In the master's thesis, we dealt with the development of students' metalinguistic abilities, i. e. one of the components of communication ability. Students should develop the ability to communicate and its components in an active, procedural and holistic way. It is recommended that students are active during lessons (transactional lessons) and that they come up with new knowledge themselves (constructivist lessons), because the knowledge gained in this way is of higher quality than the knowledge gained through traditional lessons.
In a qualitative, descriptive study, we first evaluated the textbooks that are approved for language lessons in Slovene in the 5th grade, namely their chapter on the gender of nouns, and then we investigated how the gender of nouns is treated in the 5th grade of elementary school, and we audio recorded and analyzed the lesson of five 5th grade classes from primary schools in Gorenjska. After analyzing the lessons, we conducted an interview with participating teachers.
We have found that certain textbooks are based on tasks that encourage students to be active and thus acquire new knowledge – that is, they are suitable for implementing constructivist lessons. Certain textbooks contain a summary at the end of the chapter that students must complete. Several books already present all the theory about the gender of the noun at the beginning, which is followed by tasks. One textbook also has questions at the end to check the student's understanding of the learning content.
Five teachers led the Slovene language classes using a variety of teaching methods and teaching forms. Most often, they used the conversation method and chose frontal and individual teaching form. The students mostly solved the tasks individually, namely in a workbook or on a handout. A group teaching format was also used in two lessons. The teachers used workbooks, handouts and electronic slides as teaching aids. The prospective blackboard was designed very similarly by the four teachers.
The students' problems were repeatedly related to the incorrect determination of the masculine gender of a noun of the neuter gender and vice versa. They had problems with nouns that name things, concepts and some creatures. There were also problems with determining the gender of nouns that have special endings.
We found that in all lessons, the teacher spoke much more than the students (from 80 to 90%). The majority of the teachers (4 out of 5) tried to include most of the students in the lessons.
In the interviews, the teachers said that they were mostly satisfied with their lesson delivery, but some would change it to include group work in addition to the individual and frontal format. The lesson plans were mostly prepared in previous years, but they were adapted according to the peculiarities of this year's class. Examples of nouns were prepared by some teachers in advance, while some were searched for by students. Teachers mostly felt that the tasks that caused problems for students were related to neuter gender or contained nouns that were challenging with regard to gender.
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