August 21, 2015

INTERVIEW: UCU instructor on how to teach Ukrainian to foreigners

More

Oleksandr Laskin

The textbook’s author, Mariana Burak (left) with Natalia Bartkiv, a teacher of the intermediate level of Ukrainian language.

“More and more foreigners want to learn Ukrainian. However, there is generally no specialized literature for this,” says Mariana Burak, a Ukrainian language instructor at Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU). Along with her colleagues at the university, she has taken up the development of a three-level (from elementary to advanced) series of textbooks, which they have titled “Yabluko” (Apple). The first textbook is already in use; the other two are due to appear by the end of the year. (The textbooks cost $49.50 each; the companion workbooks cost $14.50. They may be ordered at http://studyukrainian.org.ua/en/books/online_order.)

“The apple is both a symbol of knowledge and a symbol of the fruits of our many years’ work,” explains Ms. Burak. Oleg Budzinsky of UCU spoke with her to find out more about her creative approach, the education market for teaching Ukrainian and the people who come from Japan, Australia and Brazil to learn the Ukrainian language. The interview was translated from Ukrainian by Marlow Davis.

 

Cover of Yabluko’s Ukrainian textbook.

Cover of Yabluko’s Ukrainian textbook.

How much demand is there for such Ukrainian language textbooks? How did the idea to make them come about?

Ever since I began teaching Ukrainian to foreigners (already more than 10 years ago), I have been collecting materials, accumulating and systematizing various educational literature. Sometimes it seems as though I’ve been working on “Apple” my whole life.

Consequently, after that stage the idea arose to make an instructional textbook, the likes of which had not previously existed in the Ukrainophone world. Additionally, the didactics for teaching other languages were developed long ago.

When it comes to demand, such a work was always necessary. From the very beginning it was necessary somehow to teach students, to give them assignments and to encourage them to read texts. At a certain point, we had the desire to share our accomplishments with other teachers who found themselves in the very same situation. I know that there is a widespread belief among teachers that there is no such thing as an ideal textbook. I also understand that every successive attempt to develop a textbook for the Ukrainian language will be an improvement, but one has to start somewhere.

Who is your student? For whom did you make these books?

Many Ukrainian universities that educate foreign students work in the sphere of teaching Ukrainian as a foreign language. Logically, they prepare their students for university studies and for academic communication. Correspondingly, their materials are oriented toward teaching professional language, and their vocabulary is weighed down by terminology. They teach specialized literature, so that the students can make sense of their lectures.

Our audience, in contrast, is those who study the language for general usage. This niche generally has yet to be filled. While there do exist specialized materials for professional communication, there is no information whatsoever for general usage. Most often, our students have studied Ukrainian in the diaspora, or – which greatly pleases us – they are studying the language because they like this country, its traditions, or have Ukrainian friends. As an aside, I’d like to say that every year we have more and more students who are studying Ukrainian for their own academic research. Academics are interested in the history of Eastern Europe, international relations among Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and Russians. Such studies are not possible without learning the language.

In my years working at the School of Ukrainian Language and Culture at UCU, I have noticed that the geography of our students is broadening. While initially most of our students were from the environment of the diaspora in the U.S., Canada or Western Europe, now significantly more people are coming from South America, Japan and Australia.

Why, in your opinion, is it better to work with a textbook than without one?

If a set of materials used during instruction is chaotic, then unfortunately that chaos remains in the minds of students. I’m convinced that there should be a clear system of instruction. Creating this system was perhaps the most difficult task in developing the textbook. At first it seemed that the textbook would be complete once we compiled enough material, but the process of systematizing and sculpting the material has taken five years.

Do you make use of experience gained from the creation of textbooks for teaching English?

Yes, of course. The didactics of English language instruction have a long and excellent history. We studied the practice of teaching the grammar not only of English, but of French and German as well. However, we cannot blindly follow these textbooks, because the structure of the Ukrainian language is different, and this must be demonstrated.

Ukrainian grammar probably is more difficult to understand, but from experience I know that it all depends on the student’s desire to study. Therefore, I would not materially compare different languages.

For example, we could not blindly follow textbooks for foreign languages that combine the communicative component of instruction with the grammatical component. That which is possible in English is impossible in Ukrainian, for example, with cases.

Do you plan for your textbook to be used in Sunday schools in the Ukrainian diaspora?

I would be very glad if Sunday schools used our books.

“Apple” is not a textbook for self-study. But we strove to compose it in such a way that a student will be able to make sense of it alone. There is additional grammar, a section for self-testing, audio materials and graphic writing with the textbook so that one can study both pronunciation and listening comprehension.

We aimed to make the textbook universal, and for that reason it is monolingual. This fact also expands our potential audience.

You are developing a comprehensive instructional plan with three textbooks. Could you tell us more about that?

We are working on textbooks for three levels: the beginning, basic level, which I developed; the third, highest level, which Olena Sinchak wrote, which will soon come out; and by the end of the year we will release the intermediate level, the work of Natalia Bartkiv. Why is it out of order? We decided that the beginning and highest levels would mark out the frames, structure and qualitative content of the language, while the intermediate level is the search for a compromise. All of the textbooks are united by a clear, uniform structure, which determines the amount of material. Each successive level is based on the preceding one.

Why “Apple”?

In western culture, the apple is a symbol of knowledge. Secondly, the apple for us is a symbol of the fruits of our many years’ labor. And it also forms an acronym in Ukrainian: “Yabluko” – Ya Budu Liubyty Ukrainsku Kulturu, O! (I Will Love Ukrainian Culture, Oh!).

Comments are closed.