In recent years the demand for teaching English at an early age has greatly increased in Hungary. In spite of debates about the benefits of introducing foreign languages into the lower primary (children aged 6-10) curriculum, many primary schools have decided to meet the demands from society and they offer foreign language classes in their first or second grades of primary schools. The new venture of teaching English to young learners challenged all parties involved in this field, such as teachers, schools or teacher training institutions and encouraged innovative initiatives to take place.

INTRODUCTION

The course called LARK (Language and Art for Kids) was set up in Áldás Primary School in 1995. The school which is a mainstream, government-run primary school is situated in a nice green area of the capital of Hungary. It educates children between 6-14 years. The school has offered classes specialised in English for many years. With the experiment the aim of the school was twofold. It intended to increase the standard of language–teaching in the school on the one hand, and aimed to set up a programme which considers the children’s needs based on practice and current research in the field.

In September 1995 the project involved thirty 6-7 year old children coming from different kindergardens of the capital. Some of them had had some English learning experience before. There were two teachers on the course: the leader of the workshops and the teacher of English. The system of the lessons has been changed during the years based on our experiences with the programme. By now, the following structure has proved to be the most appropriate and is applied: the children are offered three 45 minute language sessions and one double period of art session, a week. Children are divided into two groups for both the language and the art lessons. In the art lessons the mother tongue, while in English lessons the target language is used for communication.

The workshops are held in the Art room of the school, while language lessons are in the English classroom. A small store-room is available to keep materials and children’ s work in.

OVERALL AIMS

When designing the course English Through Arts we had several goals. Our intention was to introduce and pilot a complex art and language teaching programme that provides an optimum environment for intensive learning and personal enrichment. We wanted to create a course during which children can explore materials, techniques and different forms of self - expression/verbal and visual/ in a motivating and challenging way. Our assumption was that visual communication which children master so well will help in acquiring another type of communication: verbal communication in a foreign language. In addition, we wanted to create a learning situation which provides continuity after nursery schools by offering chance to learn without pressure. Since the programme includes music and children' s literature as well, the title English Through Arts probably expresses its approach best.

As a highly influential background factor to our course I must refer to GYIK Art Studio / GYIK Mûhely/ . This studio has been operating in the National Gallery in Budapest for 20 years as an after - school place. The children going there get art experiences well beyond the traditional range of art activities in a fantastically creative atmosphere. One of our aims was to bring its spirit in a state primary school. Its appearance and success in the mainstream sector can have an important message to art education in general in lower primary classes.

CHARACTERISTICS, CONTENT AND EVERYDAY WORK

On the course we do not use a published course book. The programme operates on the basis of a common syllabus elaborated by the two teachers. This syllabus can be characterised as procedural, very flexible and non-assessment driven. By introducing a story in the very first lesson of the school-year we manage to give a clear context to our being together for the whole school year. The story is continually developed by the teachers and the children both in Art and in English lessons. The children participate in story-making in a very active and relaxed way while using their background knowledge and imagination.By establishing coherent links between the lessons instead of having a sequence of separate ones, we become participants of a process in which we have the power to influence the content of our teaching learning. The shared context emphasises meaning and this makes it possible to have a genuine purpose for the children’s language learning and for learning in general. Vocabulary, functions, structures are no longer isolated features to be learnt for their own sake but help to involve children in a natural approach to language in which they can get an overview of it.

We learn how to introduce ourselves in order to get into the King’s ball in the story, or perhaps we use adverbials of place because this can help us to find lost treasure in a forest.

The content of the course is flexible. Before starting the schoolyear we agreed on a loose frame of the story, brainstormed the possibilities, considered what language we want to work on / topics, functions, grammar /, examined time available. We registered what visual tasks can be done at different stages of the story and how long it would take to complete them. Then we matched the story, visual activities and the language. In the course of our work we soon found that some tasks needed more time than we had assumed, some needed less, so we had to be flexible concerning timing.

The children started to personalise the story very soon: invented new characters, added new details... and got emotionally involved. They discovered that they could contribute to the " learning material.

