Job-shadowing at the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland
Between 19 and 26 October 2023, two teachers from our faculty participated in a professional visit to Reykjavík within the framework of the project “Novel Techniques and Approaches in Language Teaching”.
PhDr. Lenka Štvrtecká, PhD. and Mgr. Viktória Gergelyová, PhD. from the Faculty of Central European Studies of the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra participated in the professional meeting aimed at exchanging experiences in teaching Icelandic and Slovak as a second language.
During the week-long programme in Iceland, the focus was on observing online and face-to-face lessons of the Icelandic language - phonetics, grammar, vocabulary development. Some of the lessons were in a hybrid form (like our university during the anti-epidemic measures), but in this case the reason was that the lessons were often led by a teacher or attended by students who were outside the capital of the island state at the time of the lesson. Due to the natural conditions and the isolation of several smaller municipalities, the university thus is trying to make Icelandic as a second language available to a wide range of people who are interested in learning it.
At the same time, we have offered Slovak language teaching for foreigners to students and teachers at the University of Reykjavik. The lectures were given by PhDr. Lenka Štvrtecká, PhD. From the Institute of Central European Languages and Cultures who has been teaching the courses “Slovak for Foreigners 1 and 2” at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra for the fifth academic year. The national or linguistic diversity of the students of the Slovak classes taught in Reykjavík was not an obstacle this time either - among the students, apart from Icelanders, there was also a student from Japan and the Netherlands. So the language of communication was English. However, several of them knew the basics of another Slavic language (Polish or Croatian), so it was interesting for everyone to observe the mutual analogies and differences, especially in the grammatical structures of these languages. For some others, however, the motivation for attending lessons laid in their perception of Slovak as a language that was rather exotic (compared to their native language).
Part of the stay at the university was also a presentation of our university to Icelandic colleagues involved in the project - the presentation was provided by the project coordinator, Mgr. Anikó Ficzere, PhD., as well as Mgr. Erzsébet Szabó, PhD. and Mgr. Viktória Gergelyová, PhD.
The meeting ended with a round table discussion and an invitation to our Icelandic colleagues to visit us in Nitra in December. The next stages of this successful international project will be the work of the project initiators, , prof. PaedDr. Zdenka Gadušová, CSc. and prof. PaedDr. Eva Stranovská, PhD. will continue under the expert guidance of the initiators of the project.
Acknowledgement: The event was funded by the project entitled Novel Techniques and Approaches in Language Teaching (NoTALaT) supported by the EEA and Norway Grants 2014-2021 and the state budget of the Slovak Republic.
