LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

Learning Together across Borders: Correspondence between
Hungarian and Japanese Learners of English
ÅË<Ɯ'Ù+ - `wGry$ĝĦžƏÙŲŴ(ĚƧ-Agnes Patko >K^RxbZNy
Kyoto University of Foreign Studies ƱÏÅƏÑÙ
Email: a_patko@kufs.ac.jp

T

he Learner Development Special Interest Group’s Forum at the 2016 JALTInternational Conference was a very positive experience for me. As always, it wasorganized in a friendly and welcoming way, so members as well as first-timers could
join easily. The title of the forum, Learner Transformation as Personal Maturation, invited us torecollect our own memories of learner transformation and maturation and called ourattention to our learners as individuals, each of whom have their own needs, goals, andchallenges, as well as ourselves as learners who always find new puzzles that keep us busy
after classes. My presentation focused on a bilingual correspondence project that I set up
with my students, but before coming to that, let me start from a bit far, with my own storyof transformation and personal maturation.
A Story of Transformation and Personal Maturation
The situation of English language education in Hungary is similar to that of Japan:
English is seen as a foreign language, even though there are minorities whose mothertongue may not be Hungarian, 99.58% of the population speak Hungarian (Kozponti
Statisztikai Hivatal, 2011), and there is no obvious daily need for most people to speak aforeign language. However, contrary to Japan, Hungary is surrounded by land and has
seven neighbouring countries (Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, andSlovenia). Whichever direction one may take, one will be out of the country within threehours’ drive, so it is effortless to travel abroad. Although there are many Hungarians in theneighbouring countries, the official language is different in all of them, so it is easy toexperience the need for foreign language competence.
I had been learning English for at least five years before I ever had a chance to use it.
Back in Hungary where I grew up, I was a member of a folk-dance group and we wereinvited to participate in an international folk dance festival in Germany. I was about 12
then. All the participants in the festival were around this age, and we had a few events
where we could meet each other. I was mature enough to know people from othercountries do not speak Hungarian; however, I am not sure now whether English was adeliberate choice for communication or I simply tried to answer in a language that others
were using to talk to me. Whichever the case was, I ended up talking to people in English.
When we did not know how to say things in English, we tried to use gestures and bodylanguage. Trying to communicate was amusing. We also taught songs to each other anddanced together. At the end of the festival, we exchanged addresses and started
corresponding. When I received the first letter from Finland, I was amazed by the beautiful
handwriting. It was different from Hungarian cursive writing. I loved receiving letters, andI always spent a lot of time choosing the paper and envelope, and writing my letters neatly.
Sometimes we sent pictures to each other.
Corresponding was a means to learn and practice English. My pen friends’ English wasmuch better than mine. I clearly remember looking up words so that I could understandSpecial Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

28

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

their letters and express my own thoughts. Reading and writing letters also helped me tokeep up my language learning motivation. I wanted to be as good as they were and to
become able to write about everything that had happened to me. I often introduced myeveryday life and topics that interested me then. I was also very curious about their lives.
Due to my pen friends, I became interested in foreign cultures and languages.
All in all, corresponding with foreign people of the same age had a huge impact on me
as a person, as well as a learner and later as a teacher. It taught me to try hard, concentrateon what I can do, be persistent, and not be afraid of making mistakes.
A Correspondence Project with Students in English and Japanese
Remembering the good times of having pen friends when I was a teenager, I wanted
to provide an opportunity for my students to experience something similar to what I had
done when I was young. So, I contacted my teacher from my university in Hungary andasked him if he would be interested in a correspondence project between our respective
students. He was, and so together we set up a correspondence project for our students.
The participants were nine of my second-year students at Meisei University with preintermediate level English; eight Hungarian students with beginner level Japanese andintermediate or higher level of English; and a British-Belgian adult, a colleague of mine
who agreed to help out as there were not enough participants from Hungary. Participationin the project was voluntary. The correspondence was bilingual: English and Japanese. My
students wrote their letters in English first, then translated them into Japanese. This is how
I could make sure they did not use overly complicated vocabulary items or sentence
structure in their mother tongue. The Hungarian students, whose target language wasJapanese, read the Japanese letters first and checked the English only when they needed
help to understand a writer’s specific meaning. Whenever my students got a reply fromtheir Hungarian pen friends, they first read the English letter and then wrote their replies
in English. In most cases I only gave them the Japanese after they had written their reply
in English. This provided the opportunity for meaningful communication in the foreign
language. They could experience the struggle of understanding someone`s letter andreplying to it. Reading the Japanese at the end ensured they did not rely too much on theirmother tongue, and allowed them to check their understanding and make changes in their
reply letters if they had misunderstood something or used too complicated language in theJapanese version of their letter.
Questions and Puzzles
Before the project, my teacher and I had to think about how to execute it. The firstproblem we faced was the differences in the academic year in Japan and Hungary. In Japan,
the school year starts in April, and the first semester ends at the end of July. The second
semester is between mid-September and the end of January. However, in Hungary theacademic year starts in early September and classes finish before Christmas, with thesecond semester running from February to the end of May. Therefore, the time during
which both countries’ students attend classes, especially in the Spring semester, is short.
Finally, we managed to finish three rounds of correspondence in each semester. However,I have to mention that in the Spring semester, the Hungarian students continued their
participation in the project until July, even though they had finished the school year. The
Autumn semester was easier to coordinate as the overlap is longer between the two school
years.

