Strategy of Development Program for 2023-2028 (Department of English Philology)
The Department of English Philology at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv is quite large. As of this year, we may be teaching up to a thousand students. They are being trained for BA and MA degrees by over sixty teachers holding 51 teaching positions and offering classes at full-time, part-time and retraining and further education studies.
The Department is one of the oldest in the field in this country. Over its history spanning more than half a century it was graduated by thousands of students. It has also been home to the best and brightest teachers in Ukraine who nurtured the highest standards of language mastery by their students and developed diverse insights into research. Now our staff includes two professors and over thirty associate professors. Younger teachers are working on their candidate theses and several more experienced ones on habilitations.
English as the first major is being taught during the whole study course within complementing aspects –several at a time for each group in varying configurations and changing priorities depending on the stage of studies, each delivered by a specialist teacher. The aspects include an introductory course and language tutor’s classes addressing the individual needs of each student, diversely supplemented analytical lessons by reliable intermediate- to proficiency-level textbooks with special companions for Ukrainian students (4 hours a week in the first 6 terms, then 2 hours), an in-depth study of normative grammar (terms 1-4 ), reading and discussion of selected works of fiction (terms 5-8), mass media English (terms 3-8), integrated writing skills (terms 7-8). In the first two years our students will attend immersive readings in English and American Literature conducted each week in small groups of students. There will also be a three year literature course with lectures and seminars given by the Department of World Literature.
Our framework enables several teachers at a time to contribute to the molding of each student’s language skills throughout the entire period of his studies. Their prime aim lies in an all-round unfolding of each student’s language talents and learning potential.
Owing to the parallel training of practical skills in two foreign languages, broadly expanded by the introduction of double specialization at the Faculty, you will have a unique chance to master a second foreign language of your choice: German (with the possibility of a one-month study trip to Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg, Bavaria) as well as Spanish or French. There are also opportunities of studying other large and even smaller languages with English as a good launching pad in this activity.
The Department also offers selective classes envisaged for the versatile personal interests of students. They focus on specific aspects of language skills that stem from the richness of English. Such classes are conducted in slightly larger groups and span communicative proficiency of freshmen, multiple standards in imitative prosody, listening comprehension difficulties, subtleties of grammar and usage, special tasks and formats of writing, discussion panels, lexical expansion in standard English and its sub-languages, text immersion in various subjects and professional domains as well as subject-oriented translation skills previously encouraged in the course of practical English training. We have teachers who are accomplished interpreters and translators themselves with experience of interpreting in public as well as published work in the sphere of both artistic and specialist translation.
Language theory and linguistics is a challenge that all our students will be helped to meet in a most enjoyable way. You will spend most precious moments listening to lectures on a wide selection of theoretical subjects: introduction to philology and specialization (with the now rarely taught essentials of the Gothic language), country and language studies, lexicology, history of English, theory of grammar and stylistics. You will also cover teaching methodology and several related optional courses (use of multimedia in teaching, CLIL, ESP, age-target teaching, etc.) crowned by the memorable four-week teaching practice at the beginning of your 8th term. And theory and practice of translation will be taught by the Department of Contrastive Linguistics and Translation Studies that bears the name of Hryhoriy Kochur. Also, you will be actively involved in seminars, workshops and projects in these subjects. And your skills in linguistics are to be further solidified by your course-papers. They will be also enhanced by your own choice of theoretical selective courses and by-subjects from the open-ended list of disciplines ranging from phonology, phraseology and lexicography through external language history, study of medieval texts and the works of Shakespeare to methods of linguistic research, communication theory, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, discourse analysis and texts of postmodernist literature. You may also join our English theatre or the students’ choir as well as numerous volunteer and institutional projects that will contribute to your readiness for a real job. .
A number of our teachers have been to international conferences or on study trips to English speaking countries. And owing to the Erasmus program there are possibilities for student and teacher mobility. We enjoy the benefits of international cooperation by numerous partnership agreements stretching from a number of European countries to the U.S., Canada and China. We have also developed some interesting tools for student research in philology, corpus linguistics or electronic modelling (the latter in resemblance to the OED and HTE) as well as teaching resources for classroom and distant learning and even inter-continental partnership sessions. And we have plans to open up a one-month summer school for willing students at John Moores University in Liverpool! There will also be other venues: Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Italy. And there is a prospect of learning Chinese.
We are helpful and friendly to ALL students: those with a high creative potential and aspiring to achieve more and more with each month and even week. Equally, we will help you to rediscover your own self, if you were not the best student at school. You may have a talent for languages! We want you to feel good and comfortable! We will be happy for you and feel proud of your accomplishments. Importantly, our teaching is institutional. It takes place in mixed groups for all aspects of English with a possibility of students inter-groups transfer for larger experience and higher efficiency of studies.
When you graduate you will make a decent living of your major in English. As English is expanding in the world teaching English at different levels to all kinds of students means a job at every corner in Ukraine. And even beyond. You can also work as an interpreter or translator or be employed as a language specialist (software tester, sales and markets specialist or the like) in the growing IT sector, or a language expert and editor at various offices or institutions. Our graduates are working in industry, journalism, politics, tourism and entertainment. And should you want to master a new profession, be it business, law or a branch of scholarship in the sciences or humanities, think of the advantages in your new field from the command of English. And your children will come to speak English from a young age.
Take a closer look at our MA Programs! They include exciting master classes by our best language practitioners, solid obligatory subjects, specially designed study programs in a set of research disciplines on the cutting edge of scholarship, methodology options that will teach you how to teach, opportunities to unfold your translation talents through real-life tasks and activities. We cannot but mention a most valuable experience that you will get during your two-month teaching practice and a taste being a researcher while writing your MA thesis. We also offer enrolment for postgraduate studies as well as possibilities to present completed candidate dissertations. This year, our graduate and first postgraduate student from China Yongmin Wang is finishing up his thesis on pragmatic-cognitive peculiarities of loans in typologically distant languages.
The roots of English Studies at Lviv University go back to the subscription to the New English Dictionary (the first edition of the OED) by our scholarly library. Very few institutions in Eastern Europe can boast of a complete set of this unique and still ongoing reference source for English which will celebrate its 90th anniversary next year. The scholarly journal Inozemna Philologia (which was a quarterly for quite some time) with most contributions on English Studies has been published here since 1964. The English Department hosted the 7th International Conference on Middle English Studies attended by experts from twelve countries in 2011.We also co-hosted three All-Ukrainian Students Olympiads in English. An annual Anglistentag for English Studies scholars from Ukraine and elsewhere is to be held here starting next year. We have had regular bilateral exchanges of groups of students with Warsaw University and the Higher Professional School named after Stanisław Pigoń in Krosno, Poland. We are also known internationally owing to lecturing visits of such renowned authorities as Jacek Fisiak (Poznań), Manfred Görlach (Heidelberg), who donated part of his personal library to the Department, Dieter Kastovsky (Vienna), Fritz König (North Carolina), Barbara Kryk-Kastovsky (Vienna), Gabriele Knappe (Bamberg), Liliana Sikorska (Poznań), Hans Sauer (Munich), Matti Rissanen (Helsinki), Christiane Dalton-Puffer (Vienna), Grzegorz Kleparski (Rzeszów), Peter L. Rudnytsky (Florida), Władysław Witalisz (Kraków), Yali Lee (Canada). John Underhill (France).
Our students benefit from attending unforgettable classes by numerous guests from other countries and native speakers of English, among them the former British cultural attaché John Day who now resides in Lviv.
If you want to study English at Lviv University for your BA or MA Degree, make the Department of English YOUR FIRST CHOICE !!