The Future of Education
Innovative and Creative Solutions in Educational Programmes of Studia Academica Slovaca
Renáta Kamenárová, School of Languages and Literatures, Translation and Interpreting of the University of Bologna, Campus of Forlì (Italy)
Michaela Mošaťová, Studia Academica Slovaca, Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University Bratislava (Slovakia)
Abstract
Studia Academica Slovaca – centre for Slovak as a foreign language (Faculty of Philosophy, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia) is a research and pedagogical centre which for the last 50 years has been engaged in language education for foreigners at all levels of language competence. SAS organises the Summer School of Slovak language and culture, publishes a large number of materials on both theoretical and practical basis and carries out a lot of important projects focused on contact and distant forms of education.
In this paper the authors focus on the three most significant educational programmes with respect to their contribution in the field of creative and innovative teaching of foreign languages.
The first programme is funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic which has defined the content, aims and methods of the contact and distant forms of language education for foreigners in line with individual language levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. One of the results of this project is a series of textbooks Krížom-krážom, which has a number of innovative aspects: no mediating language, explaining the lexis and grammar by means of internationalisms, schemes, pictures and tables, communicative and up to date language. The didactical content of these textbooks was adapted for the e-learning course www.e-slovak.sk and also for e-learning courses of Slovak language for the California University of Pennsylvania in the USA.
Another project realized within programme Sokrates Lingua 1 – Slavic Network – Linguistic and Cultural Integration is the joint work of 6 universities. It has been funded with support from the European Commision and its major aim is to encourage people from slavic or non-slavic countries to learn Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian and Bulgarian languages.
At present the last project, in which SAS participates, is the international project Prolang. This project promotes learning Slovak, Lithuanian and Slovenian languages on the web portal www.prolang.net and has been funded with support from the European Commission.
