This poster introduces the methodological approach and selected findings of the CPV Video Study of English that is being carried out by the Educational Research Centre of the Masaryk University’s Faculty of Education in close cooperation with the Department of English Language and Literature. The Educational Research Centre (Centrum pedagogického výzkumu – hence CPV) have been using video-based methodology to carry out observational analyses of the processes of teaching and learning in various school subjects: Physics (Janík et al. 2008), Geography (Hübelová et al. 2008), Physical Education and English (Najvar et al. 2008). There are two dimensions of aspects that will be in the focus of analyses. We claim that on the one hand, generic aspects of every lesson in all subjects can be observed that concern the organisation of teaching and learning, structure of the lesson and verbal communication. On the other hand, foreign language instruction is in many ways very different to instruction in other subjects (such as Geography or Physics) and therefore a variety of subject specific aspects can be observed in every English lesson. The subject-general aspects addressed in this chapter are: l opportunities to talk: What was the proportion between teacher’s talk and the students’? l classroom organisation: What modes of classroom organisation were employed and in which proportions? l lesson phases: What are the typical phases of English lessons? l didactic tools and media: Which teaching aids were used by the teachers and how much? The subject-specific analysis presented in this chapter is: l the use of mother tongue in the foreign-language classroom: What was the proportion between the mother tongue and the target language? For what purposes was the mother tongue used?

For the purposes of the analyses within the CPV Video Studies, teaching is seen as providing opportunities to learn (see Littlewood 1984; Klein 1986; Spolsky 1989), i.e. as enabling pupils to become engaged with the content or with the learning tasks. In the CPV Video Studies, the concept of opportunities to learn is concretised through more specific concepts like modes of classroom organisation (Seidel et al. 2005), lesson phases and opportunities to talk (Janík, Miková 2006).

The results of analysed data show that English instruction is very teacher-centered in the Czech Republic. The main emphasis is layed on practicing new content and revising. The traditional didactic tools (such as blackboard, textbook or worksheets) are used often, while new media (such as ICT, audio, video recordings) are used rarely. Within the CPV Video Study of English, further analyses will be carried out that will concentrate on opportunities for developing language skills, the use of authentic materials and realia and the role of questions in English classrooms. The nature of digital video data allows for yet further secondary analyses in the future that will concentrate on other important aspects of teaching English.