The piloting of the worksheets took place in two different contexts and in two different phases in the 2019/20 and 2020/21 academic years. First, the activity sequences were tried out in the author’s own teaching context, in first-year Language Practice 1 and 2 groups at the two universities where she taught at the time (Eötvös Loránd University – ELTE and Pázmány Péter Catholic University – PPCU). As the Language Practice course syllabus is different at the two universities, different activity sequences were tried out with some overlaps. All in all, in the two years of piloting, 13 Language Practice groups participated in the pilot (8 from PPCU and 5 from ELTE). An overview of the participating groups, including the research context, the semester, the group size, the work form, and the title of the activity sequence can be found in Table 3.15.

 

 

Even though Table 3.15 shows that all in all, by adding up the numbers, 198 students took part in the pilot phase of the study, in reality, this number is lower (n = 140; 64 students from ELTE and 76 students from PPCU), as many students who started Language Practice 1 in my groups, continued studying in these groups, so only a few new students came in the second semester. At the beginning of each semester, the participants were made aware that their data were to be collected and they had the chance to pull out of the study by not filling in the questionnaire and by not submitting their products to the me. It must be mentioned here that the fact that the students took part in a research project led by their teacher may have resulted in some bias: when they were asked for their opinion about the lessons, they may have rated the statements in the feedback sheet higher because they did not want to fall out of favour with me (even if the feedback sheets were anonymous), and they may have felt pressure to continue participating and submitting their work, which came from the power dynamics. Nevertheless, based on the research journal entries, most of the participating students seemed genuinely interested in the project and only a few students failed to submit their work to me (probably those who would not have done their homework anyway).