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

29

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

Time difference and online translation programmes.
Another question we faced was whether to use e-mail, chat programmes, or offline
language exchange. These days a large number of online chat programmes andcommunication software offer the possibility of real-time language exchange; however,with a time difference of 7-8 hours and set timetables, it would have been hard for bothof us to use such technology in class. As a result, real-time chat was discarded. There isalso e-mail, which would expedite communication. However, especially with Japanese
students, the risk of using online translation programmes instead of creating their own
sentences and texts was high, I therefore decided to ask my students to handwrite their
letters, many times in class. Their first reactions to this were not utterly positive, but theyquickly realised that it also provided them with a chance to decorate and personalise their
letters more easily.
Pairing.
A third issue was to do with pairing the students. As we did not know each other`s
students, and I had just started teaching mine, we decided to pair them on the basis of theirinterests, which students introduced in their first letter. My Japanese students wrote thefirst letter, so the pairing was done by my colleague in Hungary. He had known his students
for at least half a year by then, so after reading my students` letters, he knew which
Hungarian student had the same interests or hobbies. Pairing this way helped to ensurethat there were topics which were mutually interesting to the students.
Late response – absences.
Another question was how to deal with absences and late responses. Although students
agreed to keep the deadlines for writing their letters, in reality, this did not work out
perfectly. During the Spring semester, it was the Hungarian students’ participation during
their summer holiday that kept the correspondence alive until the third round. Originally,
we planned to give two weeks for students to write their letters and hand them in to theirteacher. However, when a student was absent and received the letter after a delay, thisoften resulted in a late submission of the reply letter. Delays also happened when someone
missed the class of the submission deadline or lost their letter on their way to university.
Consequently, the two-week response period could not be kept. There were delays on bothsides, which meant that the semester had ended and the examination period had alreadystarted in Hungary when we finished the three rounds of correspondence at the end ofJune.
How to keep the conversation going.
The most serious issue we had to work through was how to keep the correspondence
going without too much intervention or too many adverse effects, such as losing theauthenticity of communication or students losing interest. It is not easy to correspond withsomeone whom one has never met. It is all about sharing and inquiring. Some people liketo talk about themselves and easily ask questions, but others need time to develop the bondand talk, or here write, about themselves with ease. Some of the pairs turned out not tohave much in common, which hindered communication. In addition, some of theparticipants were not good responders, that is, they did not react to or were not interested
in what their partner wrote about, so some students did not write about or continue a topic
proposed by their partner. Asking questions seemed to be difficult for many of my students
also. They simply wrote about something and expected their partner to ask for more