We teachers knew only the frame of the story ourselves so the children had a chance to fill this frame. Let me give you an example: At an early stage of our story the main character, a caterpillar goes to visit his grandparents. On his way he meets his friends, animals in the forest. That particular day we knew that after story-making together their task was to invent and create animals. Techniques included cutting and sticking. We knew also that animals they were going to make would form vocabulary for the English lesson. But the decision of which animals to have in the story depended on them. It happened that we did not have dogs or ducks from Old Mac Donald' s farm / but we had squirrels, boars, hedgehogs or owls instead.

INTEGRATION OF ART AND ENGLISH

Different tasks during the art and English sessions are tightly connected to the story. Throughout the school year the story, art activities and English lessons progress along parallel lines.

An example of this integration follows:

Or …

Realisations of the children' s creativity and work in the visual classes proved to be of great help for oral communication. We could make use of the objects made by the children using different techniques: clay-work, painting, cutting, drawing, plaster-work, mounting, or collage. On the other hand we wanted (and want) to preserve all the potentials of art education as such, emphasising the existence and characteristics of visual and verbal communication instead of treating art as a subordinated field with an illustrating role only, or a field producing visual aids for English lessons. In this sense art and English were equal but independent from each other.

The children were often provided with language above their productive language level; still they were completely in context and able to give adequate responses to the situation. With this approach it was the story and the situations within that generated a natural range of language from both the teacher and the pupils, instead of different activities coming from resource books and matched to certain language points.

For new learners of English, most of the language was in the form of input from the teacher and related to the activities. The children were encouraged to communicate by using the type of language that they felt confident to apply. They could give non - verbal responses or use key words only. Providing a model for children by expanding their utterances (the teachers behaves as though the child' s language is meaningful and reacts to its content; elaborating and expanding on what the child has said) could provide input for the child's hypotheses formation about using English.They were allowed to work at their own pace without pressing them to perform upon demand. Building their confidence and encouraging their ownership of the language is very important for their future learning. While they were manipulating, acting and playing, they did not concentrate on producing the language, so speaking became a by - product of their activity. Being and playing together in a non - threatening environment gave a chance for them to experience English and take risks.

ELEMENTS OF THE COURSE

Picture dictionary

This was a self- made "course and progress – book.” Children stuck and drew vocabulary items in it. This was the only thing they were expected to take home.

Cassette:

It contained rhymes and songs that we covered during the school year.

Storybook:

At the beginning of the school year we started with a completely empty class storybook. It was extended gradually with the development of the story and contained the storyline.After an important event in the story a new page appeared in the storybook. We started "reading" the book only when the children were familiar with that stage of the story and completed different tasks in the visual and the English lessons. Reading the book was the icing on the cake. Every time when a new page was added to the book we read it together from the  beginning. The children were always extremely excited about seeing the new picture-page, this was why they were ready to tell and retell the story many times. As time passed they were more and more able to join in storytelling. The safety of telling the story with all the children together encouraged everybody to join in. The book provided a wonderful opportunity for the teacher to review different language points all the time and expand the children's concentration span. Moreover, through this shared-reading experience teacher could make the technique of reading explicit and could help children notice differences between letters and sounds.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, INDEPENDENT LEARNING, ENTHUSIASM:

During our work the flexible content, relaxed atmosphere, and the variety of materials all encouraged the children to make their own decisions and be able to work individually. Materials were kept on open shelves so the children could access them when they were needed. Everyone's work was different but made an equal contribution to our world. We wanted to suggest the awareness of tolerance and acceptance. In order to carry out tasks successfully they had to cooperate, help each other and feel responsible for each other' s work.

The article so far has described different aspects of the initial phases of the course LARK. First, its overall aims and characteristic features were considered. Having given an account of everyday work and the integration of Art and English, course components were examined. Although there are many aspects of the course left unaddressed, I suggest turning our attention to later stages of development.

After 1995, new groups of children have joined the programme every school year. Our work was documented carefully throughout the years. Video recordings and a massive collection of slides showing children’s artwork helped to present our experiences at conferences in Hungary and abroad. Early on this year, a 30 minute methodology video was compiled and made available for colleagues and schools that took interest in the programme.

