Abstract
The aim of the study is to present one of the possibilities of implementing constructivist features into teaching Czech language, and verify if or how much these strategies are more effective than the ones traditionally used. The presented research has the character of a quasi-experiment conducted in two groups at upper-secondary school.
In the first group, the selected matter (relationships between coordinate clauses in the compound sentence) was taught in a traditional manner, in the second, with specially designed procedures based on constructivist principles of teaching and learning. Essays in the form of a pre-test and post-test have been used as the research tool.
The results of the research suggest that in comparison with the traditional way of instruction, the constructivist programme seems more successful in the area of the transfer of acquired knowledge into students' communication practice, i.e. in their own language production. As a result, constructivism appears to be a suitable tool for greater integration of the cognitive and communicative aim of language teaching, and also for overcoming the current problems that Czech first language education has been facing.
Therefore the outlined issues require further research.