Introduction

In the mid-1980s, amid growing sociopolitical and economic reform in Hungary, a country whose policies were already considered more relaxed than those of its East Bloc neighbors, an experimental immersion approach to foreign language (FL) instruction was introduced by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and Education. The languages chosen for the experiment were English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian. This innovation was made possible by the Education Act of 1985, revised in 1990, which granted more freedom to Hungarian schools, school districts, families, and teachers over the curriculum, the election of headmasters, and the possibility of privatization (e.g., founding or reopening religious schools).

In this chapter I will describe the development of English lateimmersion programs in Hungary, based on research conducted at three schools from 1989 to 1993. The schools, located in different regions of the country, will be referred to as Nagyváros (literally, big city), Kisváros (small town), and Vidékiváros (provincial city). The macrocontext of the schools and programs will first be characterized, with a sketch of sociopolitical reforms that made their existence possible. Then, relevant microcontext features pertaining to the schools, curriculum, and participants will be considered. Finally, issues arising from the establishment and ongoing operation of the schools will be addressed. These include charges of academic elitism, of undue financial investment in a relatively small sector of the population, and of the still uncertain ramifications of adopting Western languages, curricula, materials, teaching and assessment methods, as well as other commodities and resources, in a country struggling to find and secure its place in a new political and economic era.