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

30

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017details, but they did not try to facilitate the communication by asking questions themselves.
The length of the letters varied, probably affected by the topic and the amount of free timethey had. Naturally enough, when students had tests, they tended not to spend much time
writing their letters.
As a result, by the time the summer holiday started here, most pairs had reached a point
where they did not know what else to write about. To solve this problem, in the second
semester I decided to impose topics for the letter writing. This was easy to do for mystudents, as I chose from the textbook that we were using. One of the most interesting
topics was superstitions. First, students collected information and ideas about Japanesesuperstitions using the Internet. They then shared and discussed what they had found. A
few students even tried to test some of the beliefs in their free time. They chose thesuperstitions they liked the most and introduced them in their letters, asking what theirpartner thought of them and what superstitions they believed in. When the replies camefrom Hungary, my students had a good time reading about Hungarian superstitions (forexample, if one accidentally bumps their elbow on something hard, it means they will get
an unexpected visitor soon) and checking if they worked. (Try to imagine how students
attempt to bump their elbows on the desk by accident.) This way, they had the opportunity
to learn about the topic in class, discuss it with their classmates, learn new words andexpressions, and only then write to their Hungarian penfriend. This helped to keep thecommunication going and introduce new perspectives regarding the issues.
The question may arise here, “Where is learner autonomy if the topic is set by theteacher?” Obviously, I did not restrict the whole letter to be about the topic I set eachtime. Students were still free to add other things and continue ongoing conversations aboutother topics, I simply asked them to add another topic too. As a result, students not only
managed to write more, but they also became able to use more complicated vocabulary
items and grammatical structures.
Student Feedback on the Project
My students wrote their last letter before the winter holiday. In class, we talked about
Christmas traditions around the world and what they were planning to do for Christmas.
As it was the last letter, I did not tell them what to write about; however, most of themwrote about their plans for Christmas and included their reflections about corresponding.
Here are a few quotes from their letters:“(…) Thank you for exchange letters with me. I was glad to talk with you J, I want totalk to you more (…)”“(…) This is a last letter. So sending letter is very good experience for me. Thank you
J(…)”“(…) This is the last letter I send. I`ll miss you so much …!! I enjoed and learned a lotof things to write letters for you. Your Japanese is very good! So, you will be good speaker
more than now! (…) I hope you spend lovely life! Thank you so much!!! (…)”“(…) This is my last latter… I was glad to talk with you J© I’m interested in learn
about other country’s culture, so I learned about Hungary. I want to keep talking with you.
(…) I hope you spent great holidays. (…)”
Interestingly some of the extracts from the students’ letters resemble oral conversation.
They use phrases that make us feel as if they had been actually talking to each other. I see
this as a positive result, as students had started to bond directly with their penfriends.

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

31

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

During the project, they got to know each other and learnt about each other’s cultures. My
students sometimes drew pictures to illustrate their letters. These all helped them gradually
feel closer to one another. In addition, the fact that they included their personal reflections
without being told to do so seems to indicate that they enjoyed the project.
Learner Transformation as Personal Maturation
The very first letter in the Spring semester and the last letter in the Autumn semester
were written in class. It was a task for all students in the classroom. Project participants
addressed their letters to their partners, while the rest of the class wrote to each other, toa friend, or Santa Claus. The speed of production was measured on both occasions, and acomparison showed that those who participated in the project increased their speed ofproduction more and could make decisions about the content more quickly than those
who did not participate. The structure of students’ letters also improved: They had
introductions, body texts with at least two paragraphs, and closing paragraphs.
Comparing the letters in the Spring and Autumn semesters, there was some increase inword count, namely from an average of 130 words, to an average of 140. Normally,
students wrote their letters at home so they had as much time as they needed. The styleremained friendly all through the year. The letters in the second semester also displayed
the use of more complex grammar and an increased number of language functions, which,on the other hand, resulted in more mistakes. While there were very few mistakes in the
Spring semester, most of which were spelling mistakes, in the second semester most ofthem became grammar related.
The post-project survey revealed that students enjoyed the project and felt their English
had improved. Compared to the results of the pre-project questionnaire, they reported ahigher willingness to strive to use the language learnt in class, rely less on automatictranslation software, and look up words in the dictionary more often. Their letters showed
the use of more complex language structures and vocabulary items in the second semester
compared with those of students who did not participate.
The project also provided the opportunity for my students to act as native speakers, andas a result they discovered a new self. As native speakers of Japanese they wanted to bemodels, and they tried to use correct and easy-to-understand language. Even though the
Hungarian students made mistakes, my Japanese students did not mind them, as they
concentrated on the meaning. In addition, they appreciated their partners’ efforts to learn
and communicate in Japanese. Consequently, my students gained confidence, which I
consider the greatest positive effect of the project. They now understood that one does
not need to speak—or write—perfectly to be understood and they were much less anxious
about their mistakes even in oral communication. Their attitude to their own L2 learnerself changed and became more positive.
At the Learner Development SIG Forum, I managed to talk to people from various
universities about this project. They all seemed interested. A few teachers who came fromoverseas institutions reported they had implemented similar projects in their beginner-level
English course curriculum and had observed similar results. Although the correspondence
took place between the students, we all found that teacher assistance, such as setting topics,
fostered student communication.
I believe that projects like this can enrich the curriculum. Students get the opportunity
to use their target language in authentic communication, learn about other cultures,
discover their own culture from new perspectives, and make friends with someone
thousands of miles away. Students’ attitudes to language learning may change as they see

