Exploring the Context of Participation in English Language Shadow Education: Results of a Pilot Study among Secondary School Students

As the institutionalised language teaching has not yet gone through a change in terms of pedagogical attitudes (Einhorn 2015), in recent years there has been a growing demand for a more personalised way of English language tuition (Hegedűs 2021, Réti 2009) that complements language learning in formal education. The present study aims at examining the type of private education EFL students tend to take part in, the reason for students' participation, and the efficiency of private language education. Data is also gained on what percentage of students taking part in private tutoring are in possession of a language examination and in what aspects private tutoring influences students' career aspirations. In the form of a quantitative study (N=135) research questions are analyzed regarding the nature of private lessons students take part in and correlation analysis is carried out to examine the interrelationship between the scales of self-efficacy, differentiation and language learning goals in private language tuition. Based on our results, it seems there is a correlation between participation in shadow education and language learning motivation, confident language use, and social mobility. Contrary to the assumption about the rate of language examinations in shadow education, we found that there is no significant difference between students' success rate compared to those who do not take part in private tutoring. Our findings emphasise the need for differentiated instruction as well as taking students' personality into consideration in order for efficient language teaching to take place through raising students' self-efficay (Piniel &Csizér 2013) in the EFL classroom.