On November 17 Petro Poroshenko signed a Decree “On announcing 2016 the Year of the English Language in Ukraine,” as well as a number of concrete events that should be realized on different levels.
First, the Cabinet of Ministers must develop and approve a complex of measures “aimed at activation of learning of English by the citizens.” They stake on the higher educational establishments and extracurricular educational establishments. As for the secondary school, more specialized competitions, Olympiads, and other contests connected with the English language will be held, and the nationwide and international programs of student exchange will be developed, including the ones in the framework of the educational program of the European Union “E-Twinning Plus.”
All teachers of foreign languages must take up re-attestation according to the General European Recommendations on Linguistic Education, whereas the government must improve the legislation in the sphere of education and science by defining the list of pedagogical, academic, and academic-pedagogic posts in the institutions that require the knowledge of English. The state officials will be tested as well, to check their level of English. Learning courses will be organized for those who will need to improve their English. To realize all this, the government has been tasked with “working on the question of involving international financial and technical aid for realization of the abovementioned measures.”
Apart from the official structures, summer language camps must be involved in improving the level of English, in particular, by involving foreign specialists for teaching English, including volunteers, for whom the order of entering Ukraine must be simplified and comfortable living conditions must be provided. It is also planned to include English learning TV and radio programs for different categories of population and broaden of the practice of showing films in English with Ukrainian subtitles.
There is no doubt that these steps must be realized, and for sluggish red-tape apparatus the presidential decree may become an additional stimulus. Now the most important thing is the methods and ways of realization. We already have the Ukrainian multimedia platform of broadcasting in foreign language launched by the Ministry of Information Policy. Its creation took 10 months and as a result it turned out to be not so informative and modern. At the same time the channel Ukraine Today developed original reports from many countries of Europe and the world which meet the CNN level. Showing films in the language of the original has been a topic of a heated debate, and after all the initiative has been implemented before the decree was issued.
In other words, the modernization of the system of education must not become another cover for re-division of financial streams. And the modernization must take into account the background. Young people and not only they can be taught to speak English, but we should also understand what we are going to speak about. Because there is very little Ukrainian discourse in English in the world, and if we don’t broaden the background (this can be done simultaneously to learning the language, there is no need to stick to a system of concrete steps), we simply may get lost in the trends of globalization.
The Day may become a point of support here. It started to publish the lessons of English 10 years ago within the framework of its own action “Entire Ukraine is learning English,” and it is still popular among people who want to improve their level of English. This point has been confirmed by the head of the foreign language courses at the Dnipropetrovsk-based Oles Honchar National University, a former employee of the English philology department at the abovementioned university Liubov Koshova: “When you teach English, talk to students a lot, you touch upon very different aspects of life, in particular, the situation in the country and present-day problems. For this you need some groundwork, and the English version of Den is very helpful. For it is impossible to learn a foreign language, speaking only about other countries. We are interesting for others the way we are, therefore I think we need to be able to express ourselves to the world. I view this as a part of my work.”
“We are trying to make every issue of The Day a concentration of intellectual things which must be read abroad,” says the editor of The Day Anna Motoziuk. “Namely for this purpose Den has been publishing its English-language version with Ukrainian content for many years.”