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

32

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

the usefulness of the foreign language, and their motivation may also increase. Collecting
and distributing the letters, as well as encouraging students to keep the deadlines creates
extra work for the teachers; however, it is very much worth it. I would love to continue
the project at my present workplace as well and extend the project to oral language
exchange also.

Reference
Kozponti Statisztikai Hivatal [Central Statistics Office] (2011). Nepszamlalas 2011.
Demografiai adatok [Population census 2011. Demographic data]. Retrieved fromhttp://www.ksh.hu/nepszamlalas/tablak_demografia

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

33

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

Reader Response to “Learning Together across Borders:Correspondence between Hungarian and Japanese Learnersof English”
Farrah Hasnain
Higashi Senior High SchoolThe voluntary pen-pal program that Agnes Patko initiated allowed her
students to communicate with English speakers abroad and motivatedthem to use English to maintain their relationship with their partners. In her
reflection on the letter exchange, Agnes empathizes with her students’potential limitations by drawing on her own experiences with exchanging
letters after her trip to Germany. Since she had had a parallel English as a
Lingua Franca (ELF) experience, she was able to avoid many potential mishaps
and ensure that her students would receive many benefits from this letter
exchange.
The students’ previous education may be strongly related to why they findwriting in English difficult. As an ALT in a public high school, I notice that English
writing assignments are generally not assigned as often or are as long as they
are in other countries. The Ministry of Education’s policy for secondary English
education does not provide specific guidelines for writing assignments, so theamount of prompts would vary depending on the school. I imagine that Agnes’
students probably had a wide range of writing experiences. Public high school
English instructors usually assign 2-3 writing prompts on average per semester.
Each assignment would be only one paragraph long for low-level schools, twoparagraphs long for intermediate schools, and 2-3 paragraphs long at thehigher-level schools.
Although my students had the opportunity to write in English under mysupervision, I did not know at first how to motivate them to write on topics
beyond self-introductions. I decided to assign topics for their writing prompts.
The topics would range from rhetorical questions (e.g., “If you had a super
power, what would it be?”) to responses to short foreign videos with English
subtitles (e.g., a response to a Buzzfeed video featuring non-Japanese people
trying Japanese food for the first time.) The prompts would flow as if they wereconversations, and the theme would change every 2-3 weeks. Like Agnes, I
also had them peer-review each other’s prompts and write comments in
English. By the end of the year, the students were able to express their thoughts
more clearly and confidently. Based on these assignments, I learned that
continuity is one of the main aspects to learner development.
By providing different topics for the students, instructors initiate theconversation for the students, but also allow room for progression. There was asense of continuity in Agnes’ pen-pal project and students could use English to
expand their own insights on the assigned topics. This is mainly because they
were exposed to different views and were able to familiarize themselves withthe person reading their letters. My students’ experiences were similar in thatthey were anticipating a response from someone else, and used that as a main
motivator to develop their skills in the target language.

