Learn Slovak easily, quickly, and online

Many foreigners are afraid of it. Unless they come from Slavic countries, it does not remind them of any of the languages they have been exposed to in their lives.  Despite that, the number of foreigners wishing to learn Slovak is growing. Not everybody has the time and money required to attend language courses that, furthermore, take place in Slovakia. However, starting from the following year, those interested in Slovak will no longer have to rely on summer language courses.  
The civic association Edukácia@Internet (E@I) in co-operation with the Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and other partners from Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and United Kingdom is preparing the international project „Slovak online“.

From Esperanto to Slovak
The Association has experiences with teaching a language through the modern means of communication.  Since the year 2002, it has been administering the world’s largest Internet portal for teaching Esperanto www.lernu.net. It has approx. 90,000 registered users, is translated into 30 world languages and more than 150 fellow workers (translators, teachers, and correctors) participate in it. The experiences with the technical and content creation of the Internet course gave the people of E@I an idea to extend the courses to national languages. „I have a friend from Lithuania and when she wanted to find an online Slovak course we found nothing that was any good. So we promised ourselves that we would develop one ourselves,“ as the project coordinator Peter Baláž described concerning the origin of the idea.
According to his statement, the course is intended for everybody who wants to learn about Slovak and its basics, especially for foreign students and people who are staying in Slovakia because of their work and/or families. „However, it can also be useful for linguists or Slavists or simply for people who like learning foreign languages,“ he added.

ADVERTISING

Available in five languages since March
The project team is currently working on the content of courses, exercises, games, as well as the technical aspect of the project, graphics, and information materials. Three workshops in Vilnius, Modra, and London took place, where the coordinators of the individual partner organisations divided work among themselves and discussed the details of the project, how it should look and what  its content should be. The foreign partners of the project are the Vilnius University, Warsaw Academy of Computer Science, Management and Administration, the Studio GAUS from Germany, and the Slovak Centre London. Therefore, the course is prepared in the English, German, Polish, Lithuanian and, of course, Slovak versions. „Our choice of languages has also taken into account the practical aspect,“ Peter Baláž said. „English is the most widespread language, and so for those for whom Slovak is not a native language they can learn it through English. German and Polish are the languages of our neighbours. Therefore, it is advantageous to also offer courses for them. Moreover, many Slovaks live in Germany and many of them have formed mixed couples, so these people should be given an opportunity to learn a little Slovak. On the contrary, many tourists from Lithuania visit our country, especially the Tatra Mountains. One of the partners is the Faculty of Linguistics of the Vilnius University that also offers the study of Slovenian language, so we gladly accepted the offer for co-operation on the Slovak course. 
The test version of the website will be finalised by the end of February. It will be available on the website www.slovake.eu that currently hosts a blog informing the public about the prepared project. The Slovak course will contain "typical“ and practical items required for e-learning, such as vocabulary, exercises, games, courses, tests, and video lessons. The purpose is to first offer Slovak courses of the levels A1 and A2, followed by courses of higher levels. The website will also contain information on Slovakia for foreign nationals to learn about the culture and country whose language they are learning.

Brussels also contributed to the start
The Slovak online course will be available for free, as the Association obtained the required financial resources directly from Brussels (Lifelong Learning Programme – KA2 Multilateral projects). „We want to offer our courses gratuitously after the termination of the project as well. We would like to use external assistants, volunteers – e.g. teachers, who will be able and willing to help students with homework, correct the texts or practise the conversation. We envisage ad posting on the website – it may be interesting for language schools, tourist offices, textbook shops, etc.,“ Peter Baláž said about the plans for the future. „We also plan to extend the website to other languages, for example its translation into Russian is already prepared. The system is already set up to enable translation into other languages. If some of the readers are interested, they can contact us and help us with the translations,“ he adds. 
Although the education will be online, Peter Baláž does not exclude the organisation of weekend workshops and summer courses. „In the case of our Esperanto course, for example, we started to organise summer school courses within five years. We’ll see how it goes with Slovak, maybe it will go faster.“


More info: www.slovake.eu

Author: Ivana Brezinská

Audio/Video

Photogallery