Beggars couldn’t be choosers (at Indiana University in 1980)

Abstract

When I taught Hungarian as a foreign language to American students at Indiana University at Bloomington (USA) in 1978–81, only methodologically and culturally badly outdated textbooks were available. Instead of these, I employed the textbooks of Endre Fülei-Szántó, which were successfully used by international students from dozens of countries at the Summer School of the University of Debrecen (Hungary) in the 1970s. The textbooks used in Debrecen had to be “Americanized” in Bloomington, therefore I compiled a workbook and recorded five audio cassettes for students to use at home and in the language lab. As a brief illustration of the materials I produced for the students in Bloomington, this paper offers a few listening comprehension tasks and a sound discrimination task.
In 1980, teachers of Hungarian as a foreign language in the English-speaking world were beggars who couldn’t be
choosers. This situation has not improved much in the past four decades. However, teaching Hungarian as an L2 has
been established as a legitimate academic discipline in Hungary, and teacher education programs for Hungarian as L2 have also proved successful in a number of universities. For such ground-breaking work we owe special gratitude to
Professor Orsolya Nádor.