In September 1999, the oldest generation of children on the course finished the lower primary section (1-4 grades) of primary school which urged us to take stock and plan the future of the programme ahead.

Our intention was to preserve the basic principles of LARK, build on our achievements, but also to modify some aspects of the course that can make it more appropriate for young teenagers (yrs 10-11) both cognitively and linguistically.

NEW DIMENSIONS IN THE COURSE STRUCTURE

There were two fundamental alterations in the programme involving the introduction of teaching Art in the target language i.e. in English and the integration of History into the programme as a third field besides Art and English

By the end of the lower primary period the development of learners’ language skills enabled them to follow and fully benefit from Art lessons conducted in English. On the other hand,we wanted to expose pupils to a rich language environment in which they could discover and construct the meaning for themselves. Pupils had a double period of Art lesson (90 minute) per week taught by a British qualified art teacher. The class was divided into two groups of 15 children for Art lessons as well as for English lessons which took place three times a week and were taught by a Hungarian EFL teacher.

Children had two History lessons in the weekly schedule taught in Hungarian. General Hungarian curriculum introduces History as a separate subject on the 5^th grade, and children tend to take a genuine interest in this new discipline. This was an important reason for our choosing it as the main content of our cross-curricular programme. During the school year in the focus of attention were the historical eras that children learnt about in History lessons: Pre-historic and ancient times. Within that we covered three projects on ancient Egypt, Greece and the Romans Empire.

OBJECTIVES IN INTEGRATING HISTORY, ART AND ENGLISH

We had several aims with the integration of the subjects. We wanted to provide children with a learning experience which has broad educational values, which involves the whole child involving his cognitive, emotional as well as social capacities in the process. By creating cross-curricular links our intention was to help pupils:

• relate art, craft and design to its social, historical and cultural context,

• recognise that their culture has been created from a series of traditions

• respond to and evaluate art, craft and design including their own and others’ work

• select from and experiment with materials, images and ideas and extend their knowledge and experience of a range of materials, tools and techniques

• develop their language skills by providing them with a rich language environment which offers a variety of language use

• use the language for real purposes through motivating tasks.

Next sections will refer to the role of integrating the subjects in relation to three necessary conditions of successful language learning: exposure to language, the use of language and motivation.

EXPOSURE TO LANGUAGE AND THE INTEGRATION OF HISTORY, ART AND ENGLISH

Since Art was taught by a native speaker of English who was not trained to teach EFL children needed a lot of support to handle the language demands in Art sessions at the beginning of the year. Vocabulary load involving classroom management language as well as content language was high but children’s understanding was supported in many different ways. In Art lessons while doing artwork, visuals clues such as the teacher’s gestures, body language, materials and the learners’ active participation, all contributed to clarifying meaning.

Language use in Art sessions was related to physical movements and happened in a clear context. While processing language, children discovered and constructed meaning for themselves. During this, children could also rely on their background knowledge they brought from History lessons. Familiar topics and concepts encouraged them to make connections and use their resources to complete different tasks. Tasks offered to them were related to historical eras that were discussed in History lessons and task completion needed communication, cooperation and creativity from the learners. The following chart gives an example of some activities carried out in relation to the topic of ‘Pre-history’ at the beginning of the school year.

English lessons prepared children to benefit from art sessions, helped them work on the tasks and dealt with language points, which emerged both in Art and in English lessons.

LANGUAGE USE AND MOTIVATION

Tasks for the lessons were selected and designed carefully. We paid special attention to creating opportunities for learners to communicate what they wanted to say and express what they felt or thought. Outcomes of tasks e.g. quizzes, plays, or boardgames exemplified real purposes for the learners

CONCLUSION

The article above aimed at introducing an innovation that took place in a special context in Hungary. Whenever an alternative teaching situation is described it is with the knowledge that its adaptation to other contexts needs careful consideration of local characteristics and needs. I still hope I managed to raise some issues that are worth thinking about and presented ideas that can be relevant to other teaching situations. One of the beauties of the programme is that teachers can become learners in the process and they can have challenges themselves. Exploring different aspects our everyday work can contribute to our professional development as well as personal enrichment.