The paper introduces a research project which attempts to study the processes of teaching and learning in Czech lower-secondary English classes. The project is a part 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. CPV Video Study employs a video-based methodology which is used to carry out observational analyses of the processes of teaching and learning in various school subjects. This project aims to answer the questions: a) To what degree do the English classes in the Czech Republic support communication in English language?; b) To what degree do the English classes support developing of the communicative competence? In order to answer these questions analysis of the English classes on the basis of represented language skills is intended. In relation to the need for effective communication in foreign languages, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR) (2001) was introduced conceptualising language education and emphasising the communicative competence as the outcome. Not only does the process of acquiring the communicative competence involve the syntactic, pragmatic and semantic components of language, but it is also the language skills traditionally identified as listening, speaking, reading and writing which play an important role in communication. Two main theoretical concepts are applied in this project. As a theoretical base for studying teaching practices in schools the concept of teaching as creating „opportunities to learn“ was introduced (Seidel, Prenzel 2006). Opportunities to learn are the potential of the lesson for learners‘ active participation in their own learning, the potential enabling them to become engaged with the content or with the learning tasks. Applying the concept should lead to deeper understanding of the processes underlying the lesson structure. The second theoretical concept are the four „language skills“. The language skills take part in communication and its effectivness and their applying in the learning process can be observed. Based on the fact that developing each of the skills contributes to developing the overall communicative competence the achieved level of each of these four skills is often used as a criterion for assessing the level of the communicative competence using descriptors for learners‘ performances (e.g. according to CEFR 2001). Based on the two theoretical concepts, the projects aims to find out what opportunities to developing language skills are provided in the Czech lower-secondary English classes.

The project employs a video-based research methodology. The research sample involves 79 recordings of the lessons of English in 25 teachers from 20 randomly selected schools. The recordings were video-taped using standardised 2-camera procedures (Janík, Miková 2006). Using Videograph (Rimmele 2002) software, the lessons were transcribed noting the utterances of the teacher, a pupil, more pupils or the whole class. For coding the system of categories was created consisting of categories for describing activities involving the language skills in separation (listening, speaking, reading, writing) as well as their various combinations – integration of the four skills (e.g. listening-writing). In order to see the proportion of communication in English in the lessons the categories relating to the use of the Czech language (as the language of instruction or in translations) were involved in the system of categories. At present coding of the lessons is in progress.

We presented a project intending to study the opportunities to developing language skills in Czech lower-secondary English classes. The analysis of the lessons is still in progress. So far we only have preliminary findings at our disposal which show a relatively big proportion of time in the lessons (almost 20 %) spent translating from Czech to English. The percentage in the proportion in other categories was notably lower. We hope that the future fingings will help us find out what potential the English classes offer and that the project will contribute to the research into processes of teaching and learning which have not been concentrated on sufficiently in the Czech Republic in the past.