Oldal 87 [87]
STUDY ONE
4.5.10 Communicating in English while doing sports
Another emerging theme was doing sports and using English as a lingua
franca for communication. Victor goes to football training on a regular basis,
and since he is part of an international team, English is used as a common
ground for communication. He explained it as follows:
I have soccer training three times a week, and English is the commonly accepted and
used language because there are people from all kinds of minorities and foreigners,
so we use [English]. There are more foreigners than Hungarians.
They speak English with coaches or teammates as most of the other team
members and coaches do not speak Hungarian. He explains: “In the evening
when it is dark, we can’t see each other clearly so [we do not recognize who is
Hungarian, therefore] we speak to each other in English because everyone
speaks and understands English”. This kind of intercultural communication
may also result in incidental learning of certain vocabulary items as well as
developing learners’ L2 pragmatic competence (Schmidt 1993, 1995, 2001).
4.5.11 Using English at school in classes other than EFL
Last but not least, students were asked whether it is useful and beneficial for
them at school to consume English language content in their free time. Students
explained that, in many cases, the information they gain through the English
language might be useful at school both in English and other lessons. Further¬
more, Christian explained that during Biology lessons, the teacher often uses
English-language videos to make the lesson more interesting. In his words:
“For example, in Biology classes, we usually watch scientific videos in English,
and they’re easy to understand. I think most of my class has no problem un¬
derstanding them.” Moreover, Victor’s teacher even encourages students to
use the knowledge gained through EE activities. Victor explained: “[F]or ex¬
ample, anything that has to do with what we covered in class, I just write down
a synonym in the test and I get extra points for that.”
4.6 CONCLUSION
Overall, it may be concluded that participants regularly engage in various EE
activities, but in most cases, they do not necessarily do so for language learn¬
ing purposes. Rather, these EE activities are pursued as if they were average
leisure time activities that happen to be English-language activities. Based on
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