a Foreign Language. While working at University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III as Hungarian lecturer, she earned a doctorate in Linguistics and Language Teaching, graduating in 2012. In 2014/2015 Dr. Gárdosi was in residence in the Department of Modern Languages at Cleveland State University, in the status of a Fulbright Visiting Professor in Hungarian language and culture. Since 2015, she has been living in Canada and working as independent scholar. Recently she published a paper in THL2 focusing on Hungarian language maintenance in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2017, a chapter about Teaching Hungarian as heritage language in North-America will be published in the Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education (Ed. Springer).