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

34

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

There are many features of this project that can be easily adapted tosupport the development of students’ reading and writing abilities in othereducational contexts. Introducing topics/themes and continuing themthroughout the semester can help students retain and reflect on information.
Instructors can also be more hands-on in the beginning to help students branch
off into more complex themes and concepts. ELF could be utilized between
teachers and students so that the students would come to use English as a toolfor communication more actively. Since Japan is relatively close to othercountries in Asia, I wonder if it would be possible to implement a similar pen-pal
project using ELF with an Asian partner school or university. I am also curious
about how these objectives could be adapted for larger classes as well.
Interactive assignments such as Agnes’s support the students’ development by
providing the key element to communication: a response. Knowing thatsomeone is genuinely listening to and reading a learner’s work can motivatethem to express themselves as naturally as possible.

Reader Response to “Learning Together across Borders:Correspondence between Hungarian and Japanese Learnersof English”
Adrian Wagner
Momoyama Gakuin UniversityT

he first thing that struck me in this short reflective article was the author’s
memory of her own language learning history, “I had been learning English
for at least five years before I ever had a chance to use it.” Connecting ourown learning experiences to those of our learners is a pertinent starting point
for considering learner autonomy and language education in general from theperspective of both learners and educators. The differences and connections
between language learning and language use are certainly matters that weall should consider.
As educators endeavouring to support the development of our learners,
perhaps we feel that we are creating opportunities for students to use thetarget language in our classroom. We design communicative activities, giveassignments, and facilitate discussions. Of course though, from the perspectiveof learners, this can be seen, and often is seen, as merely study or practice.
Perhaps it is never real language use when it is only in the “safe space” of aclassroom. It is using the language for the purpose of learning. Perhaps, only
when language use has a purpose beyond the goal of language learning,outside of the confines of a classroom does it really become use in the eyes ofsome learners. Students are often told about globalisation and theinternational community without being given opportunities to participate in it.
The author of this short reflective article had a wonderful opportunity at theage of 12 to communicate with people from different cultures in a sharedsecond language. It is clear that this shaped her perspective of language
learning and instilled the value and opportunities that come with being able touse another language. Now as a teacher, in facilitating this exchange program,Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development

35

LEARNING LEARNING ÙŲ(ÙŲVolume 24 Issue 2 Summer 2017

the author creates a similar opportunity to the one that she had. Furthermore
she has her students physically send their language outside of the classroom,
forcing a transition from language learning to language use.
For me, an outstanding and completely unexpected aspect of this project
was the use of both Japanese and English. Of course this added benefit for the
students of Japanese in Hungary, while also ensuring the complexity oflanguage used in either language was controlled so as not to be daunting or
demotivating to participants in either country. From the perspective of theJapanese students, communicating with foreigners in Japanese would alsobroaden perspectives on the journey of second language acquisition. They
could understand that even if an individual’s skills in a second language were
not advanced, if there is a willingness and effort to communicate, then valid
exchange of ideas and information is possible.
I also appreciated the way the author dealt with two questions that I often
struggle with while setting up autonomous learning programs for my students.
Whenever assigning homework, research projects, or anything requiringsubmission of writing, I am in constant battle with the temptation translation
software poses to students. The “old school” back-to-basics approach to letter
writing by hand employed in this project was a neat side-step.
This project also successfully negotiated another tricky aspect of trying tofoster autonomy; as facilitators, how much should we scaffold or steer the
students in their choice of learning materials or output content? While it seems
the author was somewhat reluctant about imposing topics to be written about
the selection from the class textbook of the theme, superstitions, was a great
choice as it could stimulate broader cultural as well as individual responses andwas an effective way to both keep the conversation going, and shift thelanguage use of the students away from the textbook and out of the classroom.
Overall, I was inspired by this short reflective article. It has encouraged me
to think from the perspective of language learners and consider the differences
between language learning and language use. Furthermore, I believe it shifted
the perspective of the participants as it allowed Agnes’s students to engage
meaningfully with peers in a different country in both their native language ofJapanese, and in the shared second language of English.

Special Issue: Reflective Writing on Learner Development36